YOLO

Four people, two and a half hours, three cafes, eleven cakes.

Yeah, go ahead and read that again: four people, two and a half hours, three cafes, eleven cakes. That is how we spent almost all of the afternoon of our last day in Vienna. The cafe crawl. 

All right, yes, yes, yes, I haven't posted in a long time, but! This time I have a legitimate excuse. No, "my brother ate the computer," nothing like that. There's a good reason. But more on that later. 

There are two things you should know before I start this post. First, my title, YOLO. If you are of my generation you likely know what this means. YOLO stands for "You Only Live Once," the idea that because you only live once you should take every opportunity to make your life, as my brother would say, "BOSS". Of course, there is a story (whether or not this is an urban legend I do not know) that some stupid teenager was drunk driving and texted their friends "YOLO," then got in a car crash and died. So there's also YODO, "You Only Die Once," but don't worry, what we did was not that extreme. You have to admit though, the irony is thick. 

The second thing you should know (and if you're of my parents' generation you're probably one of their close friends, and you probably know this) is that my father does NOT like too much sugar. He just can't take it. I mean, he doesn't like DARK CHOCOLATE for god's sake, a fact that I find close to blasphemous. Who doesn't like dark chocolate?! Don't answer that, if you value my friendship. You know who you are. 

Anyway, you can imagine our surprise when, on the morning that I wrote my post about the Habsburgs, my dad said, "I have an idea, and you're gonna think I'm CRAZY." We looked at him, mildly interested, and I say only mildly because my dad says crazy, dramatic stuff all the time. But this would blow our minds. "I have an idea. We are in the land of pastries, right?" A pause for effect. "Well, how about sometime this weekend we go to as many cafes as possible, and instead of having lunch, try AS MANY PASTRIES AS WE CAN IN ONE AFTERNOON." 

We stared. For a long time. And then finally I laughed and said, "That sounds AWESOME. YOLO!!!" 

My dad, the guy who can't stand sugar, suggested that. That really is crazy!

So the next day, Sunday, we went to the Belvedere Palace in the morning, which is a museum, and in the afternoon went on our cafe crawl. The former was really interesting, because we saw lots of great art, especially by one of my dad's favorite artists, Klimt. Not to mention the fact that we saw the infamous "The Kiss." (You guys probably know what that is but in case you don't, look it up, I'm sure you'll recognize it.) But unfortunately the museum will have to get less description than it deserves, simply because of the "bossness" of the afternoon. We went to three cafes: Aida, Oberlaa, and Demel. The pastries were AMAZING. My dad took pictures of all of them and rated them on Facebook. I have to say, Viennese cakes are pretty darn good. We barely ate dinner that night, we were so full from our "lunch." 

That was our last day in Vienna. The next day we were supposed to drive to Bad Mitterndorf, a town in the Austrian Alps, but it was snowing REALLY hard. For those of you who generally stay within the Bay Area, it's kind of hard to imagine. Even Lake Tahoe hasn't gotten that much snow in one day for years. There was a lot of wind so the snow stung your face when you walked outside and we had to drive really slowly, both because of lack of visibility and the piles of snow that were filling the streets. It took us an hour or so to get our chains, and after that even though we weren't skidding anymore the snow kept getting carried by the wind and blowing all over the place, making visibility pretty limited. We were driving for a few hours and we still didn't make it out of the general Vienna area. So we just got a hotel room and spent the rest of the day doing schoolwork. And so, of course, (*ahem*) I HAD NO TIME TO DO A BLOG POST.

The next morning we got up earlier than we ever have since we arrived here, which still wasn't all that early, but it was tough. We drove for a few hours and arrived in the afternoon to Bad Mitterndorf. Actually it's really nice, because we wouldn't have even gone to Bad Mitterndorf if not for Alex and Petra. Basically there's this awesome organization called Couch Surfing, which is where random people from all over the world can ask to stay at your house, usually for one to three days. You give them food and a place to stay, and then your act of kindness is repaid when you go traveling. Then you ask to stay at other people's houses for free. Even if they're not the same people as you had stay at your house, everybody ends up paying for their free bed and breakfast by giving others a place to stay. It's the ultimate system of karma because you also rate people and give them recommendations--so if you're a bad houseguest nobody's gonna give you a place to stay. And finally, it's a great way to meet other people from all over the world. Anyway, Alex and Petra (both are women, just to clarify since Alex could be a male or female name) are a really nice couple from Hamburg, Germany with two son. They are also doing a worldwide yearlong trip and blogging about it, coincidentally enough. They're people after our own hearts, and while they were staying with us they offered for us to use their appartment in Bad Mitterndorf. It was really nice of them, considering we had only known each other for 24 hours when they offered it to us. So we ended up staying there and going skiing for two days in a row. On the day we arrived my mom, brother and I went out hiking in the snow and sledding. It was really fun. We must've looked pretty silly, because we took turns pulling each other on the sled even though we were hiking uphill and I was singing at the top of my lungs, but it was really fun. There was also a snowball fight involved. It's funny, the thing about snow is that no matter how old and mature I think I am, I always feel like a tiny little kid again when I'm playing in the snow. I guess it's just the way you can create anything out of it, build giant forts or little snowmen, throw it at people and have snowball fights, run in it, jump in it, lay in it, make snow angels ... it's amazing. Even when you run in the snow it's lilke you're a little kid becuse you're so uncoordinated! Anyway, the next two days we went skiing. The Alps are so gorgeous, and the skiing was SO AMAZING--perfect snow and weather--that I think I might be disappointed going back to my own beautiful Sierra Nevadas! The only problem that we had with Bad Mitterndorf (and really it wasn't all that terrible) was that there was no wifi, so again (*ahem ahem*) I COULDN'T POST ON MY BLOG.

My mom looking like a supermodel on the sled

Me and my amazing mini snowperson!

Our first day when we arrived was beautiful…

Me, skiing in the Alps!

Gotta love your peeps ;)

So gorgeous!!!

Yesterday we left Bad Mitterndorf, and now we're in a hotel in Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. Seriously, both Vienna and Salzburg really use Mozart to their advantages when it comes to attracting tourists. It's kind of funny, actually, because there are these chocolates called Mozart Balls and it's like  Ray's Pizza in NYC. You know how there are tons of Ray's Pizzas in New York and each of them call themselves "the original Ray's" or "the famous Ray's" or "the first real original famous Ray's Pizza"? Well it's like that with Mozart Balls, too; we kept seeing shops for them around every corner and each of them looked exactly the same, with the same chocolates and everything!

Whether or not these are the original Mozart Balls I don't know, but we got them in Vienna!

So tomorrrow we're off to Cortina, Italy where we'll go skiing again, this time in the Italian Alps, with my amazing and crazy cousins Giulia and Ella! Unfortunately there will again be no wifi, so I'll give you all an update in a week! Until then, I wish you all the best.