kareina

Can I remember everything that has happened? Should I? The hour is getting late, and I've got class in the morning...

Let me see. Friday morning I checked out of my room returned to the conference venue to check mail (no internet in the dorm rooms in Budapest) and retrieve my poster. My pile of luggage was rather larger thanks to the purchases at the Folk Festival I'd gone to on Sunday. Luckily it was all still manageable, though I confess that I took the tram to the train station rather than walking like I normally would. I managed to catch the 11:00 train, though when I saw the way in which the line for ticket purchases was moving I wasn't certain if I'd manage that. Fortunately, the people in front of me heard me talking to the man behind me, and when they heard that I was hoping to catch a train that was leaving soon, they let me go in front of them.

I arrived in my destination, Oberndorf bei Salzburg around 18:00, which gave me time to visit with my hosts (I love couch surfing!) and go for a walk with them to Germany and back. The town of Laufen, on the inside bend of an extreme curve of the Salzach River made a fortune in the middle ages due to the salt trade traveling up the river. Apparently that bend in the river was very rocky, and it was needful to hire locals to safely navigate the waters there. The Nobels, who had the monopoly on the salt trade, lived on the hill in the inside bend of the river, and their workers lived in Oberndorf on the outside bend. The church in Laufen was built in the 1300's. Just incase you didn't belive me about the tightness of the bend of the river, here is the same church from the other side. Yes, that is the same river. No, it isn't an island.

On Saturday I took the train to Hallein, to take the Salt Mine tour There are, apparently, more than one available in the Salzburg area, and this is the one my host recommended. I have no idea if this is the exact same mine I went to when I was 5--I asked mom before I went which one we went to, but all she remembered was "at Salzburg". Either way it was quite a trip for me. Triggered many memories. I love the mine! Loved the view from the entrance (and the fact that it was a nice, cool, rainy day--felt so good after the heat in Budapest), loved the slide--thought it worth the admission price all on its own. The guide said we could go down twice, so I did. Was hit with some pretty powerful emotions during the tour--last time I was there was with my dad, and I miss him. Felt very close to him there.

I took the bus from Hallein to the mine, which was good because I got to talking with some of the other tourists, which meant that I had someone to ride the slide with--they require that people go down in groups of two or three. Since they let us climb back up and go down the slide a second time it meant we could take turns who got to sit in front. The slide is quite different from my memory. This one is highly polished logs, so one gets some real speed going, and they are only just raised above the nice, smooth channels, so there isn't really anywhere you could fall. My childhood memories was of being in a long line of people to ride the slide, of it going quite slowly, and of my feet dangling down over open air. I also remember it as not being that tall--sure tall compared to me, but no where near as long as this. After touring the mine checked out the Celtic Village. Apparently the first salt miners in the area were Celts, and they've got a number of finds dating from then both in the reconstructed village and in the history museum in town (both of which are free entry with your salt mine ticket, so, of course, I did). Then I opted to walk down the hill, rather than taking the bus again. I'm glad I did--I found a foot-path so I didn't even have to deal with traffic.

On Sunday I took the train to Vienna, to the home of the delightful racaire1, where I'm staying for this week's short course. It is wonderful to see her again, and get to fondle her projects in progress, and admire those that she's completed. I'm really enjoying the course--full of much useful information. I did note today that I've fallen into my typical "school mode", which is to say, arrive for class early, settle into my chair in the front row, listen to the lecture while stitching, keep to myself on breaks, and head home as soon as we are done. I don't think I'd recognize most of my class mates if I met them on the street. This is a bad habit, I think, but one developed over many years of studying. I had such an active social life at the SCA I didn't need to make friends at any of the unis I attended. Now that my social life is all on line, it would probably be a good idea to befriend some of my colleagues. I wonder if I noticed this on time to do anything about it this course?

I was a bit more social on Monday--I joined some of my classmates for lunch--we went to an Asian restaurant across the street from the class building. However, this turned out to not be such a good idea, though it took hours to figure that out. Since restaurants give more food at one sitting than I think reasonable to eat at once I put half of my food (fried rice with veg, but, alas, not much veg) into a container for later and then ate what was left. We got back to class just after the lecture started (one point against the restaurant!). I had a hint of a headache as the class day ended, but didn't think much of it, and ate my left-overs on the trip back "home" for the night. As the evening progressed the headache got slowly worse. I rarely get headaches, and even more rarely eat restaurant food at all, let alone cheap Asian restaurant food.

Eventually it occurred to me to wonder if I were reacting to the food, or rather, to the additives that they probably used. I don't *know* for certain, but when I had that thought it felt *right*--I have certainly heard of people having headaches from eating things with MSG in it before. And racaire1 tells me that "glutamat" is used in such restaurants here, and that she knows several people who have problems when they eat it. I tried taking a hot shower, and it helped for as long as I was in it. After yoga I tried chanting while meditating, and it helped for as long as I did it. But when I tried laying down and there was nothing to distract me the headache proved to be too distracting to be able to sleep. After an hour or so I got up and turned the computer back on and got absorbed in learning how to use MATLAB for the homework from class, which permitted me to forget about the pain, and when I finally went back to bed at 02:30, I was doing better enough to drift off to sleep, and felt fine when I woke up this morning. But you can bet that I did *not* experiment by going back to a restaurant today, but instead picked up some fruit and a bread roll from a grocery store on the way in and ate the way I normally do.

(Note: racaire1 had offered me something for the pain, but I don't like to take drugs, so thought I'd try the shower and chanting first. By the time I realized that it hurt too much to sleep it was too late to go back upstairs and take her up on the offer, since she had to get up in the morning for a workshop--besides, if the problem was my body reacting to something I don't normally eat it would probably be bad to chase it with something else I don't normally ingest!)

Three days of class left, then I train back to Milan (must purchase that ticket!) where I will meet a couple of friends I met at last year's textile forum, who are coming over from the UK. They will stay with me on the weekend, and then we will head out to the textile forum, where I don't expect to have internet, which is a better excuse for not updating this regularly than "I've been busy".

I had ever so much fun in Vienna, and would love to post about it. However, I also really need to get to work on papers for publication. Can it really be 10 months already since I finished my thesis and moved to Milan, and coming in on five since my degree was awarded? And yet I've not submitted papers for publication about my PhD research! Today I saw an advertisement for a very interesting sounding job in a location which is topographically uninspiring (read: flat). I'm considering applying. However, before I prepare an application packet it would be nice if the cover letter could mention that I have submitted an article for publication on that research and would be happy to provide a copy of the submitted manuscript if they cared to look at it. Guess I'd better get writing. Therefore, please read racaire1's journal (and many of her other recent entries) to get an idea of some of my adventures while visiting her.

There are lots more over on Facebook, and many more in racaire1's blog and her flicker account, but for those of you who are happy to stay in LJ, here are a couple of token photos of my time in Vienna.



The bike path along the Danube upon which I peddled to the conference each day.



Inside Stephansdom



Inside Wien Museum

Ok, I’ve been alternating between the excuses of being busy and not having good internet access as reasons not to post. I don’t have internet at the moment, but I’ve got a decent desk at which to sit, and my host is busy helping the downstairs neighbour girl learn to play the recorder, so I’ll type up some of my Vienna adventures thus far, and post them tomorrow when I’m back at the conference venue.

I arrived in Vienna on Friday and was met in town by racire1. We went back to her place for a lovely lunch, where we were joined by some of her friends. The four of us hopped into a car and drove to a fabric store in a small town to the north east of Vienna. This is a store which offers some pretty good deals. I found some nice black linen, some light weight white linen, and some decent blue linen, each of which was labelled with an asking price of €5/meter, and I tossed them into the shopping cart we were filling of things we might purchase. Then we returned to the wool isle, and I found a lovely brown/black soft wool that has a wavy weave, also marked at €5/meter. The girls explained to me once we were ready to go that it was worth waiting a bit longer for the owner to come to the measuring table, as he generally is willing to offer discounts if we take all of a bolt, or at least six meters of something. The black was labelled as having 4.6 meters left on the bolt, and the white 5.7 m, so I decided to just take all of each of those. I opted for six meters of the blue, and after hearing how much of a discount he gave for each of those, asked for 8 meters of the wool. The grand total came to an average of $3.69/meter for the lot of it! I strongly recommend shopping with racire1.

Friday evening we did a sewing night, and I tried to teach them the Finish stitch in nålbinding. To accomplish this, I first had to teach myself how to do it with the right hand, since I’d learned it left-handed. It was harder than I thought to figure it out, and while I can now do it with either hand, I like it better left handed.

Saturday and Sunday she took me to museums and coffee houses (it is Vienna after all, sitting in coffee shops is very important here). It being the first Sunday of the month, a number of the museums were free admissions. She’s uploaded lots of photos from our weekend adventures on her blog and livejournal, if anyone is interested.

Sunday evening I moved to the home of one of her friends for the week. I’ve been enjoying evenings spent with the family. Her children speak German (of course), and French because they go to French school, but they’ve picked up some English since I arrived with "Kareina, look" having been particularly well learned. I’ve gotten all of my new fabric washed, mostly dried on the line, and ironed the rest of the way dry, and I’ve started a new underdress out of the white linen.

During the days I’ve been attending the conference of the European Geosciences Union, enjoying listening to interesting talks, reading interesting posters, and making use of the free internet (while there is working internet at the house in which I’m staying, the password they think is correct doesn’t work on my computer—when we type it in it insists that it is required to be exactly 26 characters (it is!), and won’t do anything). Alas, it is rare that I’ve managed to find an electrical outlet near a table and chair, so I’ve been reduced to reading mail/LJ/blogs/etc. while holding the computer in my lap, which is fine for reading, but not so comfortable for typing.

I’ve been biking to the conference each day—my route takes me from the apartment along a lovely green belt to the Danube, and then down the bike path there to the site. It takes me just under a half an hour to get there and just over half an hour to return. Between that and all of the walking during our museum adventures, my exercise log for this month is looking pretty good.

I've been having too much fun in Vienna to make time to post. I'm now on lunch break between lectures at the confrence, and my internet connection is unreliable, so I'm not going to post now, either. I'll try to remember all of my adventures and type them up later.

In other news thealater has finished her PhD dissertation, Honored Values and Valued Objects: The Society for Creative Anachronism (this message brought to you because our friend's list only partially overlaps, and some of the rest of you may find the topic interesting.)