Austria trip day eight
Today is the eighth day and our first full day in Gmunden.
Gmunden is a small town on the lake Traunsee, which is fed by the Traun river. I can see the Alps from my bedroom. The air tastes clean. The buildings tend towards quaint and very European-looking. Some of the residents wear dirndls or lederhosen.
We set out late today, around noon, and ate lunch by the waterfront.
I had a little difficulty in ordering food. It turns out that Mozzarella-Ciabatta isn't cheese and Italian bread, it's cheese, Italian bread, vinegar, cucumber, lettuce, and some kind of pinkish dressing. I don't like most of those things. I had hot chocolate with whipped cream, as well. In German, that's 'heisse Schokolade mit Schlagobers'. Either I know a lot more German than I remember, or I'm picking it up really fast.
After lunch, Isaac and I sat on the waterfront taking pictures of the swans while mom and dad looked at the electric cars that were set out in the square.
Dad rode around on a Segway.
The swans were copious and unafraid.
We passed a Vespa marketing booth. There was some kind of small festival going on. There were even more lederhosen. A ridiculous amount of lederhosen. Lederhosen make grown men look like leprechauns. It's a little unnerving.
Then we went to Gmunden's general museum to look at toilets. The museum is a seemingly random collection of objects, most of which are at least vaguely connected to or affiliated with Gmunden. These included a chapel, Roman pottery, models of American rockets, fossils, models of the valley where Gmunden is located, Gmundener Keramic (that's green-painted pottery), a model of salt miners, a coffee machine, and a bathroom exhibit.
The walls of the bathroom exhibit were hung with low-res printouts of images that had clearly been found on the internet. Some of them still had the stock photo placeholder watermark on them. All of them showed serious JPEG artifacts.
The bathroom exhibit filled four rooms and had chamberpots, toilets, bedpans, sinks, bathtubs, urinals, and urine sample bottles dating from the 1800s onward. Notable among these were fancy floral-painted toilets and urinals, a set of toilet pulls, an avocado-green bathroom set from 1961, and a chamberpot that belonged to Franz Josef I. Just think: royal poop once rested in that ceramic. Lovely.
I am sure you can imagine the tasteless comments that we all made.
The sky had been spitting when we entered the museum. When we exited, it was more pissing than spitting. It was raining pretty hard, if that wasn't clear.
We got gelato. Then dad walked back to the rental house and brought the car back.
Mom went food shopping. We had chicken parmesan, bread, and caprese salad for dinner.
Tomorrow we're going to Salzburg. Dad went there when he was 14 and his family was staying in Germany. I guess we're fairly close to Germany right now. I didn't realize that.
This post is also somewhat terse. I am still not feeling that great. I'm a little angry that I feel like crap, because I know I'd be having a much better experience if I wasn't. I also feel a little guilty for wanting to go home, because trips to Europe are not an opportunity the average American gets and I'm wasting mine. I don't know.
I miss my friends. I didn't even realize that until my father pointed out that that might be what it was.
I really don't know. Mostly I'm just not used to not being by myself for most of the day. I miss being alone.
Gmunden is a small town on the lake Traunsee, which is fed by the Traun river. I can see the Alps from my bedroom. The air tastes clean. The buildings tend towards quaint and very European-looking. Some of the residents wear dirndls or lederhosen.
We set out late today, around noon, and ate lunch by the waterfront.
I had a little difficulty in ordering food. It turns out that Mozzarella-Ciabatta isn't cheese and Italian bread, it's cheese, Italian bread, vinegar, cucumber, lettuce, and some kind of pinkish dressing. I don't like most of those things. I had hot chocolate with whipped cream, as well. In German, that's 'heisse Schokolade mit Schlagobers'. Either I know a lot more German than I remember, or I'm picking it up really fast.
After lunch, Isaac and I sat on the waterfront taking pictures of the swans while mom and dad looked at the electric cars that were set out in the square.
Dad rode around on a Segway.
The swans were copious and unafraid.
We passed a Vespa marketing booth. There was some kind of small festival going on. There were even more lederhosen. A ridiculous amount of lederhosen. Lederhosen make grown men look like leprechauns. It's a little unnerving.
Then we went to Gmunden's general museum to look at toilets. The museum is a seemingly random collection of objects, most of which are at least vaguely connected to or affiliated with Gmunden. These included a chapel, Roman pottery, models of American rockets, fossils, models of the valley where Gmunden is located, Gmundener Keramic (that's green-painted pottery), a model of salt miners, a coffee machine, and a bathroom exhibit.
The walls of the bathroom exhibit were hung with low-res printouts of images that had clearly been found on the internet. Some of them still had the stock photo placeholder watermark on them. All of them showed serious JPEG artifacts.
The bathroom exhibit filled four rooms and had chamberpots, toilets, bedpans, sinks, bathtubs, urinals, and urine sample bottles dating from the 1800s onward. Notable among these were fancy floral-painted toilets and urinals, a set of toilet pulls, an avocado-green bathroom set from 1961, and a chamberpot that belonged to Franz Josef I. Just think: royal poop once rested in that ceramic. Lovely.
I am sure you can imagine the tasteless comments that we all made.
The sky had been spitting when we entered the museum. When we exited, it was more pissing than spitting. It was raining pretty hard, if that wasn't clear.
We got gelato. Then dad walked back to the rental house and brought the car back.
Mom went food shopping. We had chicken parmesan, bread, and caprese salad for dinner.
Tomorrow we're going to Salzburg. Dad went there when he was 14 and his family was staying in Germany. I guess we're fairly close to Germany right now. I didn't realize that.
This post is also somewhat terse. I am still not feeling that great. I'm a little angry that I feel like crap, because I know I'd be having a much better experience if I wasn't. I also feel a little guilty for wanting to go home, because trips to Europe are not an opportunity the average American gets and I'm wasting mine. I don't know.
I miss my friends. I didn't even realize that until my father pointed out that that might be what it was.
I really don't know. Mostly I'm just not used to not being by myself for most of the day. I miss being alone.