TravelStream™ news feed for member holly_wenzel on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/holly_wenzel en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:08:46 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1228427340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1228427340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1228427340/tpod.html Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:08:46 -0500 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Mauthausen, Lower Austria, Austria

On December 4th Keeghan, Sally, Nicole, Will, Alice, and I went to Mauthausen the concentration camp just outside of Linz. We got to the camp around eleven o'clock after a 2k walk up a mountain. As we were walking and shivering i couldnt help but think of the thousands driven up this path with no shoes and barely enough clothes to cover them. Starved and terrified. We got up to the camp and went into the main office. It was one euro to see the camp and we were provided with those walkie talkie things you get at museums that tell you more about a picture but in this case more about certain parts of the camp. That was included in the one euro. We went into the camp and the first part that you listen about was called the wailing wall. it is where the guards had the prisoners stand when they first arrived at the camp, they were stripped and then
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1229085180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1229085180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1229085180/tpod.html Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:06:23 -0500 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Traismauer, Vienna, Austria

Wow hello everyone it has been some time since i have written anything! well i have found out that the saying 'time flys when your having fun' is a very true statement. i cannot believe that it is almost christmas. ive had my first snow, and sadly my only snow so far this year. It was very special because olivias family had come over for thanksgiving dinner and right as we started eating my host dad told me to turn around and i did seeing a huge flurry of snowflakes coming down, it was so beautiful and made for a very special thanksgiving. i think i may only have a white thanksgiving this year and no white christmas though sadly. haha as im trying to think back on what ive done i cant help but laugh at all the memories, our three pumpkin pies that turned out, well, almost right at least=P . i went on a class trip with to vienna, got to see the van gough (is that how you spell his name?) exhibition. It was a great time because it was the second time that ive hung out with my classmates outside of school. i really am loving school alot its a lot of fun and my classmates are all so nice. yesturday i had a soccer game with the langenlois team and when they were driving me back home they invited me out on saturday, which sadly im busy this time but another weekend i am hoping to go out with them which should be a lot of fun and will be my first time out with austrians. next weekend is the salzburg wochenende, and this weekend i get to go snowboarding with my family. Its very sad though that its christmas time too because i dont get to be home with everybody and its also the three weeks that our oldies (the exchange kids from australia) are here, we get new ones in febuary but its just hard to let go to these amazing friends ive made especially because there are 5 oldies around me right now and there are no newbies coming to this area. i am fortunate though because i did end up getting an Österreich card so i can travel austria for free on the train´s. well so much more than this has happened i know but im sorry i just cant type it all out for you! thinking of all of you and wishing i could see you in the christmas season!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1225911840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1225911840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1225911840/tpod.html Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:37:58 -0500 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Hello Everyone! Yes i know it has been a long time and i cant use the excuse that i havent had time because i have, but i just havent had the energy to sit down and tell of my travels. Well i will tell of my travels to Vienna, or Wien, I had gone to Wien several times before our Rotary Weekend there but i hadnt really 'seen Vienna'. So on Friday alice, olivia, and I went to Vienna met up with other exchange students and just hung out for a couple hours because we didnt need to meet at the hostel until 17.00 so we had plenty of time to walk around.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1221577680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1221577680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1221577680/tpod.html Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:48:44 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Tauplitz, Styria, Austria

Hello! Well im back in Traismauer and i just had one of the most fun weekends of my life. I went to Tauplitz on Friday morning at 12 o'clock with Olivia, Everett, Keeghan, Sally, Alice, and Nicole and by the time that we had actually arrived at Tauplitz nearly 60 foreign exchange students were on the train it was so crazy. So this was the first time since language camp that i had seen any of the exchange students and it was soooo good to see everyone again. You dont realize how nice friends are until all of a sudden you actually have some again :p and we got to meet all of the oldies which was so much fun because they are all so crazy and spontaous and fun. So the first night was basically just everyone meeting everyone else and chilling and then on Saturday we got up at 8 and went on a hike around this really beautiful lake. About half way through the hike half the group stopped and jumped in the lake. I was considering jumping in but i didnt know how much longer the hike would be and i didnt want to hike soaking wet in the freezing cold and rain for who knows how long. But it was pretty funny because we stole two of the boys shorts for about an hour so they had to hike in their boxers for an hour and it was so funny but we did give their pants back eventually =] then there was another hike after lunch but a couple of us stayed upstairs and didnt go on it because we had just come back from a 5 hour hike and were not about to go back into the rain. So we hung out there for a while until the other hikers and over achievers came back. Then we had dinner and went back out hiking to a little disco place which was more of a big gazebo with music and free drinks :) i really love almdudler!! it like the national pop of Austria. Im also really enjoying Milka and Haribo =] so after the disko we went back to the hostel in a wagon and then we hung out again that night and finally went to bed around 1 which is later than i have stayed up in over a month! On Sunday it was another goodbye the weekend seemed to go so fast and yet now i cant seem to think of when i didnt know all the people i now do. Its hard to explain because you get to know people so well and have so much fun and then all of a sudden its over. But Monday was really hard because i had so much fun over the weekend and then i came back home where i only have one friend and i cant understand people and theres nothing to do. But tomorrow im going into Vienna for the Jason Mraz concert with some of the other inbounds and so im really looking forward to that! and Wien Wochenende (Vienna weekend) is in October so thats pretty exciting too. Its very sad that we newbies (the exchange students who came in august) only get to be with the oldies (those who came in January) for 4 months and we only have 3 events with them. But then we'll get newbies and we'll be the oldies =]
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220792460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220792460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220792460/tpod.html Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:33:21 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Hello Everyone! So i feel like so much has happened these last couple of days =] ok so yesterday i went to the austrian vs. france soccer game, it was so much fun. i went with olivia, philipp, clara, julian, and two of philips friends. it was so crazy, everyone was standing up for at least half of the game there were all these cheers that everyone, meaning the 50,000 austrian fans would participate in it was crazy, some of the chants were rot, weiß, rot weiß Österreich. which means red, white, red white Austria. and then there was one were it said jump if your not french and then everyone would be jumping and singing it was so funny. another was immer wieder, immer wieder, immer wieder Österreich which is like always austria basically. but ya austria was suppose to get creamed by the french because the french team was like second in the world cup or something and austria is like really really bad and then we won 3-1!!!! it was so exhilerating when we scored and everyone was yelling and going nuts. it was really funny cause me and olivia got hungry so we went to the snack bar and got a bratwurst and it was like in the the bun like the bun wasnt cut open there was a hole that the brat was suck into. really weird. and then for drinks they give them to you in these plasic cups and then when you return them you get a euro back. and your not allowed to have the bottles because you could throw them on the field and injure a player. then today i went on an hour walk with my mom and dad behind our house in the woods and i learned a bunch of new vocab and it was a lot of fun just to see more of the landscape near me and now i know another place where i can go running :) then we went to my first catholic church which was kinda interesting and kinda not because i couldnt understand anything that was being said but it was interesting to look at all the sculptures and stuff. i made my cinnamon rolls for my family a couple days ago and they absolutely loved them and my mom wants me to make them again so that made me happy :) my host brother said that he didnt like cinnamon and i told him that it was ok and he didnt have to eat them but he did try one anyway and the whole time he was eating it he was like mmm, mmmmm, mumphf mumphf, mmmmm, it was so funny me and olivia could not stop laughing. but one thing i found is that the yeast here is like solid, like it looks like a stick of butter but its a stick of yeast so i just cut off a chunk and stuck it in hoping it would work! (which it did) i was talking with my dad about going kayaking in a river here and he said that he had never heard of it but we looked into it and we might go on a trip with like a group or he said we might just do a couple day biking trip on the danube because he knows how that works so either way i think ill have a great time :) ok well im doing well and hope you are as well =]
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220383860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220383860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1220383860/tpod.html Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:18:20 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Krems, Lower Austria, Austria

Well here i am sitting at my computer after my first two days of school! So ma woke me up at 5:50, very early, yesterday. I got up and looked out my window and i saw the most beautiful sunrise over Traismauer. I got ready and headed down the hill with Clara who took me to school/rode on the bus with me so i wouldnt get lost. So i went into school with Clara and she showed me around a little bit, we went to my classroom and the teacher was there and she called a bunch of the students over and was introducing them to me and calling over more people and it was really embarassing because she just kept talking and looking at me and i would look back at her and then at Clara because i didnt understand and it was just a big fat embarassing ten minutes. After that Clara took me into another room and i sat down and she said that she had to leave to go to Vienna for work. Soon i found out that this room was some type of church and i actaually was put in Mass and so i sat there for an hour and a half totally lost and bored. After this i went to my class where i met some really nice girls who i now sit next to. We only had class for two hours and then i went and got ice cream with Nina one of Mirjams good friends that befriended me and then she took me to the bus station. My bus ride to school is about 40 minutes so i will be watching the breakfast club and juno a lot this year! (those are the movies that i have on my ipod). So today i got up at 5:50 again ate breakfast and ran out the door. As i was walking to my bus station a bus passed me and i was like 'No! Please dont be my bus!!!' fortunatly it wasnt but because i didnt know where my bus says its going i had no way to know. But i did get on the bus and i had to stand for the 40 minutes because all the seats were full. During class i would randomly hear 'Die Holly' so that was a little annoying that i knew they were talking about me but i had know idea what about. Then the teacher said 'Die Holly' and i was like what? and i had to tell about myself and the teacher said i could in english but i did in german because how else am i supposed to get better?! but it was really embarassing because all 28 fluent german speakers were just staring at me and i said that i lived in Phoenix with my mom and dad and that i had three sisters who lived in Minnesota, NYC, and Bolivia. And thats it. It was bad but my nachbar said that it was very good, but i think she was lying to me so i would feel better :P oh well it worked : ) Then we had religion class and i had no idea what was going on so i was just translating some vocab when all the students stood up and stood at random parts in the room and i was just sitting in my seat! The only one still sitting but i had no idea where to go. Then the teacher asked if i was the foreign exchange student and i said yes and she said well my english isnt very good. and i said ok, and then they just played a game or something around me for like 15 minutes. Oh well just another awkward moment in my day. After school i went to the bus station and the bus was so packed like we were litterally more squished than sardines in a can. it was so gross and hot and sweaty so ive decided that im going to go on the bus that leaves a half hour later because there is no way im riding in that again. And i had to stand for the 40 minute bus ride again. Then today after eating lunch i went over to Olivias house and we rode into town with her mom on bikes. We went into a little book store and i was looking for the Harry Potter books in german because i wanted to get one and i found the 5th in hardback for 23,00 euro which is a little steep for me so i asked if they had any paperback HP books and she said that she could order it and it would be hear in 3 days and its like 8 euro so i ordered and ill have it soon so im excited for that because then ill be able to read again! Then we went to Die Spar and i got peanut butter! yummmy : ) its the really small skippy kind for 2 euro but i decided it was well worth it :P after that Olivia and i decided to go running so then we went on an hour run and now my knee really hurts so hopefully its not too sore in the morning. My friend Nina wants me to take ballroom dancing lessons with her, she said it was 88 euro for 10 lessons which are an hour and a half so i think im going to do it cause we have a ball in november with my school apparently so not much else has happened so far just having fun!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219785540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219785540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219785540/tpod.html Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:50:04 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Budapest, Hungary

Hello Everyone, yes another entry so soon. Very exciting I know. Well yesterday Olivia, my exchange friend from Canada, asked me if i would like to go to Budapest the next day because her host dad, who will be my second host dad, works there and offered to take us for the day. So naturally we went. It was so fun, we left Traismauer at 7:00 and got to Budapest around 10:00. One interesting fact i learned about Budapest is that there is no Budapest there is just a Buda and a Pest, you see on one side of the Danube is Buda and the town on the other side is called Pest but for some reason we just put them together. I found this very odd and also interesting. Anyways, we went to where my second host dad works first and saw the building becasue he's an architect and he also rents out the buildings he designed, so after that we went out to eat in the Stadt, which is the center of a town where there are usually still cobblestones and it is basically more the original city part, and the food was amazing. Olivia and i both had this Crete something-or-other and it was a thin slice of pork with onions, which i ate with pleasure!, cheese, tomato, and it was so good for like 1600 hof which is like 6 euros. Then we wandered around the city taking pictures of the churchs, castles, and other pretty buildings. I didnt really have anytime to look anything up on Budapest so i dont know much about it so therefore i dont really know all that i might have taken pictures of but it was fun, oh and apparently Snoop Dog is comin to Budapest September 10th cause there were signs everywhere announcing it which me and Olivia were cracking up about. :] so after we left Buda and Pest we drove back to Traismauer but we stopped to have dinner on the way home about a half hour outside of Vienna. So you may recall earlier when i said i had a slice of pork, well for dinner i had a fish. Yes, a fish. No, not part of a fish, not a piece of a fish. A fish. Like head and tail included, I named him Mumphy. He was delicious. Now to get the humor out of his name you have to know that here in Austria they dont say like *crunch* *crunch* or *yum* *yum* they say *mumph* *mumph* Now Olivia and i found great humor in this and decided to say *mumpf mumpf* whenever we ate anything. And because we didnt know what the word for yummy was in german we made the word mumphy up to describe our deep satisfaction for the ice cream, pastries, and chocolate bars that we ate. And that is why we named my fish Mumphy. And those were my adventures in Buda and Pest!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219603440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219603440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1219603440/tpod.html Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:59:51 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Gmunden, Upper Austria, Austria

Well hello to everyone again! Where do i start? The last two weeks have been so crazy and fun. Papa, Ma, Mirjam, Olivia, and I drove to Altmünster and had lunch on the lake before they dropped us off at camp. It was delicious food and one of the prettiest views, i would put up all my pictures except that my camera died and the only place that i can get an adaptor for the charger is in Wien and so basically i wont have any pictures up for a good week or so. but anyways after lunch me and Olivia got dropped off at camp where i said goodbye to Mirjam, my host sister who is now somewhere near Sacramento, California, and i met my room mate Savannah and umm i dont remember anything too special about the first night. Our rooms were really nice, at least the girls rooms were, each room had a room for the toliete and then another one with the sink and shower. some of the rooms even had a kitchen too but not ours. So theres 53 newbies and i think theres at least 10 more oldies in our exchange group so theres probably about 70 in all id say. oldies are the ones from australia some from brazil and argentina whose school years are switched. Ok some very memorable parts of camp were the Perchten which are these really scary monster things. ok well the teachers called us all together to announce that some locals were tired of all the tourists around and had decided to dress up as Perchten and beat any tourists that they saw, and they came out at night and beat people up up in the woods where we walked when we were coming back from town. so we're all a little worried and also just like what he hell, because apparently theres like this ledgend about them being the devil or something anyways so after like 2 days of letting us think that there were these huge scary men beating people the teachers came up to our rooms and said that we all need to go downstairs the Perchten are outside and we all need to get to a safe place inside the school. So we're all in our pjs freaking out cause we think that we're going to be beaten by monsters. So all the girls run down to the room that the boys are already in and then we start to here the huge bells that the Perchten have and we're all like ahhhhh and they run in the room and like theres girls crying in the corner and guy from japan has like 10 girls behind him and hes in his like karate stance it was hilarious thinking back on it but ya so it ended up that they werent really there to beat us up the teachers were playing a joke on us but that these guys really do come out on december 5th and scare people but they arent allowed to whip people anymore. scary. i know. anyways that was a fun night and pretty memorable. well we went swimming several times in the freezing lake. class started at 8 and went till 12 when we had lunch, then at 1 we went back to class till 3 so pretty intense i learned a lot but i have a lot to continue studying and i need to practice all the forms still in my speaking and such. So on Sunday we went to Halstadt which is a very famous town in austria. there is a huge salt mine there and the town is on the lake and up the surrounding mountians. Yesterday we went to this church in Altmünster and heard this kids choir. It was so beautiful, it was my first actually like sitting and watching a choir sing and it was just so wonderful, then we went swimming at about 11:30 that night and then ran back the the school freezing so all in all a really fun time and all the exchange kids were so much fun and im really looking forward to the rest of my year!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1218132120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1218132120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/holly_wenzel/1/1218132120/tpod.html Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:44:06 -0400 Onward to Austria! to have some quality shrimp on the barbie!!

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Krems, Lower Austria, Austria

Hello Family, Friends, Rotarians, and anyone else looking at my entry. I arrived yesterday in Vienna at 8:40 the airport was so much different than the ones in USA, probably because it is a neutral nation, i got off the plane and we were in the main terminal building that had shops and eating places i walked in the direction that said exit Vienna and after walking for about 5 minutes past more stores and many other branching off pathways before i reached where they stamped my passport. They didnt ask any questions about my stay or anything just stamped my passport and sent me on my way. I went to get my baggage and my two bags were the first ones one the baggage claim, then i went in another room and there was my family standing with a sign that said 'Hallo Holly, Willkommen in Österreich' it was so cute and I saved the sign. We then went and parked in Vienna and walked to a little outside cafe where we had breakfast and tried to visit a little bit. Then Hermann had to go to work so the rest of us piled into the car and drove about one hour to Traismauer. The driveway for our house is just like the roads in Lead, South Dakota, which means that they are a very steep incline. The house is so cute. The first three rooms were the original house that my father Hermann lived in. Mirjam and I walked into Traismauer and went to the ice cream shop where we ate ice cream with Philipp Clara and Ma who had driven there earlier. Mirjam and I then made apple strudel which was very yummy. I was able to stay up until about six when i told Mirjam that i had to take a nap and she said she would wake me up before dinner. So i slept till eight, ate dinner, talked the family a little bit, then went right back to bed for 13 hours. Today once i woke up we went to St. Pölten and shopped a little bit for Mirjam and then we went to the bank where i got an account that my rotary money will automatically go into and i get a card for it so that will be very nice. I also learned today that i will have my own very new computer and a cell phone so im grateful for that. Also in St. Pölten we went to store where me and my brother Julian went and shopped a little together. He tried on this big jacket and said 'is this gangster?' in a joking and funny way. I laughed and showed him the gangster way to wear his hat and how to walk it was so funny. So overall everything has been wonderful and ill be writing more soon!

HollyDay
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