For winter break I met my parents in Innsbruck and then we met some other volunteers in Vienna. While in Innsbruck my mom thought she would finally get rid of her only daughter by throwing her off the side of a glacier. There would be a picture of my awesome snowboarding feats inserted here except dad forgot to whip out the camera at any of th few critical times. That's right we had a family ski trip, which was extremely painful for me since I'm the only Fesenmaier that has not grown up near a mountainous region. But I survived and that's what counts... though the next day every muscle in my body hurt and I was covered head to toe in my mom's healing tiger balm!
Just in time for the new year, I met the girls- Megan, Kim and Lory- in Vienna. Each night was a different ethnic food and that flash when every waitress thought, "stupid Americans why come all the way to Austria and eat- insert nation of choice- food?!" Though, Charlie took us to a really great Austrian place where we dinned with the former Prime Minister. Ok, he was at the furthest possible table and left 10 minutes after we got there, but nonetheless exciting!
The true adventure, however, was getting home... We had a 6am, with us leaving the hostel at 4am, flight from Vienna to Bucharest. Lory decided that we would stay awake all night and hit Viennese club scene, regardless of the weekday status. We had a later start because I insisted on watching Paris Hilton's My new BFF, which actually ended in December. Megan stayed home because she's an actual responsible adult and she was dying with the flu. We made up the fallen teammate with a nice Alaskan kid, Greg, who refused to wear a coat and got us lost coming home! So after being up all night and the natural exhaustion that comes from entering an airport we arrived in Bucharest, where we promptly got lost. Eventually and a $20 bus fine later we found the right bus station and were told that the next bus wasn't until 8pm. So instead we followed a drunk man who lead us to a small and clearly illegal bus that would take us to Iasi, a town on the Romanian boarder. In Iasi it was supposed to be just a hot, skip and a jump into Moldova. Not so much. Instead we got stuck at the boarder, after using all of our Romanian money. The next bus would be a 2 am and until then we were stuck so close but so far away (and trust me the irony that we were begging to be let INTO Moldova was not lost on us!). There was a bar near by and the owner let us stay there since we had no money, he actually gave us some tea and coffee for free. But eventually he too had to go to bed and we had to wait outside, maybe for an hour, until the boarder police took pity on us and let us stay in their cafeteria. Eventually the bus came and we scurried on and passed out from exhaustion, but not without the constant fear of frost-bite, or for my part trench foot (I'd been watching Band of Brothers)!
Throughout all of it I think that we kept a rather optimistic and sunny outlook, as evidence by the videos posted somewhere around here. We go a little grim when making out our will's but otherwise very very sunny. Maybe it's because we got to watch Kangaroo Jack in English... twice!
Anyways I'm back home safe and sound and now with gas! Thanks Russia, or Ukraine, who ever finally caved... you did the right thing!
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