It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

First Snowfall. Wandering around the city in a blizzard. Baking cookies. Christkindlmarkt. Hot Chocolate. Love Actually. I think you know that means folks: the Christmas season is upon us!

I woke up this morning to a snow covered Vienna and it kept right on snowing all day long. It was a perfect snowfall really, light but constant, coating everything in a clean white. Unfortunately, when I was packing in the heat of August, I did not think about my amazingly incredible snow boots, which I need for such weather. I've been sliding around the city all day in my adorable and completely impractical grey suede boots. No warmth, no waterproofing, and no grip.

I was surviving in them for the most part, until I went to work. I took the baby in his stroller to pick up Stella from school, about a 15 minute walk away. Normally, the walk is fairly pleasant, wandering through unused streets under tall trees, but normally the sidewalks are clear. Alas, Vienna does not really use salt on sidewalks, nor do most people clear them. Leaving me, my grip-lacking shoes, and the stroller to traverse the 4-6 inches of snow covering our path. Going slowly, I managed to get there fine, albeit a bit chilled.

Stella's school is on a bit of hill and as I waited for the bell to ring, I saw a taxi cab slide slowly down it, unable to stop even with it's brakes. That did not bode well for me making it back up the hill. I made it about the first 20 feet before a lovely older Austrian woman offered to help me, which I tried to politely refuse, but she would not hear it. She scolded me a bit for my poor choice of shoes, but since the kids don't know I can speak German, I just kind of pretended not to understand and apologized for "not" knowing German. Together, we made it up the hill and I thanked her profusely before we headed home.

When we arrived, Inge asked me if I knew how to bake roll-out cookies. Like that is even a question. Who knew that I could have put all my years of rolling dough at Cookie Bake on my resume? I quickly googled the Wilton no-chill roll-out recipe and we got started. It was so nice to cook in a kitchen with proper utensils and supplies!!! Inge is a furniture designer and she was having a client party for her company, Airture (airture.at), so Gerd made a cookie cutter in the shape of one of their signature couch. It was awesome. In no time we had whipped up a batch and cut out our couches. Just as I was about to put them in Arthur started crying, so I was holding a crying infant while baking cookies. I am too young for this. The whole infant thing is totally throwing me off - they are so much work! Although I have yet to have to change his diaper, so in my book, we are good.

Anywho, after work, I met up with Jess, Abe, Rochelle, Hannah, and Georg at the Rathaus, which ended up closing up right as I got there. Schade! Although my favorite pastry stand was still open, so I got a warm delicious nutty twirly thing before we departed. When we got home, I whipped up a batch of my famous hot chocolate and Jess and I sat around watching Love Actually: the quintessential snowy day movie.

All in all, this was pretty much the best December First since the creation of the International Day We Could Be Models.

Hey, I put some new shoes on!

This morning was homework morning. To compensate for shopping afternoon. Abby and I met at Cafe Sperl, my local Viennese cafe, for an expensive but amazing traditional breakfast with incredible Viennese coffee and proceeded to hang out, drink more coffee, and finish up some homework for the next few hours.


Come lunchtime, we headed back to my place to grab a quick and much cheaper bite to eat, before walking up to Mariahilferstraße. We were on the hunt for Abby's perfect peacoat: warm, good lines, easy to wear with scarfs and blue. We walked the entirety of Mariahilf, at least all the parts worth hitting, before coming up the last mall at the very end. We went inside, partially just to get warm, and ran into a tiny store that was going out of business and was clearly in its last day or two from the lack of merchandise. We found a practically perfect blue peacoat at the front of the store, but of the two left, neither were in her size. Then I spotted the few left over pairs of shoes in the back of the store and headed straight there. Along the way missing the rack full of those blue pea coats, which luckily Abby did not miss. Both of us ended up winning, with Abby finding out this dream coat was only 25 Euro! And me finding a great pair of black high heeled ankle boots for 15 Euro!


And the day only got better from there, as we headed off to Schönbrunn for the opening day of their Weihnachtsmarkt! Probably my favorite of the three I've gone too so far, the Schönbrunn Christmas market was less crowded, more organized and had more homemade goods: all in all less touristy. We enjoyed some Nockerl the Austrian version of Spätzle, Krapfen an Austrian donut which was fried and filled in front of our eyes, Punsch and Glühwein!