Off To Kärnten

Tomorrow we are off to Kärnten with Martin and Martina for the weekend. The current plan involves visiting with the parent in-laws over a few meals and skiing it up on Saturday at Nassfeld but we will have to wait and see what the weather allows. Currently the forecast is predicting storms on Saturday which would most likely turn our attention away from the slopes and refocus it on a local brewery but we are hoping everything stays clear as this may be our last chance at skiing this season. Anyways, I will be back with a new post and hopefully some new pictures in a few days. Until then enjoy this picture taken in Osttirol a few weeks back and have a nice weekend.

Kornet Pizza

So here is a topic that I haven't talked about in enough detail yet, Kornet Pizza. My brother-in-law Kaan and his business partner Erman opened a new fast food restaurant in Kansas City last December called Kornet Pizza. They specialize in making easy to carry and eat pizzas that are served in the shape of an ice cream cone (they have dessert cones too). Luckily for me and Kathi we were in the area when the restaurant opened so we were among the first to get to try the place out. I was a little weary on what the taste might be but as you can tell by the picture below (and by the fact that my mouth is now watering while thinking about them) the pizzas are very good. It is an interesting concept and I think they will do very well (especially when considering that they are the first to introduce the idea in America). A possible sign of their 'opening luck' was displayed last month when Slice America, a food related blog featured on Yahoo, published a surprise article about Kornet Pizza titled The Newest Fast Food Trend. So if you are in the Midwest and want to try the place out head on over to the Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kansas. And for the rest of us who have too long of a commute, we will just have to wait until a Kornet Pizza opens in our neighborhood.

Digital Plus

A few weeks ago while meeting some people from our housing complex for a friendly game of poker Kathi and I found out that our cable company has a new package that offers a few channels that I (as an American) might be interested in. After further research we found that for €5 extra a month we could more then double our current channel total while adding to my current English language channel options. We got our new cable box and therefore our new package on Friday and #1 on my list is the North American Sports Network. It seems they have a special contract with the NCAA because college basketball is currently being played all of the time and I heard that college football games are shown during the fall. For Kathi is the E! channel so she will never again fall behind the latest in Hollywood gossip. All that is left is to get the final configuration setup correctly as it seems our new cable box has problems communicating with home base which for some reason causes our remote to freeze (weird). A special thanks on this one goes to Anzac for providing us with the information that such a package exists.

The Bag

A few days ago I got another "birthday present." I had wanted a new bag for awhile which was not overly casual so it would be more appropriate for business (but I am still keeping my SpongeBob lunch box). Therefore I looked around the city a bit and found The Bag at Fossil. It is a nice reddish-brown leather bag that, in my opinion, gives off a little bit of an Indiana Jones feel (even though Indiana's bag is made of canvas). It has plenty of space for anything I could need to carry (which is more then you Americans might think since we are out and about on the streets all the time over here), so you will be able to find me sporting it around the city from now on. And as an added bonus Kathi took over possession of my old Puma Schattenboxen bag to be used as her new gym bag. Everyone wins.

Having Fun Staying Warm

Just a short post tonight about how to stay warm and have fun in the mountains. The key to staying warm while skiing (besides wearing the appropriate clothing) is to keep a flask full of schnapps in your breast pocket and to drink some down on the way up the mountain. If you keep this up all day and have a beer with your dinner in the evening you will not only qualify as a good fake Austrian such as myself, but you will also be guaranteed an increasingly good time as the day / night progresses.
Disclaimer - Maybe I exaggerated about how much schnapps you should drink during the day. Skiing can be dangerous (notice my helmet in the first picture), so at no time should you partake in this sport while being drunk. Plus I am not an alcoholic as my meant to be funny post tonight may make it sound, though I do enjoy a beer here and there (particularly while at the top of a mountain).

Ski Hochpustertal

We returned home last night from our little skiing holiday. Like each February we stayed with the family of our friends Hari and Kathi in Sillian. I am slowly learning more about the area since we have had the opportunity to return three years in a row now (and next year is a guaranteed fourth with Hari and Kathi getting married which will include a few days of skiing afterwards). We always ski just across the border in Italy at Hochpustertal which is technically part of the Dolomites section of the Alps. The mountains in this area are extremely beautiful and we were very fortunate as everyday during our trip was clear and sunny so we were fully able to enjoy the provided scenery.This year there were twelve of us who made the journey to Osttirol and that number becomes a few more when factoring in the Krautgasser family (our excellent hosts). It really struck me this time how extremely lucky we are for these ski holidays, not only for the excellent accommodations that we are provided (and Schlipfkrapfen) but also for the fact that five out of the twelve in our group are doctors (or at least extremely close to finishing their medical degrees). This provides added comfort to ski a bit faster since I know I will be well taken care of if I were to take a spill on the way down the mountain. More about our mini ski vacation later.

Vintage Alps

Tomorrow Kathi and I will be heading to the mountains for a few days of skiing. First I have to work for a few hours in the morning but then we will head south via Indy for a quick stop in Kärnten and then on to our final destination of Osttirol. Each year we get invited to Sillian for the better part of a week by our friends Hari and Kathi to stay at their parents home and ski. It is an impossible invitation to ignore because the location, company, and food are unmatched and each year we go down there things just seem to get better (including my skiing skills which did not exist until my first trip to Osttirol). Therefore I will not be posting again until early next week so you will just have to enjoy these vintage photographs from the Stadler family vault in the meantime. The first I assume was taken somewhere in the Austrian alps sometime during the 1960s and the second is of miniature sized versions of Maria and Elli playing outside the family home in Villach in the early 1980s.

The Game

Yesterday Martina and Martin came over to our flat for breakfast. Since I have been talking about Grieskirchner a lot lately and to say thanks for the invitation they brought Kathi and I a Grieskirchner game. I was curious about what type of game a brewery might make. Could it be a trivia board game or something similar? It would certainly make sense. The only way to find out though was to crack open the box and take a peak. What I found inside can only be summarized as the coolest game ever made. Take a look for yourself at the second picture. There were simply four bottles of beer and two glasses. It's a game that men everywhere can be proud of (Carinthian women too). And to keep things educational the bottles are simply labeled with numbers and the differences in taste from multiple kinds of brews are explained inside the included fliers so you are able to test your beer tasting skills and learn a thing or two at the same time. What a great idea and game.

Good Food, Weird Names

A few weeks ago when we were in Kitzbühel I was enjoying all of the Tirolean food while thinking about how weird (and unappetizing) some of their names must sound to people who are unfamiliar with the dishes and the German language. A few of the names for Austrian foods that may be found odd by outsiders include:

• Wiener Schnitzel
• Kärntner Nudel
• Tiroler Gröstl
• Schlutzkrapfen

A few years back there would have been nothing about any of those words that would have made me hungry. Now there is no amount of the actual dishes that can fill me up, so the next time you find something with a name that sounds a bit off on the menu make sure to do a little research before you write it off because you may just be missing out on the best taste of your life. And to show you Austrian readers that I am not trying to be biased here I will point out that one of the most common American dishes of a Hamburger with French Fries includes names that are just as odd when one considers that the first contains no ham and the other actually has very little to do with France (it seems that the French consider fries to be Belgian).

p.s. - Please don't start telling the history of each of these dishes in my comment section to try and legitimize the names and to make yourself look smart in the process. The rest of us too have access to Wikipedia and can come up with the same answers (most of which make sense of the names in the end). Now on the other hand if you want to share the names of some dishes that you find odd then I would love to hear them. Thanks!

Nichts

I wanted to provide you with a new and exciting post but the plain and simple truth is that there is nothing new or exciting going on here at the moment. We have been keeping busy with meeting friends and family most evenings for dinner after work and that has led me to hold a constant level of fullness over the past several days. I have nothing to complain about though as the news we see coming out of the U.S. is all about severe weather (and election results) so the slightly cold and breezy thing we have going on here seems very pleasant in comparison. I hope everyone is staying safe and looking forward to the next time they will get on the slopes like I am. I'll try to come back at you with something more on the entertaining side over the next few days but it's bye bye for now.

Viva Metro

Kathi and I have had a weekend full of shopping. On Friday we went out and bought a new sofa and then yesterday we went out and got new plates and bowls. We are happy that we're now able to replace a few of the cheaper things we bought when we first moved into this flat. My highlight for the weekend though came in a simpler form. We were walking around Metro (which is Austria's version of Costco) and I stumbled upon a big jug of salsa. I know this is a simple pleasure that you can buy at any grocery store in the States but for Central Europe I found this to be a huge deal. I can now have chips and salsa at any time of the day I want! While there I also found big jugs of barbecue sauce and some of the chili ingredients that I was previously having a difficult time locating. So Viva Metro!

p.s. - If you are ever hungry for Slavic food I suggest trying pierogi. We had dinner last night at Peter and Magda's where I tried this dish for the first time and it was truly awesome.

Papa Joe's

Last night Kathi and I met our friends Hari and Kathi at Papa Joe's for my birthday. Papa Joe's is a restaurant that sells different types of American food and the Vienna location opened just last month. I was first introduced to the restaurant two years back by Hari and Kathi when they took me to the one in Innsbruck. I am quite pleased that there is a location much closer to home now because the burger I had last night was the best I've had in Europe. Plus if you are up to the challenge they offer a yard of beer (Hari and I just went for the half-yard last night). Since we were there for my birthday the staff played a birthday song over the internal radio system and gave me a free Pina Colada with a sparkler sticking out of the top (be glad you weren't there Nichole). And then before we left all the Swedish people sitting at the surrounding tables sang me happy birthday in their native tongue which was a first for me and very nice (I'm not sure how there were so many Swedes in the immediate vicinity). It was an excellent evening with great friends at the new stop in Vienna.