David Beckham in Salzburg

This is a travel blog, and I definitely think of myself as a traveller. However, now that I'm back to life in America, there has been no travelling and therefore not much to blog about. Every day, I dream about leaving as soon as I can (next fall at the latest), and my current fantasies are Svalbard, Norway; Irkutsk and the Sakha Republic, Russia; Cape Town, South Africa; and anywhere outside of the US with indigenous languages that need preserving.

However, blogging about my future travel plans is probably not very interesting to anyone. Last night I had a very vivid travel dream, so I guess if I can't travel in real life and blog about it, I can dream about travelling and blog about it. So here it is.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Salzburg (that's how I knew it was a dream), and I was shopping in the Linzergasse and looking at the cheap Central Asian bazaar clothes on display with my parents and my brother. We headed towards Theatergasse and were standing on a grassy median between the lanes of traffic. David Beckham (when he was still young and good at football) was standing there and doing some sort of demonstration, and I caught a fly baseball that he had thrown. He congratulated me: "Great catch! As a reward, you get to make the first kick at the season opening Galaxy game next year. What do you want to rename the team? Anna's Galaxy? The NHL Galaxy? (that's what all Americans call us!) The USA Galaxy?"

Then my alarm woke me up from this very realistic scenario of discussing a football/baseball/hockey sport with David Beckham in Salzburg and I was back to real life in Minneapolis, where snow and apathy reign supreme.

With Dracula

Mike and I have spent an amazing 2 weeks in Salzburg. We've seen all the relatives, gone second-hand shopping and found some great things, spent time going through my grandma's apartment and taking things we liked (old Salzburg postcards, complete with Hitler Deutsches Reich stamps; a great hat that can be seen in my current facebook picture; some traditional Austrian jackets with goat-horn buttons, etc...) and of course eaten delicious food to the brim. We've probably each gained at least 5 kilos. But it was worth it! Schnitzel, Marillenknoedel, Eis, Kasnockl, Zwiebelrostbraten, Mohr im Hemd, the list goes on... yum! We haven't done much in terms of real touristy sightseeing, but Mike has gotten a good sense of what Salzburg is like. The weather hasn't been that great either. We definitely didn't pack right for the weather we've had. Every other day has rained and been freezing. Blah. Typical Austrian summer. We should have expected it.

On Saturday morning my parents and my sister Susi are taking a train to Freiburg to visit my sister Nici, and Mike and I are taking an afternoon bus to Brasov (25 hours from Salzburg), located in Transylvania in Romania. We'll explore for a few days, then spend a day or two in Bucharest, and then catch either a bus or a train back to Istanbul and back to real life. Mike got the EF job we wanted, I didn't, so he's set. I'm still searching for one, there aren't many options on the internet. I'll have to start going to language centers with my CV, or start finding private students. Not looking forward to that! There's a part-time job that I got, but I'm still looking for something else. Still apartment hunting too... we found the perfect one on craigslist, but it's a bit out of our price range.

Not much else new- I got a haircut with bangs and Mike got a cavity filled today after 4 hours in the dentist waiting room (and learned that he needs a wisdom tooth pulled ASAP). Hopefully he'll be able to enjoy our adventures in Romania even with a toothache!

I finally got all my Central Asian pictures posted on facebook. Hopefully that's the last you'll have to see of me in Central Asia for a long, long, long time.