Sacher Torte & A Baby

Only approximately 8 more weeks for me left in Vienna. I can’t believe how quickly time is passing! I leave Vienna on May 19^th, then go to London for a few days to visit Kimmy and see the sights. I’m trying to enjoy everything here with Ben, but as I’ve stated in the past, it’s exciting to think about going home to see my family and friends.

One of the main things I wanted to try to do before going home was to practice making the Viennese specialty, the Sacher Torte. Yesterday, I invited some friends over for the day so we could attempt to make the Sacher Torte as well as some other baking goods like chocolate chunk cookies and hot cross buns. The Sacher Torte recipe I had was in German from the Hotel Sacher Cookbook, so I needed Tessa and Ann’s help to translate and it was quite the complicated and detailed process. We spent most of the day making the batter the perfect consistency, allowing the cake to bake, then letting it cool, cutting it up to make a Marillen Marmalade layer, then making the icing to cover the cake with. We all had a part and we were glad we were all there to attempt the first Sacher Torte we’d ever made. Now hopefully the next time I’ll need minimal help haha. Later that evening we all had a piece and from the feedback it sounded like many people thought it tasted fairly similar to the Original Sacher Torte, so now I will be able to use this recipe in the future. There are a few things that I would think I would try to tweek for next time, but overall it turned out very well.

Another big thing that happened this weekend is that the Easter Market opened at Schönbrunn! We went there on Saturday but just got to look around quickly, so we will be going back sometime soon to try the g’spritz Wein as well as the yummy food. Well and of course do some shopping! They had a lot of beautiful booths with lots of fun gifts to buy. I can’t wait to go back and shop!

For those of you who didn’t see, Ben and I also became and Aunt and Uncle this weekend when Ben’s younger sister gave birth to a 9 lbs. 1.06 oz, 20 in, Azaileeya Rose at 4:05 am on March 25^th, 2012. We welcome this little girl and can’t wait to see her when we get home.

A Night to Remember...

Well a lot of stuff happened this week. Some good, some bad, but at least it shook things up a bit. I’ll start with the good exciting stuff that happened this week.

First off, I booked my flight to come home in May! I’m going to miss Vienna, the people we’ve met here and obviously my husband since he will be staying here for another month before coming back home. But I also can’t wait to get home to see my family, friends and of course my little Murray boy. The other big exciting part about coming home is that I will be stopping in London for a few days to visit my cousin Kimmy and obviously see the sites. I’m so excited to go to London and do as much touristy stuff as possible! I’m very much looking forward to the entire thing. So for those of you who are wondering about the dates, here’s the plan for my trip coming home:

Ben and I will take a train to Bratislava and spend the day there on Saturday, May 19^th, I will then fly from Bratislava to London. We were able to find a good priced ticket on Ryanair, but it doesn’t fly out of Vienna so we figured we could at least make a last little day trip out of it as well. I will arrive in London late on the 19^th and will stay until the 23^rd. On May 23^rd my flight is bright an early out of London Stansted airport at 7:35 meaning I will have to be at the airport by like 5:35 or so. It will be quite a long day, but it will be nice to start my journey home. From what I understand I will arrive back in San Francisco around 16:00-17:00 (4:00p-5:00p for you non-military time folk lol) on May 23^rd, so it will be nice to be back home and the plan would obviously be to stay up as late as possible to try to avoid jetlag haha.

The other good news is that my cousin Kimmy will be visiting Ben and I in Vienna next weekend! We can’t wait to have her and we’ll have lots to do! It’ll be so nice to see a familiar face again.

Now for the “bad news”. Well Ben and I have really enjoyed going to opera while here and Carmen was playing on Thursday so we got Tessa and Jeff to come along with us and we we’re all really excited. We stood in the standing section for Act I and II humming along to all the beautiful music and trying to follow the plot line as much as possible. As the third act came around, I was standing in the corner, and because Carmen is such a popular opera, we we’re all jam packed in the standing area. Even the walk ways were filled with people standing. Anyways, after the set change in the 3^rd act we had a few minutes to chat, and I turned to Ben to tell him I started feeling really hot, which I didn’t think was unusual since there were so many people in this little tiny area. Ben gave me his program to fan myself and I tried to sit down for a second, and that didn’t work. The opera resumed, so I stood back up and was feeling really uncomfortable, nauseous, and hot. I couldn’t stand there any longer and told Ben I had to get out of there. Of course I was in the corner so had to try to push by Ben and Tessa and Jeff, and as I started trying to leave, I got really dizzy, I turned to Ben and the next thing I knew Ben and Jeff were grabbing me by the arms and trying to help me get up off the floor and out of the standing section. Ya…I definitely passed out at the opera. I was quickly guided out of the area and started to pass out again so I became very disoriented, and all I heard was one of the ushers giving me directions in German, making me obviously even more confused. They began speaking English and I laid on the floor and propped my feet up. The ushers came over and gave me some water, then the doctor came over to check my blood pressure. Tessa translated what the doctor was asking and basically told me that my blood pressure was really low and after telling him how I had coffee on an empty stomach and apparently not enough water he concluded that I was just dehydrated and to drink as much water as I could. He opened up his first aid kit and put some drops in my water (which I still don’t know what it was) and told me to drink it up, because when a stranger puts drops of an unknown substance while in another country, you know you’re supposed to just follow orders haha. So obviously I was very embarrassed and felt bad that our whole little group had to miss that last part of the opera, but I was so glad everyone was there and were as helpful as they were. I quickly felt better and we left before the crowd got out. We all got something to eat and laughed about the situation, which made it all much easier to deal with. Clearly we all had a night to remember at the opera, and will have a great story to tell everyone in the future =P.

For those of you who are concerned, I’m fine now. I was just dehydrated and quickly was able to rehydrate myself. Damn you strong Austrian coffee! If I had just had the watered down coffee that I’m used to from Starbucks this never would have happened! Oh well, like I said, now I’ve got one hell of a story.