Hofstetten, Lower Austria, Austria
Thursday, December 24, 2009
in austria christmas is celebrated on the 24th, so we began our day by going to the ambulance station (where julia works) having breakfast with the paramedics and looking after 25 children while their mothers decorated the christmas tree and wrapped the presents. we made crafty stuff with them, which was interesting with them hardle knowing any english and us knowing even less german! but we worked it out and they eventually left at 1pm, 4 hours later! then we had lots of varieties of mini homemade biscuits then went home to decorate the christmas tree (which they let rachael and i do!) then julia, christa and andrea went next dor to their grandparents house while we watched a movie on their incredibly comfy couch! when they got back we turned off the lights, lit the candles on the tree and they sang some german christmas carols before christa passed out the christmas presents (its tradition for the youngest to pass them out) i did pretty well! andrea and her friend dani both gave me presents as well as rachael's mum and my parcel from home! then we had fondue (which almost didn't happen cause they forgot about the kerosene to heat the pot!) on the 25th we went to their other grandparents house in the mountains. we were lucky this time because there's usually so much snow that they park at the bottom of the hill and walk all the way up, but it was almost 10 degrees so the snow had melted. we had a traditional austrian lunch of soup with chopped pancakes and beef, dumplings, strogonoff style sauce, red cabbage and "salad" (lettuce in lots of light dressing, quite nice!) then they brought out normal sized biscuits and schnapps, then cake and coffee. there was another round of present opening (did well again!) the at about 6 we went home, watched another movie and had some more food!
