the sound of music at aufsteirern (158/365b)

ingrid gave us gigantic tons of beautiful beautiful grapes today. we ate lots, but the rest i made into fresh grape juice, and some of them we decided to make into "sturm"

austrian culture lessons for today:

*sturm is something that you can only get at certain times of year in this part of the world. it has different names depending on where it is. (except brian and i bought some sturm kits on amazon in the us and made our own sturm from grapejuice whenever we felt like it all year round)

*nobody here knows the sound of music or the music from the sound of music

*eurovision is bigger than america's got talent

i wanted to bring my kids to do some art at the atelier, but they didn't have enough kids (minimum three, "bring a friend next time")  - instead we wandered around the museum of natural history and saw lots and lots of taxidermied animals. henry gravitated to all the dumbed down games and electronics and screens and short movies they have. theodore gravitated towards the weirder animals. i gravitated towards the displays of hundreds of one kind of animal - like hundreds of butterflies side by side.

we wanted to go see the singschule sing at aufsteirern, the big festival of styrian culture, mostly full of accordion music, dirdls, and really drunk people in leder hosen. this was an event in the main square where the orchestra and kids choir from the opera were playing. and their main headline soloist was conchita wurst, the winner of the 2015 eurovision song contest who opened with "the hills are alive with the sound of music. too bad the orchestra was bored! Our feet were glued to the floor. She was pretty incredible. The kids were very tired with the nearly 2 hours of standing that we'd done so far, but we stayed for a whole hour watching her sing and then left before the end so we could carry sleeping felix home and beat the crowds. 

#kitsch

The hills fill my heart

With the sound of music

My heart wants to sing ev'ry song it hears

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds

That rise from the lake to the trees

My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies

From a church on a breeze

what makes my heart glad?

*snuggling with felix in the morning, he was pretending he was wearing an invisibility ring
"are you the only felix in the world?"
"no, there are lots of people named felix, and henry and theodore."
"are you the only felix s::: in the world?"
"yes, I think so."
"are you sure?"
"no. i'm not sure. i said i *think* so."