American Schnitzel

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas this year!  This year Christmas was a rollercoaster for me since I was not able to be back home and nor was my family with me. I spent this Christmas with my lovely boyfriend and his parents. For me an average Christmas entails baking some cookies with maybe a pie. Other than that I spend maybe a day shopping and I am ready for the holidays. This year was certainly different.   I always plan to bake like there is no tomorrow and have different sortiments of all kinds of sweets and lots of them, but then when time rolls by reality sinks in and I never bake as much as I plan. Well this year was a tad bit different. Since for my birthday I was given a mixer I wanted to bake something that would require me to use it, and also find a recipes that my European boyfriend wouldn't find too sweet. Since most Europeans will say American baked goods are too sweet for their taste. So I found a really yummy Cinnamon Swirl Bread recipie that I tho

Last week here in Austria was another Holiday, which meant pretty much everything would be closed even school! Two weeks before I had gone in to the OEBB office and was checking out some train ticket prices when I saw that no matter when you buy your ticket a two way ticket to Bratislava was only 14 euros. I figured, I can afford that and asked a freind the day before if she was wanting to come with me. So the next day we woke up and got ourselves ready for an excursion to Bratislava, Slovakia. The morning was starting off good until when we were buying our train tickets the woman in the office told us that we have about 20 minutes to make the train at another train station and not where we were. In Vienna there are more than one major train station and I got mine mixed up. I think if you would ask anybody that has traveled with me they would tell you there is never a dull moment! Between the running to get to the train's platform in time or just simply touring a new city. When

Tipping in Austria is unlike in the States. Tipping in Florida is 10% of your total at a resturant and at a coffee shop the change given back goes into the tip jar. Waiters and Waitresses normally are paid lower than minimum wage and live off their tips. When I was living in the States I worked at a local smoothie bar and I know tips were what really made working with all the rude people easier and helped with the wages I was paid. I could right a whole post on how you are supposed to act around a tipping jar because after working at the smoothie bar for a year I saw some people that did not know what was proper. For example we had a few people steal our tips, we even had people search in the tip jar for the change when a order was 3.25 they would thumb around looking for the 25 cents. I believe Tips should not suppliment a low wage but rather reflect on the service itself. If that person went out of their way for you and was not rude then tipping is easy. When I was in France

Moving abroad can be a big decision for anybody, but what happens when you don't know where to go? If you are not moving for work reasons, it makes the deciding of where in the world to go a bit difficult.  Most common is to move to a country where the language is same as your own, or a large popular city. London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona are the top names I have heard when people are talking about Europe. It was also the cities people would have expected me to move to. But in fact not only is Vienna a big metropolitain city but it is cheaper than the cities talked about above. Paris can just burn a whole through your wallet by finding the tiniest closest to call home, I would say it is comparable to trying to live in an apartment in Manhatten close to Times Square. Also another thing to think about is you don't want to move abroad with out knowing the quality of life. So not only for me personally was Vienna the perfect choice but now according to Mercer's 2011 Quality

That is RIGHT I offically turned TWENTY last Sunday! I must say that I had a really good birthday and due to my good friends here it was a great weekend. It began with a Surpise birthday party for me on Friday. That I actually came late to! What I thought was going to be coming over to one of my friends apartment for coffee ended up being a schock. My friends not only went to the lengths of making me Empanadas, a banana and guava cake, with decor, but they even went to lengths to get their hands on my cell phone for my boyfriends phone number. K had a birthday a week prior to mine and when I was not looking she was feeling my purse to see if I had left my phone in.  O asked me if she could send a quick text to her boyfriend on my phone since she was out of minutes and she and her boyfriend were having a quarll. SNEAKY!!! It was a really good suprise and made me very happy to have friends that would do so much for my birthday. As funny as life can be my close friends are not back i

Thanksgiving is pretty much my one favorite holiday out of the year and sadly for me not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. Living in Vienna has pros and cons when it comes to Thanksgiving. When living abroad Thanksgiving is not anything to shake a stick at and days off or big feasts with family are just non-existant. If you have your family living with you than is this not so much a big deal since you are togther unlike when living alone. The benefits of not living in the States during Thanksgiving is you will always find a Turkey, Markets are never jammed pack with last minute shoppers, it is just much more laid back. This year I decided when I woke up in the morning that I myself would not let my favorite holiday just slip by but rather I was going to cook for my boyfriend and myself our very own Thanksgiving feast. As we were only 2 people and knowing that there would be side dishes I was not wanting to spend a lot of money on a bird and then in the end have to throw it o

Traveling abroad has always been ''The Dream'' for me. The big question I have always been asked from people find out when I was 18 I left the nest for Vienna and I have boyfriend in Vienna is ''What did your parents say or think?''. Which has alway been difficult for me to explain specially in German. So here is the awnser, I did not leave because of a boy, I picked Vienna because of that reason but my parents were not in a state of shock when I made up a date to leave. They were a bit worried for me since they didn't know what would happen and if my heart was broken I would be a bit out of reach. I have never been a wild child or have given my parents reason not to trust me and my choices. The thing that was actually suprising to me was when I told some friends and ran into people I knew a long time ago the question of what college I would be attending would come up. After telling them I got a scoff and the shocker ''Why does that not sup

Learning a new language can be as difficult or as simple as you make it. When moving abroad and not knowing a single word can make your life more than complicated. I have been asked my opinion more than once on what program I would reccomend for learning a new language, and my personal expierence is if you are trying to learn a new language you will never go far by learning it on your own and living in your home country. I know people can learn a new language and not have to live in a region where the language is being spoken but you have to have so much contact with a certain language before you can really get the flow of it. In America we are surrounded my English, you can't drive 6 hours in one direction and find a different language being spoken. We have Spanish and as a South Florida girl for my whole life I was surrounded by Spanish and had contact with it everyday but I had no drive to learn it. So my spanish is so small you could say it is nonexistant. Keys to REALLY le

This past Friday my lovely boyfriend and I went out on a very interesting date. We went to a dinner that was being hosted in a catering service's test kitchen and the tables were intergrated into parts of the kitchen that was not being needed. It was an eight course meal and all organic, made right in front of you to see. It was hosted by  Adventure Catering Vienna to get more information or wanting to attend go to  Chef's Table . The links are only in German. It was a lovely evening and just out of this world food. They also served a different wine every course and there were eight of them, and when arriving you are also given a glass of champagne, if you are not one to drink much they also had a variety of very delicious natural juices. It was probably one of the best meals I have ever had. If I could I would go back again or atleast try to be friends with the chef. Now being that it was eight courses and everything was being made right in front of us we arrived at 6:30 an

Some basic knowledge about Student Visas: All Students residing in any country that does not hold a passport from that country WILL need a visa! American's do not need to request for a visa prior to departure. American's have the privilege to stay in a foriegn country for 3 months without the need for a visa.  People from other countries might need to apply for a visa before entering foriegn territory. (check with your embassy for more information)  Onto about renewing your Student Visa in Vienna.  When renewing your visa you normally try to have all your ducks in a row so you don't need to be running around getting this paper and that paper. Any thinking person would think the most logical thing would be to take all the papers I had to hand in last time. So you go to your university re-enroll yourself for the next semester, keep the paper showing you have paid. You might even go to the extent of making sure you can prove your grades from the exams from the past

This past Sunday I had thrown my boyfriend's mother a belated birthday dinner party, due to the recent travels we have not been able to celebrate. So that meant me in a crazed rush to buy everything, clean my small apartment, bake, cook and decorate. I also recently have purchased a small two person sofa so that was another highlight of this past weekend. Now I am proud to say that everything went off without a hitch and now here to share some photos of my lovely creation. That's going to be about it for today. One more note before I close up shop, the weather right now in Vienna is quite lovely it makes me fall in love with Fall. :)

This past July was offically my one year mark of living in Vienna. I am proud for having made it one year on my own in a far off distant land.   Marabelle enjoying the beach. This past Summer has been filled with a lot of adventure and has been enjoyable. I flew back home to Florida for the first time since I had started living abroad. It was nice to go back and see my family and my dog it was also nice to be surrounded in what is most familiar. Also it was great to get away from the cold weather and also Vienna's Summers. Funny as it sounds Summer in Florida is much better than Summer in Vinna, here in Vienna air conditioning is not really needed since REALLY hot days are not an everyday thing. South Florida, we have a lot of humidity and the heat can be brutal, but the flip side is, we have ocean breezes, summer showers that last 10 minutes, and oh yeah every building has the a/c cranking and we love having fans everywhere. Drafts in Florida are a must and we grow accustom