Relaxing, Recovering, Riding the Rails

Adjustment to the time change involved lots of playing and swimming. What I like about Austria: at the spa, nearly all the women wear bikinis and almost all men wear speedos. Yes, it sounds asthetically unpleasing, but actually, I think it is good for children, because they are exposed to many different body types and looks and no one needs to cover up their flaws in order to fit in. Most American women with stretch marks or pregnancy bellies swear they will never show this in public. But how does a normal girl learn that such a body is also something beautiful?
Something else I wondered: what happens when one of the babies has an accident in the pool? It is a mineral spa, filled with water from an underground spring. I don't know, but I didn't dwell on it.

Somehow JT took up most of the bed...

We also went on a Draisinentour - some sort of bicycles on a seldom used traintrack. You peddle along and stop at various stops (you pick the bike up and move it onto the wooden platform). It was fun. JT fell asleep right away, and baby M (in the basket in the front) slept most of the time. JK decided that he is going to change careers and see if he can open a Draisinentour in Kaernten. Of course, that was last week, when he was still liking Austria. Now that we have been here a few days, he is having second thoughts. We always go through this roller coaster of emotions - we love some things, hate others, and I can't figure out others...

For example, why did his mom think that the yogurt straight out of the refrigerator was too cold for JT to eat, yet he could eat some ice cream?

Oh, and Crocs cost around 40 Euro here, so all the people must think that JT is either spoiled or we are terrible parents for letting him wear plastic shoes. Maybe the truth is a little of both!

Today it rained, and JT was going crazy in the house in the morning - there is no room in the apartment (the small kitchen with the divan ("Actually it is a bed," JT says each time I tell him to sit on the couch) and the bedroom with 2 mattresses on the floor and a twin bed in the corner are his only playareas), and it isn't child-proofed, so his behavior was driving me crazy, too. He is doing his best with the new languange, the new environment and people, perhaps I just have to let him be a little crazy - rufusing to get dressed, throwing things around, running around slamming doors. This is behavior that he knows is inacceptable, and I can't get him to listen to me. Luckily his grandparents just say that he is being a kid. Any suggestions for me?

In case you are wondering what is going on in Austria at the moment: headline from yesterday's newspaper: Paris [Hilton] freed from prison! Other main topics include: how many Eurofighter jets should Austria purchase? (The latest news said that if they bought 12 they would only be able to protect Austrian airspace during office hours...) And: bi-lingual town limit signs in Carinthia, where the infamour Joerg Haider is governor. No way will he let the federal gov't tell him to put up those silly signs! This is a crazy debate about whether they should erect signs with town names in German AND Slovene in towns where a certain percentage of the inhabitants speak Slovene as their mother tongue. For over 30 years, this sign-thing has been a controversy, and the signs go up and the signs are vandalized, and the debate goes on. Just in case you were wondering, in 1920 the southeastern regions of Carinthia had a vote whether they would be part of the SHS, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The area was quite disputed, and the Carinthian "Germans" fought to retain the area and "rescue" it from the occupation by the Slavic Kingdom. So the Slovenes in the area remained, and somehow the population fell into different camps: the "Windische" (Slovene-Austrians), who were seen as traitors by Slovene-nationalists, Slovene-nationalists, and German-Austrians. A-ha. The history lesson on this tricky relationship between nationalism, language, and race as it continues with the First Republic (of Austria) and the 3rd Republic (of Germany) and onto the 2nd Republic (of Austria, i.e. modern Austria) will have to be continued in another post.

But this is a point for my dissertation - modern Austria's politics can not be understood without really delving into the history of the area, even if most Austrians don't actually know the history, they are raised with some sort of historical consciousness...you can imagine this as something like the ideas of the American dream or the American melting pot that Americans have.