baseball

Last night we went to a Yankees game. As soon as we sat in our seats, David said "ahhhh, now I feel like I'm home."

The Yankees ended up beating the Orioles 16-5, so it wasn't a very exciting game as far a competition goes, but it sure was a good show off for Yankees hitting. It was fun to actually go to a game instead of watching them on-line as we were doing in Austria.

butterfly

This butterfly was busy with the flowers in the flower boxes of the building next to us for about 5 minutes. I did not use any zoom on these photos, he (she?) let me get this close! He was moving pretty fast though, so sorry for the blurry photos.

water towers

We have an Austrian friend, Liz, who is living in Ohio this year and teaching German to students at Wooster College. On her blog I noticed she was intrigued by the water towers that dot the countryside. Something they don't have in Austria. I've always loved the unique, wooden water towers that live on the rooftops in New York City and thought they would make a good blog entry. Which also reminds me of the book The Alienist by Caleb Carr which if you have not yet read, is really great.

mom's visit

Robin's mom drove us back to the city after the wedding and stayed 3 nights for a visit. The first night we ate dinner at Mama Mexico. It's a really fun "destination" restaurant. They make the guacamole right in front of you and have mariachi players. Oh yes, and the food is tasty too!
We took several walks throughout Central Park and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We also went to the MoMA and the Museum of The City of New York.





Talk about scraping down to the bones! All that's left of this bike is what was not detachable:

amy & gareth

Last weekend we went to the wedding of one of Robin's best friends from college, Amy. She married Gareth, who also went to Skidmore. However, they met after school. Notice the stylish couple wearing traditional Austrian Tracht:
The girls: Robin, Erica, Justin, Kelcie, Crislin
we've all been friends since the first week of school!
Amy & Gareth
Since both the bride and groom both went to Skidmore College, there were a lot of fellow Skiddies there:

here we are

We thought it was time to put pictures of ourselves up on this blog as proof that we're actually here. So, here we are...
Tonight we enjoyed the fabulous American dinner preparation known as delivery! (mit unseren Ackern Biergläsern) David is still working hard to finish up his paper of his research done in Austria. At night he likes working from the comfort of bed, but I got him to take a break long enough to snap a picture.

there's no place like home

Here are some images of our apartment so that those of you who are far away can see how we live in NYC.
This is the outside of our building, we live on the 5th floor (which would be the 4th floor in Europe): Here's a floor plan of our space:
Looking East out our window:
Looking West out our window:
The living room:

The tile on our fireplace was painted black, so I scraped all the paint off to reveal these beautiful green tiles:
The kitchen:
In the kitchen looking towards the entry hall and living room:
Our bedroom (and our fabulous comfortable bed that we're very happy to be sleeping in once again!):

first post

We're back from our year of living in Austria. We're very excited to be home, see friends & family, and hear English all around us. Of course, there are many people we're sad to no longer see every day. So...

We found that blogging about our lives in Austria was so helpful to keep in touch with people far away, that we've decided to continue to blog some of our adventures back here in NYC, especially with our Austrian friends in mind. So, check in every so often to see what we're up to and learn more about life in the big apple.

Right now we're busy un-packing and settling back into our apartment. I'll post pictures of our home once it's cleaned up so that all you folks back in Austria can see.