Austria Missions Trip - Castle Ruins and Raclette

Exterior of the Castle

It was another beautiful morning here in Austria. I got up and showered, got ready, and headed upstairs to breakfast. We had poached eggs, coffee cake, and pastries that were leftover from yesterday. After breakfast, I helped by cleaning the kitchen dishes. I can imagine that Grace spends a good deal of time over at the sink, doing dishes. With a family of seven, how can you not? They have a lovely picture window to the right of the sink, right above the drain basket. From here, Grace can see into their courtyard/parking area and out into the street where she might see those that she has constant communication with. What a great reminder to pray!

In a main living area of the castle

After breakfast and clean-up, we practiced our German and English songs with Grace. Today was Friday and we only had today and tomorrow to prepare for our sacred concert. We eventually narrowed down what we were actually going to sing. Our German repertoire would include "Rock of Ages," "His Robes for Mine," "Only Trust Him," and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." We would also sing "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," "Sing Praise to God," "Depth of Mercy," "Savior, Like a Shepherd, Lead Us," "May the Mind of Christ My Savior," (duets) and each of us would do a solo. I was going to do the old hymn "O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus" and Taigen was going to sing "My God I Love Thee." I think that makes a total of eleven songs altogether. We hadn't been able to work on German before arriving in Vienna, so we were quickly refreshing what we had learned in college. Even Kaleb sat down to help us with our pronunciations. What a great kid. Our rehearsal went well over an hour.

DaVinci Grill

After a quick lunch, we blitzed to a place called Kreuzenstein. This was an amazing tour and we barely made it in time to make the last one of the day! It's a castle that's been pieced together with pieces from all over the world, on the site of existing castle ruins. When you typically go to visit castle ruins, you basically only see the walls. With this place, the man who built the castle made sure to purchase artifacts that would have existed from the day. It was fascinating.

I snapped up photos left and right (remember this fact). In the kitchen there was a gadget on the table that was a spaghetti maker and even a wind-powered grill that was actually designed by Leonardo DaVinci. The tour was being given in German so I really didn't understand a word he was saying. Stan translated what he could and we also had a bare-bones rough English translation (a paragraph or two) that gave us the tour in synopsis form.

At the end of the tour we thanked our tour guide. He started talking to Stan and as we left, Stan told us what he had said. He told Stan, "It is a good thing you had me giving the tour. They normally don't allow you to take photos, but since I am not a family member of the owners, I do not care." I felt terrible, but I think the tour guide knew I wasn't going to be turning around and making lots of money from my photos.

On the way back home we stopped at a store called Multikauf. It is like Sam's, Target and Toys R Us all combined. The Shelton kids were especially happy to go because it meant they could go and look at their huge Playmobil selection. I was able to find a few souvenir items to bring home, but also enjoyed looking around. By now, we were all a little weary and started for home. There was a great dinner planned for tonight. It's called Raclette. We boiled some potatoes, diced up various and sundry items to accompany the potatoes and Grace cut up some raclette cheese. If you click on the "raclette" link and scroll down on the article, you'll see a raclette "grill". This was fun. You place the meat on the top to grill and the cheese, ham, tomatoes, etc. in these triangular dishes and put them under the grill in order to melt. Once the cheese has melted, you pour it over your potato and eat it with your grilled sausage. It was delicious and so much fun!

After dinner, we walked over near where the kids go to school and stopped to get ice cream. It was a beautiful night and the walk after a good dinner felt so good. The kids were very eager to get in my pictures and were hamming it up! I love them!

When we got home it was getting close to bedtime, so Stan and Grace took them upstairs to get them ready while Taigen and I cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. When Stan and Grace came back down, we were all able to sit and chat for a while. Kaleb wasn't feeling well (he has something called Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis ) so he came down to get some hot tea. It was neat to hear about Vienna and his school from his perspective, but he eventually had to go to bed. It was getting late! The four of us chatted a little longer, but were slowly hitting our wall, so we had a time of prayer and went to bed ourselves. It had been a wonderful day.

Weapons in the Armory

In the Courtyard

Taigen and Me in the Armory

Raclette Dinner...Delicious!!!