Eating our Way Through Europe, brought to you by Project Runway: Austrian Grandparents

My last post about Vienna got so long that I rushed the ending a bit and forgot to mention the biggest highlight of that leg of the journey, so here I am again! I should have heeded the advice of one of my great journalism professors who told us not to write the endings of papers and stories just to get them done, but to give the story the ending that it deserves. So here is the ending that that blog post deserves.

One of our stops on Wednesday afternoon was a cemetery where many famous composers are buried: Strauss and Mozart, just to name a few. Except we couldn't really find the tram stop that we wanted and were wandering around a bit aimlessly until we heard a voice ask us, in English, if we needed some help. After almost a week of hearing nothing but unfamiliar languages around us, it was almost a relief to hear some English. And trust me, we were in for a treat with the speakers of this English, who we dubbed our Austrian grandparents. This elderly couple named Franz and Elizabeth had noticed that we seemed lost and offered to help us get to the tram stop. And it was a good thing, too, because we had been going in the complete wrong direction. They were out on their afternoon walk through the city and were more than happy to walk in the direction we were going, pointing out landmarks and giving us a little tour the entire time and insisting that we take pictures in front of almost every landmark we passed. The best part was when Franz handed off my camera to his wife, saying, "Elizabeth--man the camera!" and then hopped in the photo with us! They were so nice and had lived in Vienna for decades, so they told us all about the park we were walking through and the different monuments and statues to Strauss, who was born and lived in Vienna. And they asked us all about us and what we were studying while we are abroad and what we had done so far in Vienna. When we finally got to the tram stop, they both gave us big hugs goodbye and stood and waved as the tram pulled away. Just like any good set of grandparents would.