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Bella Venezia! I am obsessed with riding the water busses (like Spirited Away) and eating seafood.

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Jesolo with Jimmy (pronounced Yesolo with Yimmy)

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Road trip to Venetto! The Dolomites are pretty cool.

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Easter photo dump with my Amgen peeps in Salzburg

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Back in Cali Day 1! ❤️❤️❤️❤️✈️

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Kind of an epic weekend

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Catching up to the tumblr

We are very behind on the tumblr posts but here is a massive catch-up post. To recap, we moved from L.A. to Langkampfen. They are really similar in that they both begin with an "L" and an "A".

We are more adjusted to life here and we are so so so lucky to have met so many wonderful friends. They tolerate our endless questions and our bad German and for some reason they still want to hang out with us in their free time. We don't get it either.

Our home is now ready for visitors whether it be a quick visit or a more prolonged vacation. Please drop by! Just give us a heads up so we can put on some pants.

Ikea delivered to Obere Dorfstrasse bc we thought we lived in Obere Dorfstrasse when in fact we live in... 

Untere Dorfstrasse! Who knew! It took an Ikea misdelivery to figure that one out, not the 1,000,000 documents we had to sign with the correct address stated. Oh we are such silly silly Americans. 

Jim set everything up because he is BEAST <3.

The day our stuff showed up from the US felt like Christmas! All our things! The bed and the litterbox were the most highly anticipated items. 

For awhile we lived in chaos but Jim worked his Gleason magic and it started looking a lot more like this:

Recycling is serious business out here so what you don't see in these pictures is a room full of cardboard boxes Kristin named the "trash room". She knew it killed us to have so much trash in the house. She was right. 

This is called Perchten and they drum really well and put shoe cream on your face. 

Oh look we bought a car! I like my cars used, small, and Japanese. Jim was not the most enthused but he can get a more Jim appropriate car one day.

At some point I got really sick but not sick enough to see a doctor. I haven't figured out the whole doctor situation yet. More on that later.

Also it snowed! And then it snowed. And snowed. And snowed. I have never lived in snow so it was kind of cool and then I felt a bit scared to drive. Irene and Günter were nice enough to fetch us and drop us off to hang out at their house when things got really hairy with the roads. 

Somewhere along the way we hung out with cool people and sometimes got a little hammered. 

We also hung out in the mountains because there are lots of them all around us. Very cool! (literally)

This is my fave pic of Jim for the month.

We got to see Dachau Concentration Camp which was really sad but also really interesting. These were all the concentration camps in Europe. So much to learn and take in and still never enough time. 

The chocolate out here is really awesome. The best of the vending machine variety is the cornflake ritter sport. It's the yellow one called Knusperflake. It is amazing. 

Most of our days look like this. We just watch a lot of TV and consume vielen internet while our cat sleeps on the couch. 

Today we climbed Pendling and it was cool! Happy 2015!

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Jazz club in Innsbruck, care package from the Gleasons, Tex Mex for "America Week" at the cafeteria, Christmas market in Kufstein with friends, and Pinoy Christmas party with karaoke! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Been a bit light on Internet lately as we don't have unlimited data until we move to our permanent apartment so apologies for the lack of posts lately! We went hiking this weekend up to Aschenbrenner. Spectacular weather considering it's almost December. Got up to around 60 degrees. Hiking is so great in Austria. Besides the gorgeous scenery, the hills are littered with little bungalows that serve food and beer. We can't wait for the summertime when we'll have long warm days. You can also jump in the crystal clear lakes to cool off. We had some Radlers (beer + lemonade), grilled sausages with fries and Kaiserschmarm (an Austrian dessert similar to shredded pancakes). Really tasty...or maybe I was just hungry after hiking. Can't wait to do more hiking soon. Might be in the snow soon though.

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Today we headed to Innsbruck for the first weekend of Christmas markets. Everyone told me that Christmas markets in Germany and Austria were the best. I was excited, but to be honest, I had really no idea what a Christmas market was exactly. Turns out it's a ton of fun. 

The best part, for me at least, is the food. The best part is something called Glühwein. It's basically warm mulled wine. It's delicious and a nice treat on a cold winter day walking around town. Alcohol also makes things a tad more fun too. 

There was also kiachl which is fresh fried dough. You can get different toppings on it. The traditional topping is, strangely, sauerkraut. I had to try that one. It was good, but tasted like a donut with sauerkraut so no exactly heaven. Next time I'll try it with raspberry jam or vanilla creme. We also had currywurst which isn't specific to Christmas markets, but pretty amazing nonetheless. 

Innsruck is also a beautiful little town. Today the sun poked out and you could see the Alps covered in snow in pretty much any direction. Not bad. Cam and I have decided we're on a mission to hit up as many Christmas markets as we can before the season is over. Salzburg here we come!

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Oh weekend, parting is such sweet sorrow. We watched Interstellar in ENGLISH in Innsbruck, stocked up on Asian food in Munich, window shopped in Ingoldstadt, and got drunk off glühwein in Innsbruck. No posts yet about work except to say non QWERTY keyboard is killing me.

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Kudos to This Guy (Really)

Earlier this week, we posted about this guy, a British scientist named Matt Taylor. Why? Well, it’s probably pretty obvious. The picture above is Taylor answering press questions at Philae landing event, and he (for some reason) chose to honor what’s probably the high point of his career by wearing a bowling shirt covered in scantily-clad women.

Why’s that a problem? Well, there are basic sartorial reasons, the kind of thing we might write about on our blog if it were targeted at guys who land spacecraft on comets. Like it’s a horribly ugly shirt, and it’s completely unsuited for such a momentous occasion. The real reason, though, is that engineering is a field that’s historically been hostile to women, and to wear a sexy ladies-themed shirt on so public a day as that one sends exactly the wrong message. A message that crosses from distasteful into nasty.

But this is a post about what he did right.

Yesterday, Taylor apologized. Sincerely.

He said: “I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I’m very sorry about this.” And he even cried, which there’s no reason to believe was a show.

That’s a really decent thing to do. 

I’m reminded of my friend Jay Smooth’s video How To Tell Someone They Sound Racist. When you’re accused of bias, it’s easy to assume your humanity is under indictment, and not your actions. The kneejerk reply is to say, “I didn’t do something sexist, because I’m not a sexist.” In other words: to have done something wrong, you have to have been malicious. Not just have had malicious intent, but to be fundamentally evil. And since none of us think we’re evil, we can’t have done something wrong.

Much harder is to say, “I don’t believe in sexism, and for that reason, I apologize for my mistake.” To recognize an error and to accept responsibility for behaving differently in the future is a brave thing to do. That’s what Taylor did, sincerely, and I tip my cap to him.

Here’s the thing: when you have the upper hand in society, it’s easy to leave your decisions unexamined. It’s easy to assume something is neutral that’s actually hurtful to others. If Taylor were one of two or three men on a team with fifteen women, those circumstances would have made him to think about what effect wearing that shirt would have. Odds are, though, that the numbers were reversed, that there were many more men than women. That circumstance never asked him to examine his assumptions. And that any woman who was bothered by it figured it was easier to just not say anything.

We write this over and over at Put This On: your clothes communicate. They talk to the world before you open your mouth. Think about what they say.

And if you make a mistake? Cop to it, and apologize. Like Matt Taylor did. That’s being a grown-up.

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Almdudler is a local favorite. It's basically a lightly sweetened apple/grape soda. They also sell radlers (beer + soda). I think it's pretty good. Cam likes it even more than me.

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Bike riding in Austria is pretty amazing. There are trails everywhere. I also hear there are some bad ass lift served mountains nearby that I can hit up once the snow season is over. Today I explored some trails behind our apartment. I followed this trail until I ended up right above Cam's work. Hi Camille!

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We hit up Innsbruck today. Saw a big tree, the inn river and ate strudel and a plate of something they call "Tirol Bacon."

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Yesterday our air freight shipment arrived and best of all (behind the Dyson vacuum) it contained our bikes! I spent last night putting our bikes back together and making sure everything was lubed and ready to go. 

After dropping off Cam at work today, I took my first ride in Austria. Felt so good to be riding again. I headed out from our apartment and hit the bike trail that follows along the train tracks on one side and cows on the other. Once I hit Kufstein, I headed in to the mountains and climbed about 1000 ft. Before I hit the summit, I turned back realizing it probably wasn't a good idea to go too far as I didn't have any food and water with me and I forgot to have breakfast this morning. 

Riding out here is great as there are some many more paths and trails to explore and far less car traffic to deal with. I also feel like drivers around here are not quite as ready to run you off the road as they are in LA. That's certainly nice. 

My only complaint is the cold. 40 degrees is subarctic for a Californian. Although I can't say it's any worse than the oppressive heat we came from. Pretty soon snow will start falling and I don't think I'll be able to ride for quite some time. I guess it'll be time to strap some skis on instead...