Dear Mark,

I think I have died and gone to moustache heaven.  No, don’t worry.  I am still around and have not been flushed down the sink because of a razor accident.  I am very much in bloom on Alexander’s face.  I was able to see a special treat.  There is a movie called Gettysburg and if you want to see some quality moustaches then look no further.  Be sure to check this out as well as the pictures of the Gettysburg officers here.  Wow, I am tremendously humbled as well as in awe to the power these moustaches command.  You want sexy?  Oh yeah, it is there.  You want rugged?  Look no further.  Gettysburg has it all.  Where did we go wrong?  The days of powerful moustaches are gone.  Mark, we must bring back the power of the moustache.  We must think of a plan to bring back the moustache to its former glory days.  Based on my experience of travelling in Austria I think we will have allies in the Austrians.

Hugs and kisses,

Moustache

Back in September I announced the new addtion, Grace, to Drew and Melissa’s family.  Spending time with Grace has been a pleasure since we have returned.  The Teal’s popped by for a visit last Friday and Grace was a wee bit happy.  She was giggling steadily for half an hour and thankfully I was able to get the camera out in time to catch the last bit of giggles she had.  Grace is a cutey.  Here is the bundle of joy that Mrs. Turkadactyl and I looked forward to meeting when we returned from Europe.

For those of you who have been regular visitors of the Roost you are already well familiar with my travel bunny Snuggles.  Snuggles came to me as a gift from Mrs. Turkadactyl when we were still dating.  She was inspired from a story I told her involving my friend Bill.  You see Bill has a group of friends that get together around Christmas and do a gift exchange.  I know this kind of gift exchange as the Texas gift swap.  The Texas gift swap involves everyone picking a number and whoever has number one can pick a gift from the pile of presents and unwrap it.  Then person with number two can either pick the gift person number one chose or pick an unwrapped present in the middle.

For those of you who visited the Roost while Mrs. Turkadactyl and I were at Camas you may recall some photos of me with one of the Iona sheep.  Now I am in the first to admit, based on evidence over at Turkavision, it will appear that I want to make war and not peace with our four legged friends.  That is, however, not the case.  I realize that we must ally ourselves with as many different species as we can to put up a brave front to the squirrel menace.  The squirrel menace you may ask.  Yes, it is true.  The squirrels mean to take over as supreme overlords on Earth.  There will be more to come on the squirrel front.  While on our travels I took the time to persuade some of the furry critters to take to my cause.

Now that I have the world wide web avaialbe at my house I am starting to upload pictures from our Eurpean vacation.  Wrath of Caen has been updated as of December 27.   Rome- It’s a Spicy Meatball and Italy- Road Kill Cafe have been updated as of December 29.   Italy- Siena and Radiohead has been updated as of December 30.  Italy- Never Ending Story has been updated as of January 6.  Italy- A-Maze-Ing has been updated as of Janury 9.  Austria- There Are No Kangaroos In Austria has been updated as of January 10.  Austria- The Hills Are Alive… and Austria- I Bought The Wrong Banana have been updated as of January 12.  Austria- The Visible Part has been updated as of January 13.  All of my European Vacation posts have now been updates with photos.  To view photos please scroll down.  I will notify when other posts have been updated with photos.

Mrs. Turkadactyl and I have been home for a a couple of weeks now.  It has been a tough adjustment since returning primarily beacuse we arrived to a cold snap.  Edmonton is now coming out of the deep freeze.  The last two weeks have seen weather in the -30 degrees Celsius range and that is before th wind chill.  I am really missing the mild temperatures of the Mediterranean at the moment.  Mrs. T and I appreciate the big welcome we received at the airport.  Mama and Papa Turkadactyl, Drew and Melissa with their new additon to the Teal army, Grace, as well as Emmy (Wes we now you wanted to be there but Sequoia had a bedtime to make), and John and Kim.

The title to this post is inspired from here. One thing I am still not used to are all the shops being closed on a Sunday. Mrs. Turkadactyl and I are taking the sleeper train the Amsterdam tonight and were going to buy some groceries for the train. All the supermarkets are closed. We came across a stand that was selling fruit and we purchased the fruit. Probably the biggest fruit purchased mistake that we will ever make. The prices must have been jacked up since no other stores are open. Anyways, next time we will go without fruit. I bought the wrong banana. At least I get to link a catchy song to my Roost.

I am very thankful to have visited the Mauthausen Memorial.  The only unfortunate part of the day is I ran out of time and that is with half of the memorial closed to renovations and many displays only in German.  I had to take the train from Vienna to Mauthausen, which ate up a large portion of the day.  I am thankful to Cecilia who gave me a ride from the post office to the memorial.  I was asking for directions and she said she can give me a ride.  Cecelia told me on route to the memorial that the people of Mauthausen are still judged for the atrocities that happened at the camp over sixty years ago.  Travellers try to avoid the town when visiting the memorial.  Cecelia also shared about her experience in Israel that she was strongly encouraged to not disclose that she is from Mauthausen as there are still many open wounds with the Jews and the Nazi concentration camps of WWII.

Dear Mark,

Austria is a pleasant surprise.  While I was expecting moustache’s galore in Italy; I had no expectations for Austria. The image of Mario and Luigi gave me high expectations for the Italians.  I think it is Austria of where the moustache was born.  There are moustaches everywhere here.  The young men do not seem to be as enthused as their older brethren but I think there is hope for them yet.

… With the sound of music.  We are in Salzburg now.  We spend the full day in Salzburg tomorrow and then board the overnight train to Amsterdam.  We spend an afternoon and night in Amsterdam and then it is time to return to the Great White North.  It is hard to belief that we left my grandparents almost a month ago.  Salzburg is beautiful.  For those of you who have seen The Sound Of Music you will be familiar with our picturesque surroundings.  There are Christmas markets crowding the streets.  The Austrians love their Christmas markets.  The streets were crowded today.  Many people were drinking punsch- it is an orange drink mixed with rum heated up over a burner.

We have been in Vienna since Friday evening.  My taunting of the weather has now caught up to me.  Here I have been laughing that we are enjoying shorts type weather and Edmonton is receiving snow.  We are now becoming acclimatized to Canada.  Saturday and Sunday has seen snow, which is alright.  It is the wind that has been a pain.  The weather warmed up a bit today.  What is a kick to the teeth is before we arrived in Vienna the weather was around plus 15. The long range forecast for next week is around plus 12.  Nooooo!!!

Our trip of Italy concluded with a stop in Venice.  I was not a big fan of Venice.  It was very crowded even out of tourist season and vastly overpriced.  We did take some very nice photos and enjoyed a ride down the Canale Grand.  I made some new friends- pigeons.  Snuggles, my travel bunny was trying to make new friends as well.  Two pigeons started to fight and tok no notice of poor Snuggles.  Snuggles received a black eye out of the whole ordeal.

Dear Mark,

It has been a while since I have heard from you.  I hope the Paydro gang are behaving themselves.  I have just completed a trip through Italy and I want to voice my sincerest displeasure to the Italians.  You see I had big expectations.  I guess I was hoping for too much after being exposed to the most famous Italian moustaches of them all- Mario and Luigi.

Friday night saw the release of many Siena University students into the streets of Siena.  Siena has a bustling night life, which it can thank a large part to the University campus located in its city centre.  Friday saw a larger than usual crowd pour to its streets.  Mrs. Turkadactyl and I came across a group of at least twenty young men dressed up in bell bottoms and afro wigs.  They were having a good time at a bar.  Shortly after returning to our room we heard some jovial singing from who we assumed to be the group dressed to party.  At first we were impressed with the how far the sound carried.  Then the singing was starting to get old until they pulled out there secret weapon- the theme song to the Never Ending Story.  That brought a smileto our face.  It was getting old, however, after the third time when they were still singing about three hours later.  What makes their singing even more impressive is these young men sang constantly.  They followed one song into another and did not pause between songs.  I am sure they did not have much to say the following day.

I am in an internet cafe typing away and listening to Radiohead on YouTube.  I missed Radioheads world tour so I will take this as a consolation.  It appears that winter is now catching up to Italy.  We have enjoyed amild winter up until a couple of days ago.  For a Nelson ha ha moment we have no snow, ha ha.

Mrs. Turkadactyl and I have e njoyed three relaxing days at a farm just outside of Sora.  There isn’t much to do here so we have had no choice but to relax.  The down time has been grand.  Both of our hips have been sore with all the walking we have been doing.  Plus this has been the first time we have had some extended time off for a long time.

Thank you to Anne and to John and Kim for informing and keeping us updated about the Hunchaks.  The Hunchaks go to our church back in Edmonton.  Ken, husband to Larra, and father to Taryn, Raena, and Allayna passed away of a heart attack.  The news came to a shock to us as I am sure to many others as well.  Michelle and I were expecting to come back home seeing a couple new faces, Grace Teal and Naomi Boldt, but we did not expect to lose anyone we know.  Our thoughts and praeyrs are with the Hunchaks.

Okay, I will admit I was reaching for a good title for this post.  Spicy Meatball is the best I could come up with.  Rome was fantastic.  I will warn you, hoever, if you are arriving by train to the Roma Termini the tourist information is very hard to find.  the map in the station has about eight information booths.  The booths are actually currency converters and hotel lodging reservations.  It took us a half hour at least to find tourist info.  That and Romes public toilets are scary.

For those of you who are familiar with Star Trek I am sure you will appreciate the title of this post.  Caen is pronounced the same as Khan.  Caen was wonderful.  It was our base of operation for me to visit the D-Day sites.  I really wish I could upload some photos to share with all of you what I saw.  I experienced a wide range of emotions for the two days I was in Lower Normandy.  I now have a deeper sense of admiration and respect for the soldiers of the allied forces who landed on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.

We are leaving for France tommorrow.  It has been good to see my grandparents.  We are looking forward to seeing some of the sights of Europe.  We had a close call yesterday.  I found a discount air carrier.  We ready ready to book tickets to arrive and depart at Vienna, Austria.  Upon further investigation we would have landed at Vienna airport in Slovakia.  Now that is a nasty trick.  Yes, mom we did make it to Bromsgrove on foot.  It was a long walk and good exercise.  Too much car traffic on the way.  We met a lovely woman Yvonne.  Hi Yvonne!  we ‘re looking forward to the new chapter on our trip.  Please keep checking in.  My updates will be unpredictable but I still want to keep my roost fresh.  Ever since my departure from Camas my increased fan base to five has dropped back to three again.  Time to drown my lower fan base with some chocolate now.  Mmmm chocolate.

Here are some songs to keep you entertained until my next post.  Warning, I have only seen the videos for these three songs.  Sarah gave me notice that some of the content on the site may go too far.  Oh yeah, John and Kim make sure the boys are not around unless you want them to sing the songs over and over again.

Bananas

Cats Knees

Moon