Sonntag 30 Juni

After a late night FaceTime visit with the parents, my plan to rise and shine at 8:30 for a leisurely walk to church was foiled. I blearily made out 9:00 on my ipod and threw some clothes in speed mode. I skipped the hair and went for the natural look. Breakfast, however, was laid out for me once again. Muesli, “tropical” juice, brot, käse, und Aufschnitt (lunch meat) mit Erdbeere und Himbeermarmalade had to be consumed first. With all of the walking involved in my current arrangement (ohne ein Fahrrad), skipping this opportunity was not an option.

I somehow managed to meet Katie by 9:40 as planned (that 1.2 miles to the school does go faster when you don’t take wrong turns…), and we wandered around for 20 minutes until we found the Kirche which was probably only a couple of blocks away to start with. I like to think of it as exploring, not being lost. We followed a nun into St. Gallus Katholische Kirche, skipped the holy water, failed to bow to the cross, and chose a spot on the uncomfortable pews. The acoustics and the choir (one song was in English) were fabulous, the interior was gaudy and glorious, and the sermon may have been as well, but I couldn’t pick out much more than “Jesu Christi.”

The service ended promptly an hour after it began, which left me two hours before class to wander back to my house, enjoying the first sunshine of my visit to Bregenz. We crammed as many polite German phrases and adjective endings into our heads for three hours back at the school before being released back into the sunshine. Another quick trip to my house and back, and we headed to the beach. This turned out to be a narrow strip of rocks and driftwood between the water and the biking/walking path that surrounds the lake. Not quite a Pure Michigan beach experience, but we settled in to soak up the sun, freeze in the water for a few minutes (it has been an unusually cold and rainy spring here), and observe Austrian family culture around us (children’s swimsuits seem to be superfluous… just think how much money that would save).

We returned to Harborfest (as it sounds: a festival on the harbor, with various vendors and live music), and I picked the one thing I couldn’t identify on the menu: Zack Zack. It turned out to be a thin slab of pork with some kind of spiced mayonnaise spread and lettuce on a Kaiser roll. Not bad, Gromit, not bad at all.

It was too beautiful out to go inside yet, so I did a little more exploring on my way home and discovered a tidy vegetable farm just behind my house as well as a massive church and boarding school that my host sister had told me is the “Hogwarts of Bregenz.” From the walls surrounding the complex and the violin/piano duet emanating from the windows, that sounds like an accurate description.

Estimated mileage walked today: 9