Tuesday, May 29, 2012
I was pretty excited for today, it said on our schedule that it was a Cross Cultural Scavenger Hunt on Health Determinans. It did say wear good shoes we will be hiking on the forest. We arrive to be divided into teams, teams were mostly 2 Austrians and 2 Americans. Our team was handicapped with 3 Americans and 1 Austrian. We look at our instructions and the light goes on for me. This is not a scavanger hunt! This is another flipping hike all over a mountain with points to stop and answer questions! I felt bad for my team because of course we arrived dead last and I think almost an hour behind everyone. It said on the sheet that this would be a 4 hr hike, we started at 8 and I returned around 1. I am not that fast climbing vertical hills, I am not that steady on my feet when climbing down trails, I just don't trust my footing so I step carefully. The questions were easy things like name some edible plants around you. We had nettles, dandelions and elderberry right next to us. There were some neat highlights for us on our treck though.
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| these are stairs on the trail...made of roots... |
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Austrian bowling, I found this up on Zirbitzkogel too, its a ball on a chain and pins...
you swing the ball to knock em down |
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| found a 4 leaf clover just in the middle of the path... |
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| loved the view from the top |
Sorry team, didn't mean for you to come in last. Note to our fearless leader....scavanger hunt means you look for things and bring them back with you not go on a hike and answer questions!!
After that we had the rest of the day off.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Today is a looooong day of lecture and presentations. The Austrian students have been doing presentations and we have had some to do as well. Carly and I had to do our presentation on breastfeeding so in true Angel style I started it off with a controversial photo and discussion, I really wanted to hear what the Austrian students and the US students had to say about this photo
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no I don't agree with the photo or the caption but it was a discussion on breastfeeding
and this def got the discussion going! |
Our presentation went great and I am glad to have another assignment out of the way.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
I am soooo excited for today! We get to go on a culinary trip and explore a flour mill and oil press, a chocolate factory and a vinegar factory and Schnapps distillery. We met at the college bright and early and were greeted with an awesome ride!
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| gotta love a mercedes bus!! actually we saw several delivery trucks that were mercedes too |
We then traveled to our first destination the Berghofer Mühle. This is a mill that produces flour and pumpkin seed oil. What first struck me is we pulled into a dirt parking lot, there was a barn with open windows and doors and people just walking about in overalls or other bits of attire. My reaction was really one of puzzlement since in the states even to tour a jelly belly factory we had to wear hair nets. Everything is sterelized and sanitary. We are greeted by one of the owners and she lets us know that they produce flour from three kinds of wheat and shows us the difference.
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| 3 different kinds of wheat, I think one was rye but I dont remember the names of the wheat |
Then she takes us over to where the grinding is done, and the bagging, we climb old wooden steps and see how old school they do it here. The mill has been around for over 800 years but a flood wiped out the original so this building was only 400 plus years old. We were able to peek into open bags and never once did someone say to put on a hairnet!
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open bags of ground flour, notice it is not bleach white and it has not been enriched
its just exactly what it should be, ground wheat. |
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| these are the machines they use to grind the flour... |
Then we left that part and went to the pumpkin seed part of it. She told us all about how they grow the pumpkins and a machine comes along during harvest and splits the pumpkin and harvests the seeds and leaves the flesh and such to be fertilizer for next years harvest. Sometimes however it is gathered and people make paper out of pumpkin flesh. I guess these pumpkins are not good eats except for the seeds. The first step is to clean and dry the seeds and then they grind them up and then salt the seeds to extract lots of oil from them (think about sugaring a berry to get it nice and juicy) then they roast the salt seed mixture and then start doing layers of steel plate and salt seed mixture and then press....
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| seeds ready for grinding |
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| the press and yes there is a person not wearing much other than an apron stirring the roasting pot |
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| yes the seeds and oil are dark green |
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| roasting the seeds |
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| this round disk is what is left after pressing, its now animal food |
The lady then took us into another area where she let us do lots of tasting of the seeds that were flavored or the oil that they produce right there.
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| everything was yummy here! |
Next we board the bus...off to the chocolate factory!
End of Part 1
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