Austria – Turknoy Travels 100!

TAKE TWO COUNTRY 6: Austria’s Really Perfect Landscape and Those Innovative, Healthy, Creative, Fine-Looking People!

October 5, 2017October 4, 2017 by turknoys, posted in Austria, Travel Adventures, Travel Goals, Why Travel With Kids?

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” – Austrian Proverb

The easiest thing to do in Austria, based on our family opinion, is to appreciate beauty. The landscape all throughout the country is phenomenal. We meant it when we say, “jaw-dropping, inhale exhale majestic.”

During our first visit in the country back in 2013, we visited Vienna and Innsbruck and we were floored with amazement in every country landscape we saw during our train rides passing through towns from Vienna to Innsbruck. We can ride the train back and forth and we’ll never get tired of the nature, view and even houses with their happy cows grazing in the majestic field.

Never did a month pass that we didn’t talk about visiting again Austria. We wanted to go back to Innsbruck and leisurely enjoy the mountain peaks. However, this second time around, we enjoyed worldschooling our little travelers in Salzburg and discovered the UNESCO World Heritage Town, Hallstatt.

Salzburg

Salzburg is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthplace, the city where legends are born. Kids noted that their mom was being “weird’ in the room where legend was born at No. 9 Getreidegasse in Salzburg, Austria. Like any “typical” traveler, Mozart didn’t quite like Salzburg as much as he loved Vienna. That fact alone comforts our traveller’s hearts. The understanding of Mozart’s childhood, dreams and environment he grew up basically validates our family trails we seek for our three Mozarts.

We gave Salzburg landscape a chance to impress us like Innsbruck, but this traveling family somehow chases the fog, instead of the sun.

Hallstatt
Oh Hallstatt! A small village by Lake Hallstatt in the moutainous region of Salzkammergut. We went to explore Hallstatt from Salzburg on a day trip taking two trains one way. It was well worth a day visit and probably more! We really didn’t want to leave. Would you leave a view like this?

Hallstatt, Austria — Another #nofilterneeded #familyphoto ! When we’re together enjoying majestic landscapes, that’s family bliss to treasure forever! .

We also enjoyed the Salt Mine which took more than 3-4 hours and we didn’t even notice! Definitely a recommended activity for kids in Europe – tourist mode or definitely event long term travel. How fantastic it would be to stay more than a month in this place, we can only imagine.

One of our favorite country to explore is definitely Austria. We have explored 30 countries to date across three continents. That makes us well travelled family, right? We say, yes! We set goals to live the life we imagined.

COUNTRY 6: Austria’s Perfect Landscape Country With That 80-Year-Old Woman Biking Uphill Quite Passionately

July 27, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Austria, Travel Adventures, Why Travel With Kids?

“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.” – Alfred Adler, Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist

As a travelling family, we never NOT get lost. Getting lost is part of our traveling strategy that IF, in rare circumstance, we didn’t get lost, there will be a lot of Oohhhhss and Wooowwws. We even started to enjoy getting lost!

When we travel, there is no rule but “hold hands when we cross the street.” We basically wing it all from there. A little bit of caution and disclaimer though, our free-range kids and relaxed parenting method while traveling is not for everyone! We have bruises and cuts to prove minor dangers in family travel.

Our main focus when we travel is curiosity. We believe that when we are driven by our desire to learn and explore, the risks mitigate themselves allowing us to enjoy the benefits of travel to the fullest.

Austria is a country where we never really went to any actual tourists-to-see list by purpose! We followed a rough itinerary of what we should see in Vienna and Innsbruck but we ended up just roaming around, observing people, eating, observing people and actually talking to them.

The beauty of Vienna is imbued with a perfect mixture of intellectual and emotional spirit. The architecture, the art, the people, it’s artistic, puzzling and electrifying all at the same time.

Turknoys Exploring Austria — The Oldest Working Ferris Wheel in the World

While Innsbruck! It’s true love between Innsbruck and the Turknoys really! Oh my, how our hearts crave to go back to Innsbrucker Nordkettenbahnen , the panorama and the funicular ride! As much as those things are memorable, we will always equate Innsbruck (and the country Austria in general) with that very agile and healthy grandmother who was biking uphill and passed us by in a flash (no exaggeration!) while we were panting, sweating and almost climbing the hill with our very healthy kids!

Our love for healthy lifestyle was sparked right there and then. We wanted to become that woman, when we are that old. We equated it to the activities and habits of the people in the country. Who wouldn’t be inspired to walk, bike, be active in such as a beautiful scenery, we wonder.

This we lesson is instilled in all of us – from Innsbruck, Austria:

Life is short indeed. However, we don’t have to make it shorter. Live to the fullest for longer beautiful years by being healthy and happy.

If there is a country perfect for wandering and getting lost, it is definitely Austria! Throw your precautions away, pack the bags and learn life’s lessons in a beautiful landscape. Who knows, you’ll find an inspiration to the old lady (or old man) who had lived their life to the fullest and by the looks of how healthy they are, is barely done living!

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live! – More from Alfred Adler

The Birds And The Stars

May 23, 2016 by turknoys, posted in Austria, Maldives, Monaco, Travel Goals

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.” – E.E Cummings

Have you ever seen someone full of eagerness to learn that they kept on trying and practicing to their heart’s content and when they get to learn the ideas they wanted to comprehend, they shrieked carelessly out of pure delight?

“I got it, Mommy!”

What a remarkable statement that is for a home educating family. When traveling to new countries, that statement with different world scenes as backdrop, where they claim to learn something in an out-of-box method, is beyond an awe-inspiring statement.

Those moments are contagious. We can’t help but feel ecstatic about whatever they are learning, whatever is important for them to learn. The songs they want to sing and how they sing it.

Insert the image of Archimedes running naked around town, shouting Eureka! Eureka!! He has found the answer!

We don’t really get that passionate inside the four corners of our classrooms, do we?

Traveling and home educating shares the same purpose for our family. Song birds singing in their natural habitats. Finding their songs and unleashing the power of their music. The passion, the bliss of singing under the brilliant stars!

Turknoys Exploring Monaco — inside the world’s first ever submarine !

Oh, the stars!

The stars mean different things to different people. Shining stars, their brilliance is simply magnificent, twinkling the night away.

“Someday, I want to be a star!” becomes a popular dream for everyone. There are gazillion stars up there trying to outshine each other. It’s a beautiful sky. But as e.e Cummings noted, there are no dancing!

Institutionalized. One word we learned as we embarked on our family goals. One word we started to detest and shield our kids from. Yet one, we can’t run away from. One word we defines as “No unique dancing allowed.”

During our school days, remember those times that we have to excel at examinations to show the administrators, our parents and classmates that we are shining brightly because we are top of the class or we got several awards and medals? Was it really that important?

We have been there. Top of the class, lots of medals. Not really that relevant in the real world.

We’ve also seen students who were bad at math and staying extra hours to study to ace a test over practicing violin or traveling on a summer vacation.

Shine bright, stars. That is what stars are supposed to do, isn’t it?

Institutionalized. The lazy way to dream, copy the dream and goals defined by the institutions and live the happy, mediocre lifestyle.

There are lots of bright stars but only when the sky is dark. The system is dark.

Our family is part of the system, we can break free for that, but for this period, the system prevails. We can only hope that there will be revolution in the future to free our stars and let the dancing starts!

For now, we travel and learn as a lifestyle. There will be “dark” moments. We do what we can.

Everytime we have those Eureka, song bird moments from our kids, we are taught again and again, (and again..and so on!).. that anything worth learning can’t be taught. Stars can’t make their own bright lights.

The birds, the birds create their own happy songs.

Happy singing birds over brilliant stars. Why not?

Happy singing!