Blamo! from around the world: Blamo!! from the Original Snowglobe Makers and an Austrian Soccer game

On Monday November 16th my education class went to the Original Snowglobe factory, which happens to be in Vienna! The guy who owns the company now, his grandpa was the one who created the snowglobe on accident. His grandpa was trying to improve the lightbulb by putting water behind the light. He put some silver flecks in the water globe one day and realized that it kind of looked like snow and thus the first snowglobe was born. His grandpa stopped trying to improve the lightbulb and started making snowglobes.

The snowglobe they made for President Ronald Regan

Snowglobe they made for President Obama

Snowglobe they made for President Clinton

The Vienna Rathaus with the Christmas Market in front

All of the molds for the figurines and some of the figurines themselves are made by hand. They are also all painted by hand!

It was a very cool visit! Later that week I was trying to go home from school and my street car that I take home was not running. I looked down the street to see what was going on and there was a huge student protest going down the main Ring road around the city. The university students are protesting several things that are about to get changed. Students do not have to pay to attend the university now, but they might have to next year. I'm not quite clear on all the other thins they are protesting because I don't speak German and can't understand the newspapers here.

Wednesday November 18th I spontaneously decided to go to the Austria vs. Spain soccer game. It was a "friendly game" because Austria was already out of the competition for the world cup (or whatever it's called....I'm not good with sports things). However, the game was not so "friendly" because they kept fighting each other. At one point one of the Austrian team members just kicked a Spanish player in shin really hard.