Are you ready for this??!?!?!?!?

I’m really sorry it has taken me so long to post, but my internet at my apartment will only let me on AIM (yes, it’s weird) and then most internet places and IES are closed this weekend, plus I’ve been staying really busy so this entry is huge. It may be completely boring, but it is the complete update on EVERYTHING I’ve done since I’ve been here. I hope you feel like you’re in the middle of Austria with me, or at least know a lot more!
If I repeat myself forgive me, but I’ve written all of this in many parts to make it possible since I’ve stayed so busy.

Also, I absolutely LOVE reading everyone’s comments! Yay you guys!

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Our very quaint European Apartment
May 25, 2007
11:23 p.m.


Hello!

All day I feel like different words and anecdotes have been whirling through my head to write in here, but I’m probably not going to get it all down since there is soooo much and I can’t even begin to chronicle it all!

So we’ll start with the rest of yesterday (Thursday). In the morning I was the only English speaker at breakfast, which consisted of a modest buffet of cereal, cream, tons of different roles and pastries, cheese, and of course coffee. I checked out and made it to IES using the U-Bahn (underground subway system) all by myself, which was really exciting. The night before I had been a bit south west of central Vienna, and at night I was just a tad disappointed because everything looked a bit more Eastern European than charming, Western Europe. Well my opinion of that quickly changed as soon as I emerged from the U-Bahn into the center of the city to get to IES. I came up out of the tunnel (keep in mind towing my luggage) to the main pedestrian street, and was immediately surrounded by sidewalk cafes, shops, and the entire European feel.

Arrived at IES, and buzzed it. C-Geo (UT’s study abroad office) wasn’t lying, or at all exaggerating when they said IES is in a 17th century palace. The interior is so beautiful. The rooms have exquisite muraled ceilings, and gold leaf on the moldings, a large marble staircase and statues everywhere! The story is that the owner was an Italian officer in the Habsburg military, and needed a palace in the city for ball season. So he built the place and imported all the marble and detailing. Well I thought it was weird when I walked in that the staircase is just off to the side, but it turns out there used to be another half of the palace but it was bombed and completely destroyed in WWII. This is a very common theme unfortunately in Vienna. Whenever you see a new (and very plain building) next to an old one it is because of WWII, which is all over the city in huge chunks. Like the huge and beautiful grand opera house was bombed, but luckily the front, and most elaborate part, was left almost unharmed. Well the descendent of the Italian officer still owns the place, but has to rent it out and lives in the basement but is VERY cranky about students touching anything and to people in general. lol

So I walked around with someone until time for our meeting. We had a giant orientation, full of lots of information, and then we finally came to our apartments, which are in a really convenient location, and right next to the Naschmarkt, the largest “flea” market, or basically market in Europe and also the Farmer’s Market. Well we got here, and met our landlady, who was a very robust and older Austrian with a very thick German accent (she kept saying ja [yah] a lot and doesn’t understand the internet, which is why my internet access is really messed up right now. She has gold teeth but was very nice and overall hard to understand. Our apartment, 15, is on the 4th floor, which in the US would be the 5th floor since they call their first floor the ground floor and the second the 1st. This is an older apartment building, so that meant we all had to take our luggage up five flights of narrow, spiraling stairs. I almost died. Because it has now been two straight days of me lugging around my big rolling suitcase (which weighted 49 pounds) and my rolling carry on and dragging them through the U-bahn up and down stairs, on and off, and all across European airports.

Anyway, our apartments are really nice, and very European. I am in a bigger one with 6 girls. We have a kitchen, dining area, living room with a German TV, and three rooms (one big, one medium, and one small size, I’m in the big one with three girls, but it’s four times larger than my dorm room). Everything here is from Ikea, which makes it even more European. We have giant windows that open and we get a nice breeze. The furniture is all randomly acquired, but very nice overall.



Last night we all took cold showers, and assumed we had run out of hot water. By the time I took one it was ice cold. Austrian water is freezing coming out of the tap, which is good for me drinking cold water, bad for taking showers. I wanted to cry in the shower. It was like ice. No more 15 minute showers for me. Well thank goodness tonight we discovered that the hot water heater, which is like literally a flame, hadn’t been lit yet so that is a relief.

Ok, I’m going to bed and will continue this tomorrow. It won’t make a difference to any of you since I have no internet and won’t post it until maybe Saturday.

*Elaine



May 26, 12:32 a.m.
Apartment

The past few days have been so busy, and I have yet to find a successful internet connection. At our apartments basically our internet is just wacked up, so all I can access is AIM, not email or websites. Our landlady is out for the weekend, but I’m not sure she’ll be able to help at all.

Ok I’m going to try really hard to catch everyone up since I’m already falling desperately behind. So Friday we had a walking tour of Vienna with some of the resident students who work for IES. They showed us their favorite places to eat around central Vienna and gave us a few tips on where to break the giant bills you get from the ATM and other randomness. We ended the tour at the place where we are supposed to register to live in Austria this month. The line was way too long so we went out with our Professor for lunch and decided to come back later, like on Monday since it was going so absurdly slow.
At lunch we went to this deli, and since I know no German I have to point, gesture, grunt, and hand over more than the possible amount of money I need to the person in order to successfully get through. I have to say, for any place where they do not have a fluent English speaker, the Austrians are very patient and polite. I have been very impressed, and they go out of their way to try and help you as best they can, but really most people here speck at least basic English. Really, that makes me want to learn a little German even more because they have been so accommodating. With my program they have an introductory German class I’ll be taking 4 days a week, which I’m really happy about.




Sunday May 27, 2007
Apartment 4:30 p.m.

Continuing this giant blog entry that I cannot post until I get internet access. So to continue our Friday activities, after ditching the registration line, a bunch of us and our professor, Dr. Louis Waldman, went over to a local gelato place. Picking flavors was fun, since for the most part you weren’t sure what you exactly were getting. There was one word I knew the second I saw it, and the selection was a done deal: tiramisu. Gelato is a type of ice cream, but less creamy and a slightly different texture, to be honest I don’t know a whole lot about it other than it’s very European, so good it’s sinful, and just making its way over to the states.
After eating gelato, we headed over for our IES bus tour of the city in front of the Staatsoper, the enormously grand center opera house. Our tourguide, Dr. Ottersböck, an American and art history professor in what I guess to be her late 50’s, who I believe came to study in Vienna, fell in love with her ski instructor ( I could be completely wrong on that, but I thought she mentioned that, otherwise just fell in love) and bottom line got married, stayed in Vienna, and raised her kids here. We made a few stops along our bus tour, including the grand summer palace and garden of Prince Eugene, a brillent, but apparently scrawny, military stragist who after being turned away from the French (what a joke!) came to Austria and defeated the invading Turks for the Habsburgs (ruling family), and thus became quite wealthy. We are going back there, so we just looked around the gardens, and there are these giant sphinxes that are supposed to show women as having strong lion bodies, wings, and intelligent heads and be all powerful, but they have giant breast that appear to be a bit cold so basically I think it’s just soft porn that men tried to pass off as art. Although Prince Eugene wasn’t interested in women and never married, so either females freaked him out more than the Turkish army, or he had some huge closets in that palace. We may never know.

After that we hit up the work of a really neat architect, who didn’t like to use straight lines, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who had roof tenants (plants). Even the floors are a bit uneven, inside and outside his building. Normally I’m not into that sort of stuff, but I actually liked his work. After driving around, we saw a few other examples of his work in Vienna, although his work is throughout the world. He died a few years ago.

Well this was the hottest day thus far of the trip, and we had been out standing in the sun, and getting back on the bus which didn’t have sufficient air conditioning. We were dying, especially poor Dr. Ottersböck, who kept fanning herself and exclaiming, which made me think of a few certain ladies back in the states. We were dying, since you can’t even cool off inside.

We ended our tour in the Vienna woods up in the hills, which are completely beautiful. Up toward the hills there are home run wineries, called Heurigens. You go and have an Austrian meal and drink last year’s wine. We had a wonderful meal, and yes I do believe in the saying “when in Rome” or rather “when in Vienna” so I had some wine. In case you all were wondering, I am the largest lightweight possible and got slightly dizzy after half a glass. lol
I eased up after that, but to my defense they were big glasses, it was strong (but I will admit very good) and we were all dehydrated. Nuff said.

We all laughed, because at the end the directors were like “ok, take the public transport back, have a good weekend” and we were all like “great, they get us drunk then make us find our way home!” But as all public transport is here, it was really easy.

So Saturday. I woke up early and went to the Farmer’s Market. The Naschmarkt, which is the flea market part, wasn’t that terribly exciting but the farmer’s market was amazing and very reasonably priced. I got some fresh strawberries, some dried fruit (with even kiwis) with nuts, and a loaf of whole grain bread that was still warm when I picked it out. After that we went to Merker, the local grocery store for shampoo, and other things. When I was walking around, they started to play “Raindrops keep falling on my head” which I found rather amusing. After that we had a class meeting by at the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna. We looked at a lot of changing maps of Vienna, and talked about the influence of taverns on local life. It was really interesting, but by the end all the German words got overwhelming and all of our feet hurt really bad from standing a lot. This museum was right by the enormous and imposing Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) that was built in 1713 to celebrate the end of a plague that hit the city. Outside we passed the weirdest thing. There was a performance of human statues, all painted like roman statues, playing this really loud classical music with nature sounds. The more we watched, the weirder it got, because it was like there were starting to move and whisper, but then they would stop. As a group of us walked away in search of food, they started making a lot of really loud noises, so we were glad to be heading the other direction.

I ate at this bar called 1516, and had asparagus cream soup. Spargal (asparagus) is in season, so it was really good.

Later that evening, we got standing tickets at the Staatsoper (main opera house). What you do is you wait in line several hours before the performance, then they let you into another room and everyone files in, then you by tickets ( €2 each!) and then you are led into the grand stairs, wait again, and then there is no kidding a mad dash for the standing seats. I was with three other students and our mouths dropped open because there were grown adults running and pushing to reserve their railing space at the top. Well after much pushing and confusion, we got our seats. To mark your spot you tie a scarf or belt along the railing and then leave and go socialize. Well we hadn’t brought anything so we finally tore up a plastic bag and ghetto-fied ourselves at the opera but we just chilled by our “seats.” We saw Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, which was set in the French Revolution. It was really good, but thing that made it really enjoyable was the English translation that you could program on the screen in front of you. That way you knew exactly what was going on (for the most part) but it was funny after each act there was an intermission, and we would sum to each other what was happening in “common” terms. Overall it was full of drama and very enjoyable. I looked that that night as my trial run at the opera, since we didn’t have to dress up. There were plenty of people in full dress, plenty of people in casual clothing. Next time I plan on dressing up, but that will mainly be for my own enjoyment. Also, standing got pretty tedious, so I may try to get the €10 student rush tickets that sometimes are hard to get, but they are just the leftover seats. It would be nice to sit. Sitting is wonderful.

Finally, I’m on today! I got up and went to mass at a local church. It was entirely in German except for one song, and Jesus tastes like cornflakes in Austria! I’m sorry if that was offensive, but seriously, the wafer was very cornflake like. There was a modest turnout, and today I just went to the local church instead of one of the huge central churches. It was very beautiful, but hard to understand what was going on since I was surrounded by what I’m guessing were tourists who didn’t know either, so I couldn’t just follow their lead since things were going in a slightly different order than I’m used to. The small choir was pretty good, and even sang the end song in English, so that surprised me.

I was feeling kind of tired, so I just chilled in the apartment today. A few of my roommates went hiking, and a few others just chilled around. I’m trying to not over do it since I have an entire summer of this left to go, so I sat with the windows open, wrote most of this, read in my guidebooks, and completely relaxed.

*Elaine

May 27, 2007
11:15 p.m. just got back from the center of Vienna (1st District)

So I just went out with four of my other roommates and we walked to the center of Vienna, which is around the giant Stephansdom (St. Stephan’s Church), walked around and then had dessert at Europa, a sidewalk café. Especially since it has been so hot the past few days this cool weather and light breeze was heavenly. We sat around and talked, had my first encounter with rude service, but the Blackforest Cake I got was quite enjoyable. We took the subway back and got right next this couple making out and the women had no eyebrows. Oh the things you can observe!

*Elaine