Guten Tag!
I miss you all more with every passing day. This will probably be fairly lengthy post considering I haven’t written in weeks, so I have organized it in a way in which you can choose to read only what interests you. If your level of interest in my Austrian adventure is at a survival only basis, you can stop reading now, I am in fact still alive. If you want to hear about my academic escapades continue to “Sie Klassenzimmer”. If you want to meet some of my new friends, skip to “Mein Freunde”. To hear about weekend fun, go to “Wochenende”. To hear about the fragile and perhaps volatile relationship with the Bosnian cleaning and kitchen staff and the students here at the DA, go to “Scheisse!”. Otherwise, you can just read through or look at the pictures.
Sie Klassenzimmer
Classes are now in full swing and my schedule is quite full. Yesterday I had 8 hours of class, 8:30 am to 6:30 pm with a break for lunch. And I’m not talking underwater basket weaving here. Many of the students here studied international relations in college or have already gotten their masters in some related field. This allows them to exempt a lot of the introductory level classes. Unfortunately, psychology and advertising don’t really get me any free space in my schedule. Additionally, I have to take German as well as French. Oh, French, Maria has studied French since she was 12, you might think. No big deal, right? WRONG! The word “fluent” means very different things in the US and in Europe. I placed into an advanced level, which is still 2 levels below the highest class. Then after two days of class, my French teacher (who is a super cute French woman with bobbed black hair and glasses) asks to talk to me during our break. She wants me to move down to the lower level! SAD! I know I shouldn’t take it personally, but I was realllly bummed. Apparently, A’s in French all of your life don’t actually mean you speak a language. Ok, I’m being a bit hard on myself here, I know I can express myself and understand very well in French, but I have a lot of room for improvement. Additionally, some people speak about 5 languages here. It’s craziness.
I’m also starting German. My German teacher likes to only speak to us in German even though we started out with absolutely no vocabulary or grammatical base. It was an interesting first few days, but even after just 5 classes, I feel like I have improved a lot! Das baby isst die eis. (That baby eats an ice cream). How ‘bout them apples?
Outside of language classes which occupy all of my mornings, I am taking Principles of International Law, Microeconomics, Latin America between the US and the EU, Institutional Law of the EU, Evolution of the International System (history), and two classes taught all in French about government. They are all in 2 to 4 hour blocks. Saturdays are not off limits. I find that morally wrong. Although some of the classes get kind of boring (particularly during my after lunch food coma) I feel like I’m learning a lot and am enjoying my studies.
Meine Freunde
So I have met people from all over the world here and have been lucky enough to make some really great friends already.
Peri-Khan is one of my closest friends here. She’s one of the other non-Austrians in the Diploma program, born and raised in Germany but of Kurdish descent. Her dad is the Iraqi ambassador to Austria and she lives with her parents a little bit outside the city in the Embassy of Iraq Residence. I went to visit her there, which is cool because it was kind of like being in Iraq since Austrian laws don’t really apply there. The people who used to live there before Peri’s dad got the job worked directly for Saddam Hussein, and they destroyed a bunch of paintings and other things when the old regime went out of power. Craziness, no? Peri is really funny and nice and I think we will stay close throughout the year.
Yana is my uber cute Bulgarian friend. We share a love for Depeche Mode, thrift stores and nail polish. She has great fashion sense and is into graphic design too. We are in the beginning level of German together and often eat together since we both live in the DA and like to cook vegetarian.
Marta is from Cadiz in Spain and she is super friendly and laid back. She is in ETIA, the environmental masters program, and lives 15 minutes from the DA with a former DA student and her baby (her roommate’s not hers). The baby’s name is Sasha and he’s adorable and only responds if you speak to him in French. I dig that.
Maria Konstantina is a tiny Greek girl with an insatiable appetite and a distinctively shrill laugh. She is really sweet and hearing her laugh makes me laugh even if I totally missed the joke (there usually isn’t a joke, she laughs at the most random things ever). She’s in ETIA too and lives a couple of doors down from me.
Marianne is the friendliest Austrian girl I’ve met here. She is really sweet and invited me over to her apartment to meet her friends and boyfriend and eat some traditional Austrian food. Her friend has a garden at his parents’ house and loves to grow his own food. He made us apfelstrudel and really delicious juice out of elder flowers. Marianne plays soccer, which is cool. She and Perry are the only other girls that play soccer with me on Tuesdays along with about 15 to 20 guys.
Marianne and Maria Konstantina
Vladamir is obsessed with his girlfriend, chocolate, and making inappropriate comments loudly in private or public places. He is a slacker (actually just missed over a week of school to go visit his girlfriend in England) but really smart. He can speak English, German, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and I think he’s working on Russian. His dad was an important figure in the Romanian revolution and is now an ambassador in Brazil. Vlad eats more than I thought was humanly possible. He got a deep eye infection the day after he arrived and looked like Quasimodo for weeks. He likes chess and judo. We get along.
Selyna is from Sri Lanka and is a second year masters student. She gives off motherly vibes that make me feel better when I am sad. She loves jewelry, bratwurst, and knowing all DA gossip there is to know.
Sam and Manuel can go together as one because they are always together anyways. Sam is British and Manuel is German but they both graduated from Oxford. Manuel might as well be British because he has the most posh British accent I’ve ever heard. They like to watch opera and symphonies on YouTube.
Manuel and Sam
Ian is a really fun Italian guy who is in my German class. I think he would make a better gypsy than student at a diplomatic academy and he agrees. He plays the guitar really well and has good fashion sense (minus his soccer shorts which are constantly falling down, but it doesn’t really matter because he manages to score anyways). He has a thing for Yana… we’ll see how that ends up.
Anthony is the one I call Tall Tall Cankle Man because he is a freakishly tall Canadian who has to wear ankle guards when he plays soccer. He and Peri had a thing going on but I think that’s over… maybe?
Damir is a really funny Bosnian dude who lives two doors down from me. He graduated from the DA last year and is now working for the UN. He loves to sing (LOUD) and play his music (LOUD). He is really good at the guitar too.
Alex is lives down the hall from me and he’s Canadian. We have some similar musical preferences and he was my Levi on Halloween (more on that later). He’s really nice and fun to watch play soccer because he doesn’t actually have any ball skills and is constantly spinning wildly out of control… sometimes resulting in injury to himself or others.
There are plenty of others who will probably be described later on, but this is a good base I think.
Wochenende
Ok, since I missed a bunch of weekends already, I’ll try to do a summary. I learned two weeks into my trip that the sun actually does exist in Austria. We had some really good weather and it always seemed to show up on the weekends, lovely! We enjoyed most of those weekends in various parks, playing soccer, strolling, and lounging around in general. At night we hit some bars and I’ve been to one club. I like house music more than I remembered! One night there was this citywide event called Lange Nacht der Museen, where all the museums stayed open until 2 am and you could buy a ticket to let you in to all of them. It was fun although most of the big museums were quite crowded. Can you imagine a night in a US city where everyone was like, “Drop everything! Let’s go to see museums all Friday night! They’re open until 2! Yes!” I can’t. Another one of our weekend trips was at the end of orientation week when we went to walk through the vineyards in the countryside and ended up in a tavern where we drank wine and sturm. We had great weather and it was really nice to spend a day in the sun after weeks of gray.
Walk through the vineyards.
This weekend was Halloween (duh) and last night we had a huge party here at the DA bar. I dressed up as Bristol Palin (pregnant 17 year old daughter of Sarah) and my friend Alex went as Levi. At the party we found Sarah Palin walking around and we were all nominated as a group for the costume contest prize. However, Marta and Maria Konstantina, who dressed up as showers, took the prize. Fair play. The party was fun but some people were getting sloppy drunk and some gummy candy was getting out of control stuck to the floor. Dancing takes on a new meaning when your feet are cemented to the ground with green goo. Overall it was a good night and I didn’t get to bed ‘til half past 5.
Scheisse!
Everyone living at the DA has a different experience with the cleaning staff. They are supposed to come in twice a week to do basic stuff like change the sheets and towels, sweep, and clean the bathroom. The extent to which they actually do this depends on whether or not they like you. If they don’t like you (as is the case for Maria Konstantina) they will bitch you out for clogging the shower drain with your hair and for having more than your appropriated number of tea cups in your room). If they do like you (as is the case for Anthony and Tim) they will do your laundry for you, leave pastries in your room, and disregard any extra dishware you may have stolen from the kitchen. Most of the staff is Bosnian and speak Serbian with a little bit of broken German. Since I speak neither, I have a somewhat neutral relationship with my cleaning lady. I try not to piss her off, she hasn’t yelled at me up until now. We are technically supposed to be out of our rooms at 9 for them to come in and clean, which I think is unnecessarily early but doesn’t usually cause me problems since I have early classes almost every day. Vladamir on the other hand, has no early classes and likes to leave the keys in the door so that the cleaning ladies have no way of getting in. My friend who understands Serbian told me that Vladamir is now the number one conversation topic of the cleaning ladies bitching sessions and I fear that they may seek revenge for locking them out and being generally untidy. I’ll keep you all posted. The same women who clean serve lunch too. Lunch is at 1 and if you get there at 5 past, you get dirty looks. If you get there at 10 past, you should check your food for loogie. If you get there at quarter past, you have to beg them to even give you lunch, and if you get there at 20 past you may as well head for a kepab stand. I’m especially despised because they always bring me meat and I have to send it back and ask for vegetarian. Is it my fault they still don’t recognize me after a month of returning their shnitzle? I don’t think so.
Ok, so this has been an inordinately long post and I shall try to post shorter and more frequent updates. I miss you guys so muchhhhhhhh. Please tell me about what’s going on in your lives and add me on skype if you’ve got it. Oh yeah, and here’s my address if you want to send me a note:
Maria Alejandra Baetti
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna
Favoritenstrasse 15A / #304
A-1040 Wien
Austria
Bye byeeee! Muah ☺
~Maria
