Frohes Neues Jahr!

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written! December was a very busy month. This will be my last post of 2008, crazy! I can’t believe the year is almost over. It was a long year. Lots of things happened. Ok I’m going off on a tangent already, lets get to the core material (clearly I’ve O.D.ed on academia). Like before, I will divide this into chapters so you can pick and choose: A) First snow day! B) Jane’s visit C) Exam week and the study week leading up to it (aka- HELLLLL) D) Spain at last!

A) The first day of snow (which has actually been the only day of snow so far) was beautiful! It was coming down so fast I couldn’t believe it! I was giddy and ran down the hall, running into a number of unamused Canadians and an equally unenthused Dutchman. I guess people north of the Mason-Dixon line just don’t understand, haha. That evening (which is basically night here because the sun goes down at 4:30pm) a big group of us went to one of the many Christkindlmarkt (Christmas markets). This one was especially cute, because unlike the expansive one that draws in all the tourists at the Rathaus (town hall) this one is tucked in between a few cobblestone streets.





Christmas markets are glorious places where cold Austrians (and colder non-Austrians) go to drink hot “gluehwein” (mulled wine) or a variety of other hot alcoholic beverages in an effort to stay warm or forget that they were cold in the first place. There are also all kinds of tasty treats, sweet and salty. One particularly notable market specialty is Langos, a large fried bread, fried again when you order it and then brushed with garlic oil. Eating one of these is probably the equivalent of shooting up a half cup of straight fat. On the healthier side, there are tons of stands selling maroni (roasted nuts, I don’t know what they’re called in English) and slices of thick, whole grain bread (brot) with all kinds of spreads, spinach, cheese, and… lard. Seriously, they eat lard on bread. The sweet stands are also pretty wild, including every size possible of wafer tubes filled with what looks like marshmallow fluff and dipped in chocolate. I tried an ice cream cone shaped one of these and have not repeated since.



Apart from the food, the markets sell gifts. What kind of gifts depends on what market you go to. The Karlplatz market, closest to where I live, sells all handmade artisan crafts (soaps, hats, jewelry, etc.). The more touristy ones, like the Rathaus market, sell everything (furry stuffed animal puppets, pot-leaf belly button rings, etc).

Back to the first day of snow… the snow was fluffy and light and clean and white and perfect! We threw many a snowball at each other, which was fun because they would explode into powder as soon as they hit you. The ones I make when it snows in Georgia would give you a black eye. All of the buildings looked picturesque I felt like I was in a storybook. Sooooo yeah, snowy Vienna = magic.

B) Jane came to Vienna! It was nice to have a friend from home come visit me in my new element. For those of you who do not know, Jane is a former roommate from UGA who is now teaching English in Cadiz, Spain. We went to Christmas Markets, walked around town, hit a museum or two, and right before her departure, we went to see a ballet at the Stadtopera, the big beautiful opera house in the center of the city. Along with my friend Selyna, we saw “Giselle” … standing. Regular tickets that night were about 150 euros. Our tickets cost 4. Only catch, we had to stand the whole time. Totally worth it.





C) This is where the story gets dark. EXAMMSSS. Throughout the semester, I had been keeping busy doing my homework for my language classes and attending those and all the rest. However, I had not been studying for all my classes throughout October and November. To be frank, I didn’t even know what was going on in some of the classes, even though I had attended lecture regularly. Institutional Law of the European Union was the worst. I’ll save my rant about the EU for a later post, because it would make this one way too long. So anyways, a week or so before exams began, I started to realize how absolutely screwed I was… 6 exams in 6 days… Friday and then back to back Monday through Friday. I then began to teach myself everything I could… about everything. As if mother nature was in tune with my mood, the sun did not come out for 2 weeks. I stayed in the DA building for 2 weeks. I studied my ass off for 2 weeks. I have never studied so many subjects, in such a short time, in such and intense way in my lifffeee. There were a number of emotional/mental break downs, which I attribute to a combination of stress, homesickness, and lack of vitamin D. It felt like exam week would never end. Somehow it did, and I am grateful for that. I am used to working for A’s in school, but this time, if I so much as pass all of those exams, I will be thrilled.

There are no pictures posted for this period of time, since none were taken. So here's a picture from the night I went out with Peri and some friends after I finished my last exam. Joyful delirium.



D) ¡ESPAÑA! I could not have been happier to be leaving Vienna. I mean, Vienna is nice and all, and everyone says that Christmas time is the best there, but I wanted out. I have limited vacation time, and I want to spend it somewhere warm and sunny and new. So I went to Castellón (between Barcelona and Valencia) where my cousins Pachu and Ceci live. Their parents live just a little bit away in Oropesa del Mar, a hot vacation spot in the summer and an absolute ghost town in the winter. Another cousin of mine, Lucky (short for Luciano), who lives in London came for the holidays too.





So, for the past week, I’ve been living in Pachu’s apartment with him and Lucky, because Ceci went to stay with her boyfriend in Barcelona. Me, 22, Pachu, 28, Lucky 31. Our schedule: noon- I wake up. 1:00- Lucky wakes up. 2:00 Pachu wakes up. 2:30- lunch of sorts. 3:30- go out for activity of sorts (coffee, stores, etc.) or stay in our pjs and surf the net for hours. 8:00- talk about what we might eat. 9:00- Lucky and I actually make what we will eat for dinner and Pachu leaves for work at the Casino (he’s a croupier) usually saying something along the lines of a spanish, “Damn, I haven’t eaten anything”. I then proceed to give him suggestions about snacks he should take with him, he listens and nods, and then leaves without taking anything. Lucky and I cook, eat, shoot the shit for a while and start watching a movie (sometimes a documentary about pedophiles, sometimes a really depressing movie starring Bjork). Pachu comes back around 1 am and we finish the movie. Then we sit in our “internet café” (the three of us on our laptops at the kitchen table) and hang out on the internet, looking up random YouTube videos to show each other. Between 3 and 5 am- bed.



There are some variations in the schedule, which I will describe in further detail in a later post, but overall, this is what we do. This schedule is not normal to me. After my weeks of absolute structure and discipline, I feel uncomfortably relaxed and lazy. Sleeping past noon? What? Staying up until when? I’m starting to get used to it now, but I think that could be a bad thing. Another weird thing: I never get headaches usually, and since I’ve been in Spain, I’ve had one almost every day. What on earth? Lucky says he gets them too and that when his brother came to visit the same thing happened. He suspects it has something to do with the car or the roads or something.

Ahh! There’s too much to say! Too much tell you guys! I’ll have to fill in all the bits I’ve missed later on. I’ve missed you all most this month. Holiday season I suppose, sigh. I hope you all are having a nice relaxing break and that you have a fun New Year’s celebration! I will be thinking of all of you and wishing we could be hanging out together today. Feliz Año Nuevo!

Das ist Magische!

Two weeks ago I went on a hike about two hours outside of Vienna. It was a Sunday morning and we had to wake up pretty early and leave the academy at 7 am. When we arrived at the start of the trail, I will admit that I was asking myself, why am I doing this? It was completely gray, drizzling, and foggy. The ground was wet and my mood was equally soggy. Soon we entered the forest and began to climb. Instead of being under a cloud, we were moving into a cloud.



Everything was misty and spooky and I felt like I was in a movie. Pretty soon my hair was wet, even though it wasn’t raining. Looking up we started to see faint hints of blue through the gray and in another 15 minutes we had hiked out of the cloud and over it. Everything was crisp and clear and sunny and beautiful. I seriously felt like I was in one of those “Claritin clear” TV ads. The higher we went the more the clouds below looked like white ocean, waves lapping up against forested mountain tops.





We continued at a fairly quick pace up the trail and stopped to drink icy water from a natural spring. There was a huge sigh of relief from all when we arrived at a mountain hut for lunch. This high up, there aren’t really vegetarian options, so I classified eating bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potatoes on an Austrian mountain top a “cultural experience”.



I have had a lot of “cultural experiences” lately. Along with my uber-Austrian meal, I drank Almdudler, and Austrian soft drink made of elder flowers and other mountain herbs. I couldn’t help but to yoink the old glass bottle once I was done drinking. From here on we made the decision to continue up to the top of one of the peaks. The professor who was leading us on the hike was bookin’ it!!



The rest of us scrambled to keep up, rocks and mud sliding beneath our feet. There were 5 other students on the trip with me: Dubrovka and Mili (super nice Serbian-Montenegrin couple),



Nikolina (pretty eyed Croatian),



good old Manuel (with his ever tumultuous love life…) and his Russian ex-girlfriend visiting from Paris who won’t seem to accept that they are no longer together. Awkward.



One by one we made it up to the top and the view was spectacular.



The pictures came out like postcards but even that cannot do the scenery justice. It was a magical.

Ich verstehe einbisschen

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

Oktoberfest! Ja?

My journey to Munich began when I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday (gross, right?) and made my way to the train station via Ubahn (subway here). I paid for an over priced breakfast in the train restaurant so that I could sit at a table and not have to bother looking for a non-reserved seat. I’m still not sure how this reservation process works. I sat down in a seat until this old couple came up to me spouting quasi-angry German so I just got up and went to the restaurant. I had to switch trains in Salzburg so I didn’t want to fall asleep for fear of missing the stop. My head fell and rose as I bobbed in and out of sleep, the picturesque scenery of Austria’s countryside blurring outside. Each little town is nestled into lush green hills and always has a perfect little church steeple to complete the storybook look.

When I arrived at the train station, Melina and Katharina met me on the platform with big hugs and some tears on Melina’s part. Flash forward one hour and I’m holding a liter of beer, a supersized pretzel and am wearing a dirndl (a traditional Bavarian dress, think St. Pauli’s girl but ours were a little more conservative). We are in a huge colorful tent called the Hippodrom and we have managed to squish our way to Katharina’s friend’s company table. Generally, to get a table at Oktoberfest you have to come ridiculously early or pay a large sum about a year in advance. Katharina had the hook up. Hours of drinking, singing, dancing, and some really good people watching ensued. Our tent was a bit of an older crowd (more company tables and apparently some of the Munich celebrity scene- footballers and the like). This meant less backpacking tourists and more expensive champagne. People get really generous after a few beers and by the end of the night we had gotten free food, free drinks, and a few five-finger discount souvenirs.








The next day my rogue strain of the bubonic plague, which had been gaining strength throughout the Oktoberfest festivities, was in full gear. Despite my insufferable congestion and scratchy throat, we went on a walking tour of Munich. The weather was spectacular, as it had been all of Saturday, and Katharina showed us all over. We stopped at a beer garden in the English Garden and ate bratwurst and sauerkraut (a brief lapse in my vegetarianism, but a girls got to eat more than a pretzel and potatoes or she’ll turn into a giant walking talking carbohydrate). One of the coolest parts of that huge park is that there is a really fast moving river that goes through it were people can actually surf! Only one at a time, but right there in the middle of the city, people can catch waves in the freezing cold water. So if you ever see a guy in a wet suit on a bike carrying a surf board around Munich, don’t think he’s just taken the surfer-poser trend to a new level.



The rest of the trip was spent chatting, shopping (I got a pair of heels for 2 euros!), and eating fun German things… and Chinese food. On Monday Katharina had to work so Meli and I went to the Scholss Nymphenburg, a huge castle with a big garden and more little castles.

Melina in one of the baby castles...


Melina and I, with our keen sense of direction, got a little lost walking around in the woods and it turned out to be a 2 ½ hour tour. Our same sharp directional skills managed to get us lost a few more times before the trip was over. Katharina was a wonderful host and I was so happy to get to see her.

On the way to the train station Tuesday morning, Katharina got hit by a car. She’s fine!! Don’t worry. We were crossing the street and some ASS in a van almost hit us, so we gave him mean looks. As some sort of hilarious joke, he rolled forward a little more and actually knocked Katharina off balance and she fell. The only real injury she sustained was probably a sore hand from when she proceeded to jump up and slammed the hood of his van while cursing him in German. Finally I got to the train station and Katharina and I said our goodbyes before I got to my platform because she was late to work. But when I got to the platform, there was no train or crowd of people to be seen. After a bit of scrambling through my papers, I realized that the train had left at 9:27! I thought it was leaving at 9:57 because I had read the schedule for my ticket into Munich! Dumbass! And the ticket I had was a cheaper student one which meant it was only good for the time scheduled. I frantically found the info desk and put on my best pathetic face (not too hard to muster at this point) and told them that I was late because my friend got hit by a car. It wasn’t thatttt much of a lie. The kind German woman may not have bought the story, but she gave me a free ticket for the next train anyways. On the long voyage back, I met this cool Austrian guy and we talked for hours. So now I have an Austrian friend to hang out with outside the Academy that I wouldn’t have met had it not been for my inability to read train schedules.

Now back in Vienna, orientation has already started and the building is full of students. The bar is open every night for this week and I have been meeting people from all over. Last night there was a really fun dance party and I met a Polish guy who can really cut a rug (I’ll have to make and post a video of it one day because it’s freakin’ hilarious). I think that this year is going to be really intense academically. My advising appointment kind of made me nervous, but I’m really looking forward to classes starting on Monday (especially my German classes).

I miss you friends dearly! Thanks for leaving me comments and what not. Leave me your current addresses if you haven’t already given them to me and maybe you’ll get a little Austrian something in the mail (don’t get too excited, it will probably be paper, haha).

Muah!

eins zwei drei

The rest of orientation week went by really fast. Amidst the piles of paper work, often in German, we had a few really interesting speakers and discussions. We learned about the Austrian university system and it's many problems, the Viennese press, Austrian-American relations throughout history, and did a tour of the University of Vienna and the National Library.

On Friday, the last day of orientation, we went on an excursion to Melk to see a beautiful monastery, and then on a boat trip to Durnstein. Friday morning I woke up with a bit of a tickle in my throat, which usually means I'm going to get sick. So being the conscientious kid that I am, I checked the weather in Vienna on my mac dashboard. The high would be 85! Sweet. I put on a thin long sleeved shirt and my new leather jacket. Walking to our meeting point, I got a free pack of Manner Schnitl, Vienna's most delicious wafer hazelnut cookies, from the SPÖ, Austria's socialist party. Elections were being held that Sunday, so apparently this group was resorting to high school SGA election tactics in order to win votes. I took the cookies gladly and enjoyed my crispy and sweet pieces of socialism later on that day. About midway through the 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Melk, I began to get really cold. The sky was medium shade of gray (as usual) and did not look like it would be clearing up any time soon. How would this day ever reach 85 degrees? Not until I was standing in the courtyard at the entrance of the Melk Abbey did I come to the realization that I had been looking at the weather forecast for Vienna, Virginia. My friends on the trip laughed at me... a lot... but one then admitted it had happened to her before.

Melk


Durnstein




So as the day went on it started raining and by the time we reached Durstein at the end of the boat ride I was freezing. While the others hiked up to see the ruins of an ancient church, I did a quick walking tour of the less than 1,000 population town and then ducked into a winery to try the local riesling. My friend Patrick (who doesn't like to walk a lot and often complains that his "dogs are barkin'") joined me. I surprisingly had a really great conversation with him. Surprising because he is a republican who was John McCain's body man for a couple of months, and has a picture of himself protesting Hillary Clinton on his facebook page. I won't go into all the details, but I learned that Republicans from Seattle, Washington and Republicans from the deep south are a different breed all together. Back in Vienna I got some Italian food with my friend Kyle, a dude from UNC, Brian, and this woman named Anna, who is from the US but has been living in Italy and has travelled all over the world. Super interesting lady and she talks alllottt. Back at the DA the first “bar night” had started (we have a bar in the building) and so we went and met some of the other students and drank some Sturm (seasonal early wine- tastes like fizzy juice and I like that). Off to bed after that because I had an early start and long day ahead of me.

nein

I'm here! Finally. It's weird, being plucked out of one world and dropped into another. I arrived on Sunday around 1. At the airport I picked up both my suitcases to find one of them completely open. Not unlocked, totally unzipped. I could just imagine all my bras and underwear decorating the suitcase loading area and gumming up the works of the conveyor belt. But by some miracle, I may not have lost anything. I felt kind of like a robot as I loaded all of my things onto a cart and got a taxi, while german conversations whizzed by my jet lagged ears. I wasn't worried because I had been told that everyone in Vienna spoke English as well as German. Except my taxi driver. Oh well, I guess that's what written addresses are good for. We sat in silence in his Mercedes-Benz with a fancy black leather interior while he drove me through the gray and drizzly Vienna streets. For a while I was worried that I had payed extra for some fancy chauffeur service, but later I found out that all the taxis are like this. When I arrived at the Diplomatische Akademie (my place of study and residence for the next 9 months) we unloaded my suitcases, the broken one opening again allowing a few socks to jump ship into the wet street. Luckily the person who was supposed to let me into the Akademie (it's normally closed on sundays) was there as planned. Unfortunately, I had found the other non-English speaker in Vienna. He showed me up to my room in the empty building. The other students wouldn't be arriving until next week. Except for I think the man tried to tell me that someone else was living on the second floor. I tried to ask him which room, but the language barrier was too firmly grounded for either of us to make any progress. He left after mentioning something about 9 in the morning. I had no idea what was happening at 9 in the morning, but I just set my alarm for that time just in case. Breakfast in bed at 9 in the morning? Someone will be painting your room at 9 in the morning? We'll be streaking through the quad at 9 in the morning? I had no idea, but whatever it was it didn't wake me and neither did my alarm. Later I decided it must have been that the cleaning people had come. I ran into the cleaning lady, a short asian woman who... SPOKE ENGLISH! 1 in 3. My odds were improving.

My room is lovely! I have a big window that looks over a grassy courtyard with pretty trees and flowers.



The building looks really old but the inside is modern and well maintained. More info to come on what this building actually started out as...



On Sunday the other Fulbright kid studying in the Akademie moved in, which is nice because otherwise this place is kind of creepy all empty and what not. He's from Arkansas and seems pretty cool. He kick's my ass at German. This is useful to me right now, especially as far as filling out forms and grocery shopping goes. At noon a friend of a friend living in Vienna came to pick me up, show me around and take me out to lunch. It was really nice to see the city some and EAT (I hadn't eaten anything substantial since the flight on Saturday). The architecture here is amazing and the city is very walkable. I can't wait to explore it more! At night I went out with Brian (the Arkansas guy) and we met up with some other students from the DA (diplomatic academy) who aren't living in the dorms. We drank beer and played Trivial Pursuit, which was in German so part of the game was translating the questions into English, haha. Did you know that a snail actually moves faster than a sea horse? I didn't.

Today the Fulbright orientation started. It was a little long for my shrunken attention span which has not been in a classroom since May. The people running the program were really nice though, and the other students seem really cool. A lot of them are doing individual research projects and teaching english, and they are spread out all over the city. The office where the meeting was held is in this great area called the Museumplatz. There are tons of museums all in one area. I ate lunch with a girl I met who graduated from Brown in this cool museum cafe. It was all glass and there was finally some sun out today!





I am going to try to be a better communicator this year than I was in France. I really am! So if I haven't posted anything for a while, just send me a bitchy email or something. In the mean time, I will be trying to improve on my non-existent German. First on the list: numbers!

I miss you friends!!

Auf Wiedersehen!