First Week

Oh my god, where do I even start. 

This banana approves of Liechtensteinstrasse.

My apartment is nice. It's not huge, or classically Viennese... some students in the program have two floor apartments and with roof patios, or wood-burning stoves [even if they're out of commission] in their bedrooms, or overlook the Naschmarkt... but it's nice. We have roughly four rooms plus a bathroom and a toilet room. A bathroom really is a bathroom, here. Other than that there's a kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. One bedroom is curtained off from the living room (which hasn't been as distracting as it sounds), and the smaller one has a door. There are two of us in the big/curtain room and one in the small/door room. 

My roommates are nice! One is from California and the other is from Alaska. 

There's a ton of shopping around our apartment—no need to go far for groceries or anything else (though I've yet to seriously shop at an open air market. I've visited the Naschmarkt, which is the big, famous open-air market in Vienna, but the only thing I bought was Sturm, or baby wine. More on that later). 

das rathaus

At any rate... I have German intensive every morning from 9 AM to noon. I'm in the "Intermediate I" section, which is for people with approximately two semesters of college German. I was in the Intermediate II section... Why I switched is a long story involving several angry German professors and me going to a different class every day for three days (which creates a lot of extra work per switch when you're in class for 3 hours/day).


In better news, I saw two ballets my first night in Vienna. There's a free film festival at the Rathaus, or city hall, with an absolutely amazing sound system. I also saw part of Hansel and Gretel (the opera) one night, but I haven't gone at all recently because it's been really cold and raining every day. 


The Cleveland Orchestra was actually broadcast there last Tuesday, but I didn't go. P.S., though: Franz Welser-Möst's face is all over the subways here because he's conducting the State Opera in October (he usually conducts the Cleveland Orchestra, but is natively Austrian). It was weird the first time I saw the poster. 

IES organized an art history museum tour for us last Wednesday, which was nice. The museum is huge, though, and we covered only about 7 or 8 core paintings in the space of an hour. The tour guide is one of my professors during the semester though, so I'll get to work with her again. She was great. I also want to go back and do the guided audio tour. I also want to go back and take pictures of the stuff in the Egyptian section that is almost definitely misplaced... you'll understand when I post the photos! 

fooootbaaaalllll

Roommates & Co. went out on Friday to two salsa clubs near the IES center. One is really only appropriate for people who actually know how to dance salsa, so we didn't stay there very long. The other one was much larger and more suited to young people who don't necessarily know how to dance salsa, so we stayed there until about 1 AM until we ended up at the McDonalds next door.


Saturday IES gave us bus tours, which the picture over Vienna is from (see last entry). That night I went to the Naschmarkt for the first time, got a bottle of Sturm, had dinner with friends, and retired early. Sunday is the day that nothing happens in Austria (yay Catholicism), but one of the IES staff members invited us to his pre-soccer game, which is what the picture on the left is from (also displaying our one day of nice weather out of the past 5).

I feel like the colors, especially the blues, are more intense here. Maybe it has something to do with things being cleaner. The Donau is clean enough to swim in... no "high bacteria count" warnings in Vienna, and air pollution is very low.