First Rapid Game and Weekend in Vienna

As my previous post noted, we only have German class three hours of the day and the rest of our time we get to spend doing whatever – whether it’s exploring the city, going to museums, sleeping, doing homework, going to the Naschmark, or just lounging around.  Thursday night, however, there was a soccer (football from here on out) match of large importance.

From left: Ashley, Patrick, Allison, Me, Roger

Rapid Wien is one of the two Vienna football clubs, and it was the one Pat and I chose to align ourselves with while we were still at school last year.  Our student assistants are also big Rapid (ra-peed) fans, so they agreed to take us to a place to watch the game.  Rapid played Aston Villa, a club that competes in the English Premier League.  Thus, their budget (and probably talent) level is significantly larger than ours.  Interestingly enough, we played them in this exact same competition last year and pulled off the upset.  So we had a very small amount of hope.

Pat, Liz, Megan, and myself - watching the Rapid game

The match is played over two legs.  In the first leg (played in Vienna) we forced a 1-1 draw.  This was good, but slightly troublesome.  Scoring is done on aggregate, which means whoever scores more goals over the two games gets to advance.  If the aggregate score is even, the next tiebreaker is away goals.  This means that a 0-0 tie would not be acceptable in the second leg because we needed to score at least one goal to keep the away goals even.  If we did that and the aggregate is still even, then overtime is played in the second match, and if it is still tied, it goes to penalty kicks.  The winner of the two legs gets to advance to the group stage of the European championships.

We missed the first little bit of the match because the place Tobi (our student assistant/friend) took us couldn’t pick up the right channel.  So we went to another bar instead.  This was a blast – there were about 10-12 of us students there with another 10 native Austrians who all were so into the game, which exactly what I wanted it to be like.  Also, because the Austrian Bundesliga doesn’t have the funding other leagues have, they have to split the airtime between the Rapid game and the Sturm Graz game (they were playing Juventus on the same night in the same type of set-up), so we could only watch about 5 minutes at a time.  But we still had fun.

Pat and I celebrating

The game started a little slow, and eventually Aston Villa punched in a goal.  This put us in an even deeper hole.  We rallied though, and were able to flick in a header a few minutes later to tie it 1-1 (and tie the away goals), which remained the score until the half.  Unfortunately, early in the second half, Aston Villa knocked in a second goal, taking the lead on aggregate goals.  This was reasonably deflating.  However, in the 74^th minute Tobi leaned over and said something to one of his friends who was there.  It was a German phrase and not really translatable but it means something like “ok now it’s after the 74^th minute so we can score” – apparently this happens so much they made up a word for it.

Five minutes later, we took a shot on goal that the goalie got a hand on, but not two, and it dribbled across the line.  Tie game, and we’re ahead on away goals.  Less than three minutes later, we scored again on another cross into the box. 3-2. 

That’s how it would finish.  Everyone in the bar was so excited.  It was really fun to see just how into it people actually get (after hearing about how important it is in Europe for so long).  Even more exciting, our win means we qualified for the cup, which means we’ll have three home games the rest of the semester against other European clubs in addition to our regular league games.  The cup starts with pool play, and each pool has four teams.  It’s a round robin, and we’ll play each time twice (home and away).  In our pool we drew FC Porto (probably the best team in the Portuguese league), FK Besiktas (likely the best Turkish team), and CSKA Sofia (the best team in Bulgaria).  Our draw honestly isn’t that bad – there aren’t any teams in our pool from the major four leagues (Spain, France, England, and Germany) which means it is pretty wide open.  Porto and Besiktas are the favorites, but we’re certainly not out of it.  Which is going to be sooo much fun.

Afterwards Tobi and Katya (another assistant) took us to a restaurant/club place in the Museums Quarter for a while, and then Pat and I walked home (it was relatively impressive how easily we found our way cause we had no idea where we started).

8 hours later I got up and showered, went to class, and took my first German test.  (Yes, I had studied before going to watch the game.)  And I’m pretty sure I did really well, so no need to worry mom.

A view of Vienna

After the test I took a nap, and then we prepared to have our first Friday out in Vienna.  To start we had a few people over to our apartment, and then we left to explore the Bermuda Triangle.  Apparently it’s the area of the city where there are three of the best bars that form a triangle.  I’m not sure if the place we ended up was even one of the “three”, but that’s ok.  First we stopped at a place called the Funky Monkey, but we had left far to early so there weren’t really many people there.  After hanging for a little while we killed another half hour by walking around and then ended up going to a place named the Salzbar.  We hung out there and danced for a long time, and when we finally left to go outside it was raining reasonably hard.  We were going to try and walk home but instead we just grabbed a cab cause it wasn’t worth figuring things out in the rain. 

Saturday we went on a bus tour of the city.  It was pretty neat to see a bunch of the older stuff and we got to go to the top of a hill outside the city and had a gorgeous view of the entire city.  Afterward our RA (resident Austrian) Alex took us to explore the Donau (the island in the middle of the river).  There’s a big theme park, so we did go karts and rollercoasters and hung out for a long time.  When we finally went home Alex told us he’d pick us up about 10 and take us to an area of town where there was a bunch of live music.

A few stops down on the metro there were a variety of different clubs and bars that had bands playing.  This part of town doesn’t have a “quiet hours” law, and there were a lot of people there.  Also, the crowd was mostly Austrians, which was pretty fun because we weren’t just walking around in a mass of American students.  After spending the night visiting a variety of places, pat and I we’re pretty tired so we started to walk in the direction of our apartment.  It was our plan to find a night bus to take us back, but no one really knows where they stop, so we ended up just taking a 40 minute walk home, which wasn’t really that bad.

The lower Belvedere

 Sunday we pretty much just lounged around.  I went and did homework at a friend’s apartment and eventually went back to our apartment and hung out there for the rest of the night.  About 1 I started watching the DCWS game, but I only made it to halftime before I fell asleep (but we were up 1-0 and we won so I saw everything that was important, right?). 

Oh one final note about going out - what really hangs with you after you go home is the smell.  Everyone here smokes so most of the bars are just filled with it.  I've desensitized to the smell while I'm in there but then once I get home and smell my clothes it's terrible.  I usually take showers before I go to bed just so my sheets won't smell bad.  Most clubs are big enough that they are forced to have separate areas which is really nice, but I guess that's just the way it's going to be here.

Sorry this was so long…I meant to post Saturday, and then Sunday, and then before class, but I just finished now.  So I hope it’s worth it.