Vienna Week 2

It’s weird. It feels like I’ve been here for so much longer than just two weeks (probably due to the two I spent in Egypt beforehand, but still), yet at the same time I feel like time is just about to start flying by.  Two weeks ago last night I had just moved into our new apartment, yet two weeks from last night I will be returning from a 9-day, 3-city tour of Eastern Europe.  Two weeks after that my mom will be in town, and by the time she leaves my time here will be nearly half gone.  Wow.

This week was pretty nice.  The workload for class started to pick up a little bit but it still hasn’t been anything like Davidson.  My German is certainly progressing.  This week we had to write and perform a short skit about looking for/checking into a hotel.  My partner (and roommate) David and I nailed it, I think.  We didn’t really get to see our grade, but I thought it went really well.  We had another test on Friday for which I have also not received the grade, but I’m pretty sure it went really well too.  All we have left of the intensive is one week, including our final.  Put that way, things seem to already be moving kind of fast.

From left: Casey, Ashley, Sam (it was her birthday) and Taylor

The social nightlife during the week this week was substantially lower than it was last week (which is probably much more normal).  Monday was a friend’s birthday (Samantha) so we took her out to an Italian restaurant.  Afterwards I just went home and watched some of the U.S. Open (which I’ve done a lot of – Fed and Nadal are both looking very strong, this ending could be fun).  Tuesday – Thursday was more of the same except without the birthday dinners.  We pretty much settled into a routine around the institute and class and home, plus the weather wasn’t particularly awesome so it made it easy to just stay in and not do much.

Friday finally rolled around, and after taking the test, our class went to a café to practice ordering and just to have a relaxing end to the week (plus IES was buying, so why not go?).  I then proceeded to go home and clean the majority of the public living space in our house because we were having guests.  David helped me some in the kitchen, which was reasonably gross.  But everything looked nice at least until some people cooked dinner, but I guess that’s bound to happen.  I then took a brief nap and got ready to host and go out.  We ended up having about 20 people at our place, which isn’t actually that many given the size of our apartment, but we’ve discovered that American’s aren’t the greatest at controlling the levels of their voice, so at 10 when quiet hours started we started to get a little worried.  Eventually a friend came down from a few floors up and reported that a lady had complained about their “Schnitzel party” of about 8 people cooking food, so we immediately turned off our music and made everyone be quieter.  We probably still hung out until 11 or so, and then we set out to find a place to spend the rest of the night.

One of the places we tried to go but it was too crowded

This weekend was the first time our U-bahn and public transit system ran 24-hours, so some people thought it would be creative to stay out until the U-bahn would have started running again on a normal weekend, which is 5am.  First we followed our RA to a club we couldn’t get into because it was already too crowded, so we decided to relocate to the Café Leopold.  I don’t really know how to describe this place.  For starters, it’s inside a museum.  You have to walk up stairs to get in, and the first floor has a bar and a non-smoking room where we hung out for quite a while.  There was also a downstairs with a big dance area where a band was playing and they later set up a DJ.  We hung out there until around 4 when a few of us got hungry, so we left and took the U-bahn one stop (because we could).  We got a couple of kebap wraps and sat outside the opera house and ate them.  Eventually we decided it was time to head home (though Patrick and I both found our 8^th wind at like 4:15 but it only lasted 20 minutes and we just crashed).  We got back to our place at about 5 and decided that was good enough.  A few people crashed on our couches because they live another 30 minutes away from where we were.  All in all it was fun, but I woke up the next morning and was just sure I would never stay up late enough that my room would be light when I went to bed again.

 I was almost wrong.  After having such a late Friday, Saturday was a little slow.  I had to do some laundry and Patrick wasn’t feeling 100% so we just lounged around.  Tobi’s team had a soccer game at 7, but we didn’t really get on the road until about 7.  We were told to get off at the Baumgarten stop, and ended up exiting the streetcar a few stops early at the Flaschenbaumgarten stop.  So we walked in a big loop around the 14^th district until we got better directions and took the streetcar to the right stop, just in time to see the last 4 minutes of the game.  We went with Ashley and her roommates back to their place to hang out for a while before going out.

Kind of just lounging around on Saturday before going out.

Tobi suggested we spend our evening at a club named The Loft, so about 10:45 we headed over there.  Though we were some of the first people there, it was still pretty cool, and within an hour plenty more people had showed up – both from IES and Vienna.  Every month the club does a “Different Year in Hip-Hop” and this Saturday was 1994.  The music they played was all right; I’m not sure I ever heard any of the two or three major songs I knew, but that’s ok.  The whole environment was actually really cool, and it will probably be a place I return a few times while I’m here.

I’m not sure of the exact timing, but I think around 2:15 I walked outside with a friend to hang out for a little while and make sure they made it home safely.  They were texting someone so I decided to do the same.  I stood up to get my phone out of my pocket, patted down all of my pants, and came to the awful realization that I had no idea where my phone was.  I decided to make sure my friend got home before going to look for it, which turned out to be a great decision.  We ended up getting relatively lost on the streetcar (where I got checked for a transportation pass for the first time since being here – at 2:30 AM?? But at least I had one…) and ended up having to take about a 12 minute cab ride back to her place, at which point there was a relatively weird man there so I made sure she was safe and locked her door.  At this point I walked to a close U-bahn stop to take it back to the Loft and ran into some of her roommates, whom I told about the guy, which was probably a poor decision, because then they got a little freaked out (obviously) and I ended up going back with them to the same place and making sure they got home safely as well.

The lower room of the Loft.  It was a pretty cool setup.

 By the time I made it back to the Loft, it was well after 4.  They told me it was closed but I asked to look for my phone so they let me walk around (there were still plenty of people in both rooms) and look for it, but I had no success.  Eventually I just went home, and for the second night in a row I went to bed after 5.  At least this time it wasn’t light outside yet.

Sunday dragged on because I was in a perpetual state of frustration about my phone, but fortunately I got to talk to a few people from home some - which was really nice.  Late that evening I got around to doing some of my homework and watching some of the Open (Murray lost, pretty big upset there).  I got up this morning and went into the office and asked what to do.  The Loft is only open Tues-Sat from 6pm to 2am so they just said go in tomorrow evening and ask if they found it. If not, I’ll get a new one on Wednesday and have to pay the 30-euro fee (about 40 dollars).  Which will be not fun.  So I hope they have it.  Also, since writing the first part of this I got my test back in class and did very well, so that’s good news.

This is our friend David. It's the only picture I have of him so far, so if I get another one
where you can actually see what he looks like, I'll make sure to put it up.

Tonight we went to the Schweiserhaus for dinner.  They have their own brewery that claims the “freshest beer in the world” because they make it every day (because they know they will sell so much of it because it is so good, so they don’t put any preservatives in it).  Their feature dish is a pig leg.  Literally.  You can see the pig hoof.  It had so much meat on it that three of us (Patrick, David and I) couldn’t finish the whole thing.  But it was really tasty.  Since then I’ve just spent the night skyping and doing work.  Hopefully I’ll be in bed soon and get more sleep than I did this weekend…