And the string of visits continues...

Once more, the formatting on my blog is being weird, so I'm going to have to include all of the pictures at the end.  Sorry!  

Again, I think the easiest way to do this is just to go day by day, because so much happened. I’m not sure I’ll remember it all, but here goes the best synopsis I can come up with for Paul Britton’s visit to Vienna. (Paul Britton is not the same Paul that I visited last post in Madrid. He is studying abroad in London, and is also one of our good friends at Davidson. He lived on the same hall as Pat and I did freshman year.)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Paul’s plane landed around 7:30 in the evening. Pat and I, being the great friends that we are, went to the airport to pick him up. Of course, we cut it a little close, and as we were making a sign for him we saw him walk out and start to follow the directions we gave him (because we hadn’t told him we were going to pick him up). Instead of just going and getting him, we decided to follow him and see how well he did. Once we were sure he was going to make it on his own, Pat did the birdcall and got his attention, and we took him to our apartment. He was hungry, so we all went out to Centimeter (my mom and I went there a couple of times). Our roommate David went with us, and a friend of ours, Aliza, met us there. Afterwards we spent a little time at a bar, but all of us (except Paul of course) had class the next morning so we called it a night pretty early.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Pat and I each have three classes, and since the next week would be midterms, we needed to go to all of them to make sure we had all the notes and knew what would be on our tests. Paul spent the afternoon wandering around the area near our classes. We finished with classes and got home about 6:30. I’m pretty sure we accidentally skipped dinner (I may have made myself a small sandwich) but we had a bunch of friends over to hang out for a while. We never ended up going out, but we did spend time skyping (an internet video chatting device) a number of friends from Davidson. Eventually Paul fell asleep on my bed. I woke him up when I was ready to go to sleep, but after we both brushed our teeth I decided just to let him sleep there so I took my alarm clock to the living room and slept on the futon. Evidently Paul woke up at some time in the night and felt bad for being in my bed, because when I woke up he was on one of our other couches with no blanket. Once I got up he moved to the futon and went immediately back to sleep.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Pat and I had our last German classes of the week, so I forced myself out of bed, made it through the class, and returned to my bed to sleep for another few hours. Pat’s class was at 10:30, so when he got home we all got up and tried to make a plan for the day. Mostly, we decided Pat and I needed to study for our German midterm (which was the next day) and Paul should do a bit of sight-seeing while it was nice. So we sent Paul to the Schonnbrun Palace and Pat and I pretended to study (just kidding mom…). In the evening we too Paul to Schnitzelwirt (another place I went with my mom and every other guest we’ve had) for dinner, and then we packed it in early and called it a night. It was a much slower day, but we all needed it. At one point I turned to Paul and asked, “Did you come to Vienna to see Vienna or to hang out?” He responded, “I’ll let you answer that one for yourself.”

For those who were worried, I did put in a call to my mom to wish her happy birthday!

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Pat and I had to take our German midterms, but we finished in a little more than an hour. Afterwards we took Paul to the Schweiserhaus (another place I went with my mom). A few minutes later we were joined by a variety of other students from our program. We ate lunch there and hung out for a while. On our way out all of them did the ride “Extasy”. I’ve attempted to include a picture – it starts spinning on the ground, moves up and spins you sideways, and then goes vertical and spins you upside down. It then slows down, and spins you the opposite way in the same three positions. It’s pretty intense.

No one got sick, but a couple of people (Paul included) weren’t feeling too hot afterwards. Everyone went back to our apartment where we hung out for almost the entire afternoon. At about 7 the three of us went to have dinner with one of our program directors. We had a good time, but after a couple hours Paul and I left to go meet up with everyone we had been with earlier in the day. Pat was pretty tired, so he decided to stay and hang out and told us he would meet up with us later (which did not actually happen). Coincidentally, Paul and I ran into the people we were looking for at an u-bahn stop, so we followed them to a club named U4 (cleverly named as it is right off of the U4 line). When we first went in, it didn’t really seem like it was worth the 10 euro cover. After a couple hours though, it turned out to be really fun. Paul and I tried to talk to a few Austrian girls by asking them if they spoke English (not the best of pick-up lines). They just scowled and shook their heads (which is almost definitely a lie). Paul, in a bit of an angry tone, responded “Was ist das!?” (Vas ist das…means what is this?) and stormed off. I just laughed and followed.

A couple times during the night Pat texted me to ask where we were and if Paul was still with me. Because my phone was in my back pocket, I never actually felt it buzz. Eventually he texted my old phone (which we had fortunately given to Paul), and Paul responded in a timely manner. This eased Pat’s nerves – he told us the next day he was rather worried he was going to have to go out searching all over Vienna for our lost friend. Paul left about 2:15 and went home (he took my keys and it was just a few stops away from our place). When he got there, he thought he has lost my keys because they weren’t in his pants’ pockets, so he had to be buzzed in by our roommate Tad. Fortunately, they were just in his jacket. I left about 3:30 and got home at 4. Luckily Paul was asleep on the futon and not in my bed this time.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Yet again, we all slept in rather late. Once we all woke up, we decided it would be worthwhile for Pat and I to do some studying during the day since our midterms started the next day. However, we also needed to visit the Roman ruins museum, so we took Paul to go do that. We thought it was going to be more extensive than it was, but it only cost 3 euro to get in. It was mostly just the base of a house they had found underground and then a bunch of displays about Roman life in “Vindabona” (the name of Vienna back then) and stuff like their aqueduct system (which was really elaborate and pretty impressive).

It was a little bit rainier than it had been earlier in the weekend, so we went home and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening doing homework, studying, and watching American football that was on our ESPN America channel. I also watched the Davidson women’s soccer game against Chattanooga (which we won, keeping us alive to get into the Southern Conference tournament). Later that evening the three of us skyped with Jonathan Fisher (a good friend of ours at school) and Mary Marshall Meredith (also a good friend and a soccer player). Our test wasn’t until 1 the next day, but we decided it wouldn’t hurt to get an extra hour of sleep or two since we had spent so much time not sleeping over the weekend.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Pat and I woke up and studied a little bit more for our test and then went and took it while Paul gave himself a self-guided tour around the ring. Afterwards we went back to the apartment where I started studying for the next day. Eventually I had to take a brief nap, and when I woke up the other two had gone to go get food to cook for dinner. After one final meal together, Pat and I took Paul to the train station to catch his train to the airport. His flight was pretty late so he didn’t get home until after 1 am, but I would like to think his trip was completely worth it.

Midterms – October 25 – October 28: For my 5 classes, my midterms were as follows:

Cross-Cultural Philosophy was a paper that was due a week in advance. So I had no formal test in that class.

German was a test the Saturday Paul was here. It went well.

Austrian Art and Architecture was a written test where we had to identify a set of slides and then respond to two essay questions. It wasn’t terribly difficult.

Political Science – The New European Security Architecture was a verbal exam on Tuesday. It was reasonably straight forward, it was done in pairs, and Pat and I did really well.

Political Science – Europe Beyond the Nation State was a written exam on Thursday and was surprisingly easy – or it just happened to be exactly what I had studied. 

Thursday immediately after that test, I left with Allison, Ashley, Julia, Katie, and Michelle to go to Hallstatt and Graz for the weekend. Patrick will be joining us when we get to Graz. But that’s another post.

This is the ride named "Extasy" - as you can see the cars are upside down
and spinning around in multiple ways.

This is Paul attempting to put on his "that was so awesome and I feel great"
face after doing the ride seen above.  You should have seen him a mere
two minutes later.

This is paul re-enacting where he woke up Friday
morning after he evidently slept-walked out of my
bed.  

Me, Patrick, and Paul right before Paul left.

I forgot to mention that on Tuesday after my midterm  Roger and I went to see
an ATP tournament being held indoors in Vienna.  We got to see Thomas
Muster play - the only Austrian to ever be ranked #1 in the world!

Madrid with Paul Ream

It’s now been six days since I have posted, and I’m sorry the number of posts per week is getting lower. It seems that every weekend I go and do something or host a visitor, which prevents me from catching up. So here is my post covering my trip to Madrid, which took place from October 14-18. In order to help myself remember as much as I can, I’m going to do it by date like some of my Cairo posts were.  Also, I don't know what's going on with my computer but I'm just going to have to put all the pictures at the end of this post.  Sorry!

Thursday, October 14:

I had a German test at 9 in the morning. I had to get up early to run my mom to the City Airport Train so she could fly home (once again, it was great having her here), and then I hustled to my class. I ended up getting an A on the test, so it all worked out. Anyway, I then attended my 1:25 class in which we had to perform the Melian Dialogue. I digress.

After class I went home and finished packing. I had a 7:30 flight, so I got to the airport around 5:15. Turns out in Europe, especially flights within the EU, they don’t even open check-in until an hour and a half before the flight. So I got something to eat, checked in, and went and used wireless Internet at my gate for a while. I flew Iberian Airlines (the only easy way to get straight to Madrid), and my flight was a little late getting into Madrid, but there was Paul Ream, a good friend of mine from Davidson, waiting with a sign to pick me up (it said “Panel” which is a nickname a group of us gave ourselves last year…and I would explain it but after reading it you would just think it was stupid, so I’ll spare you the headache and myself the embarrassment).

We took the 45-minute underground ride home (but it was very nice that their underground runs all the way to the airport). Paul is staying with a host family – a mom, her sister, and three sons, ages 26, 22, and 13. They have a relatively small buy very homely apartment, and they were very, very generous. We arrived around midnight, and spend an hour or so in the kitchen talking to the aunt. It really made me miss Spanish. I discovered my listening abilities were OK…certainly not anywhere near as good as Paul’s are, but my speaking abilities are still way behind. Granted, I haven’t taken a Spanish course in almost a year, but still. However, native Spaniards swallow all of their “s”s and speak so quickly…it is truly remarkable. Mostly I listened to them talk and tried to understand what I could and answer anything she asked without sounding like a fool.

Paul allowed me to share his double bed for the weekend, and about 1 a.m. I told him I was pretty tired, so we headed to bed.

Friday, October 15:

Paul usually doesn’t have class on Fridays, but this Friday his internship class was taking a tour of El Pais, the major national newspaper, so I went with them. The tour was all in Spanish, but it was easier than the night before because she knew she was speaking to a group of Spanish as a second language students. I didn’t understand everything, but most of the important stuff I understood (like how the entire sports room was devoted to different football (soccer) teams except 6 or 8 desks). It was pretty interesting, not to mention really large.

Afterwards we went on a walking tour around the city. We saw the main square, the oldest active restaurant in the world, an area of the city that looks like Vienna because the Hapsburgs built it, and eventually the royal palace and church. The architecture is quite interesting all around the city, and it just feels like a much, much bigger city than Vienna (because it is, about three times as big). We walked through an enclosed market place and tried some food, then walked past a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and finally went home to retire for an afternoon/evening fiesta.

We woke up about 9:30 and went out to start our evening. For dinner we went to a local shop famous for it’s huge sandwiches. How huge you ask? They were made of toasted bread, cheese, and ham. Only not like the ham you get in the store or in a Subway sandwich. This was like ham cut right off of the Christmas ham. Thick, juicy, tender, real cuts of ham. Pilled so high I couldn’t fit my mouth all the way around it. The sandwich itself was as long as both of our heads but together. We each had a half and were completely satisfied.

Afterwards we partook in the Spanish tradition of botellón. This pretty much means going to an open air place, spending time with a bunch of other students, and hanging out in clusters until sometime between 1 and 2 in the morning, at which point everyone leaves and goes to a bar or club. Did I mention, by the way, that the weather in Madrid was gorgeous? Clear blue skies, 70 degrees; it was absolutely amazing. It got kind of chilly at night but that’s ok. Mike Anderson, another Davidson student who is studying in Madrid for the semester, also joined us. After hanging out, we went to a bar that is shaped like a cave. In fact, there’s even a drink named Panther’s Milk that you can order (and we did order), and when you order it all of the lights go on and milk starts shooting out of one of the stalactites into a large fishbowl. Unfortunately we stayed there too long, so by the time we got to the club (Kardinal) that we were going to go to, it was too expensive (we were on the list to get in free or cheap, but that only works up to a certain point). We ended up going to another bar where there was basketball on tv and pool and hanging out for a while before we decided to call it a night.

We got to bed about 6 a.m. Now, I should probably clarify that this is apparently what Spanish youths do every night. Apparently Paul’s older brother (host) used to do that Thursday through Sunday night and go to work on Monday. It was fun to do one time, but I probably will not ever do that again.

Saturday, October 16:

We slept in. Way in. But eventually we got up and went and ate a kebap (the kebaps in Spain are lamb instead of chicken, a refreshing change, and they usually serve them with fries and a special sauce). After eating we went to watch his young host brother, Ricki, play in his own football (soccer) game. Unfortunately, the referee never showed up, so they had to cancel the game. Just from watching warm-ups though, it was easy to tell that Ricki is really, really good. As were the rest of the kids on his team.

Afterwards, we met up with a couple of his friends who had bought tickets to an Atlético Madrid football (soccer) game. On our way it was really amazing to see how many people were turning out for the game. Everyone was dressed in red and blue and all heading the same direction. I also bought a scarf to fit in. Once inside and seated, I surveyed the stadium. It was about twice as big as the Rapid stadium, though the scoreboard was pretty plain and didn’t really do a whole lot. The game was pretty exciting, an Atlético victory 2-0.

Saturday night we decided to go a bit slower. We walked around and tried a variety of foods at different restaurants, and eventually went over to Mike’s place to hang out for a while. He had a couple of friends and his roommates there, so it was fun to meet more new people. Tonight, however, we left about 1 to make sure we could catch the last underground back to Paul’s apartment.

Sunday, October 17:

It was a good thing we went to bed earlier because we got up about 9. After a small breakfast, we headed out to the Rastra (I think that was the name) – Madrid’s biggest open-air market. Here I purchased the cheapest jersey I could find, and I also bought the Atlético patch that hopefully I can have sewn on during winter break (Aunt Carol Beth???). After walking around here for a while we went to a museum where we saw a variety of works, but most importantly and impressive was Picasso’s Guernica. It is way bigger than I imagined it after seeing it in textbooks, and just as graphic and meaningful.

For lunch today we were invited to join in the family meal (called la comida, which means food, because it is the major meal of the day). There was a nice potato salad as an appetizer, but the main dish was amazing. It was a chicken stuffed with LOTS of ham and cheese. I made sure to eat whatever was put on my plate, which was a lot, and then his host mom put more on my plate, so I ate that too. There were 11 of us – Paul, his host mom, aunt, the three brothers, two grandparents, one girlfriend, and a friend of the mom’s named Michael (who had a very young child there with him who didn’t eat with us), and me. The grandmother was hilarious. Kind of reminded me of Patrick actually, but she was so funny to be around (at least what I understood). And I’m sure I was the butt of a few jokes I didn’t understand.

It was another beautiful day, so we spent most of the rest of the day walking around Madrid’s central park. It’s pretty big and really beautiful. There were all sorts of families walking around or boating in the lake, trick roller skaters doing tricks, and plenty of trees and shade to sit and nap under. After the park we went to another museum and saw more artwork (if you wanted to spend all 4 days in a city like Vienna or Madrid seeing art, you could – easily). Finally, we ate one final kebap and wandered around the city a little bit looking for desert. We settled on some kind of warm tortilla with chocolate inside. Eventually we headed home to get some rest and do homework (Paul had class Monday and I had a written midterm due).

Monday, October 18:

I got up about 6 and left by 6:20 to get to the airport. I was there a little early again, but that’s much better than being late. It also gave me time to work on my midterm (which I had done by the time we landed). I ate McDonalds in the airport for breakfast and watched the sunrise. I got home in time to take a nap before turning in my paper.

It was an amazing trip. So much fun, and great to see another Davidson friend and learn what all he’s doing. Paul’s Spanish is unbelievable. I guess that’s what happens when you study in a country and are immersed in it for two months. At any rate, it was definitely worth the money and three classes I missed.

That’s all for this post. On October 20th another Davidson friend visited Pat and I in Vienna for a few days, but that is another post altogether. Hopefully that’ll be up before I leave tomorrow for Hallstatt and Graz!

Paul (third from the right) and his classmates at the newspaper

A main square in Madrid

The church next to the royal palace

Beautiful stained glass

The Royal Palace

Our ham and cheese super-sandwich

Milk coming out of a stalactite in a bar

The Atlético Madrid game

The Rastra

Paul at the entrance to the park

Paul and I in the park

The Chrystal Palace and lake in the park

The sunrise on Monday morning over the airport

Mom in Wien!

Since it has been two weeks since she first arrived, I'm sure i'll accidentally leave out details or forget parts, so my apologies!

Mom landed around 4 on Thursday afternoon (October 7), and once I got out of class I went to her hotel to meet her.  After she showered and got ready we met Patrick and his parents (who had been in town for a few days already) for dinner.  We went to the Schweiserhaus (which I believe I’ve written about before?) where my mom and I split a leg of pork (literally a leg – you can see the foot) and shared a few drinks with the Mullers.  It was quite an enjoyable dinner, and afterwards Pat and I did a ride that takes you up in the air and rotates you around.  It’s reasonably slow so you can see the whole city, but our moms still were unable to watch.

Out to dinner with Roger, Allison, and Ashley

Friday morning after my german class I went and picked her up again and we went back to the institute to see where I have all my classes and to meet a few friends.  There we ran into Sarah Andrews whom I have known since we were five.  She was visiting one of her sorority sisters who currently lives a couple floors above me.  We spent the rest of the day walking around parts of the city.  First we walked around St. Stephen’s Cathedral, then the Museumsquartier (but didn’t go in anywhere), and then we spent some time in the Naschmarkt where she was kind enough to pressure me into buying some peaches.  For dinner we met Allison, Roger, and Ashley for dinner at my favorite schnitzel restaurant – Schnitzelwirt.  It was quite enjoyable.

In the labyrinths at the Belvedere 

Saturday was a beautiful day, so we started it by going to the Schonnbrunn Palace.  The palace itself is quite large, but the grounds are enormous.  We spent a good portion of time in the labyrinth area of the grounds where we encountered a variety of puzzles.  It was actually a lot of fun and the weather was perfect.  Afterwards we went to the Albertina Museum.  There were two special exhibits: Picasso and Michelangelo.  Both were fairly large and quite interesting to see and read about.  We also spent some time in an exhibit by a current painter (I don’t remember his name) who did a variety of graphic animal and nature paintings.  They were all quite large and detailed and really pretty cool.  For dinner that evening we tried a restaurant named Centimeter (because you order bread by the centimeter).  My food came in a hatchet and my mom’s soup came in a pretty large bread bowl.

Entrance to the Albertina Museum

Sunday morning escapes my memory, but that afternoon I let my mom wander by herself while I went to play tennis with Roger.  It was the first time I had really hit since late July, and it was the first time I had ever played on red clay.  It was quite the experience.  It actually is a lot different, and the ball does get a lot heavier and it takes a lot more effort than I thought it would.  Needless to say, I was really, really sore the next day. Pat and his parents got back from Salzburg, so that night we had dinner with them again, and they wanted to go to Centimeter because they had not been yet.  Thus we went back there for a second night in a row.  It was fun though – we ordered a wheelbarrow of food, and our waitress loved us and invited us back.

Dinner with the Mullers

Monday I got up and went with my mom to the Belvedere Palace before I had class.  In the upper Belvedere there was an extensive Gustav Klimt exhibit (including “The Kiss”) along with plenty of other paintings by a variety of artists, including Van Gogh, Monet, etc.  In the lower Belvedere there was a large Rodin exhibit with all of his most famous sculptures.  Almost all the information is also in English, so it wasn’t hard to understand or learn a lot.  Unfortunately I had to be at class so we didn’t get to spend that long there, but we did walk around the garden for a minute and through the grounds, and all of it was beautiful.  The weather was just perfect for almost her entire stay.  I don’t remember what we did in between my classes, but I have a class late on Mondays so we didn’t eat dinner together, but we did meet up afterwards and went to walk around the Rathaus (the city hall), which is gorgeously lit up at night.

Tuesday I have class almost all day, so my mom had to fend for herself for most of the day.  She bought an opera ticket (yes, just one – she says that’s all they had left…) and after my classes were done we met and had a quick bite of pizza before she went to go see it.  Her seat was in a box with a few other women, and according to her it was really well done and funny and impressive. (She went to see the Barber of Seville.)

Looking down at the Lower Belvedere

Wednesday we went to the Kunsthistortious Museum.  It houses one of the best Egyptian exhibits outside of Cairo and Berlin, and it made me feel good to be able to walk her around and tell her stuff about everything we had seen in Cairo.  I had to leave for class so she walked around there for a while more.  Afterwards we did a little shopping (I got new clothes!) and walking around.  We went to the Hotel Sacher and had Sachertorte (their famous chocolate cake) and then we walked around the Donauinsel for a while (it is a man-made island in the middle of the Danube river that stretches a long ways, and we got to watch the sunset).  For dinner we went to a new restaurant (for me) named Vapiano.  Felix, who lived with my Uncle David in NY this summer, picked the place and joined us, along with Ashley, Allison, Roger, David, and one of David’s friends that was visiting, Molly.  The food was really good.  At one point it got a little emotional, but it only lasted a couple seconds and everyone thought it was adorable.  Afterwards we went out to try a glass of Sturm (a drink that is the stage before wine and only available two months a year), and finally I had to call it quits because I had a test the next day.  

Enlarge it - my mom loved the colors of the vines

Thursday I got up bright and early and helped my mom get to the train that would take her to the airport.  I was in a rush because I had a test shortly afterwards, so I hope she figured it all out ok.  The goodbye was short and sweet, but it was great having her here and it went by so quickly.  I’m more than halfway done now, and I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing.  But mom, I love you, and I’m glad you got to come.  Dad, Kat, and Jess, I’m sorry you weren’t able to join, but hopefully someday you will get to come see all of this!

Some more pictures:

The Rathaus at night

Quick! Fake run this way!

At the Donauinsel

Mom blends in with the post in this one

A little bit emotional, but we had a great time

Pre-Madrid Tune-Up

I thought I should put up a brief post before I leave for the weekend.  As you know my beautiful mother was here this weekend, and I don’t think it is an understatement to say she was a hit.  I loved having her here, my friends loved meeting her and hanging out a little bit, and she even cleaned our kitchen (unfortunately, I went in less than 6 hours later and it was re-destroyed…sorry mom).  We saw lots of museums (lots and lots of art), which I can and will describe in more detail in a later post, but among them we saw exhibitions of Picasso, Michelangelo, Klimt, Rodin, and I can’t remember them all right now.  We ate great food, it was fun to hang out with Pat’s parents, and I was really sad to see her go (even though it was remarkably hectic getting her to the airport train and then running to make it to my German test on time).

I’ll be staying with Paul Ream (a Davidson friend) and his host family in Madrid.  My flight leaves here at 7 and I get in about 10.  Tomorrow morning I get to tour the major paper printing press in Madrid, and it is supposed to be in the 60s there the whole week.  I’m really excited and I’ll take lots of pictures and put up a looooong post when I get back.

Final thought: Here’s a website I’ve been watching the last few weeks. Kind of depressing/interesting/jaw-dropping.

http://costofwar.com

Mom's almost here!

In an effort to improve the number of mid-week hits on my blog, and because I may not have time to update this for a long time, I’m writing one more “pre-mother visit” post.  It should be short though.

I thought I should include a few photos of where I
live my daily life.  This is the outside of my apartment
building. Our apartment is the second row of windows
on the far left.

Mostly I wanted to provide those who read this with an extended update about my semester schedule/traveling plans.  A week or two ago I pulled the trigger and booked a trip to Madrid.  My flight leaves next Thursday evening - the same day my mom leaves Vienna to head back home.  I’ll arrive that night and I will either be staying with Paul Ream and his host family or in Mike Anderson’s apartment (both are friends from Davidson).  I fly out of Madrid early Monday morning and will be back in Vienna in time to make it to my 1:15 class.

The next weekend Paul Britton (another Davidson friend) is coming to Vienna to stay with Pat and I.  The weekend after that is Halloween.  Thus far I have no plans although we may go to Styria/Graz for a night.  The next weekend, November 5-7, Pat and I are taking a trip to Istanbul to round out our trip to Cairo.  We haven’t book flights yet (though we probably will today), but I’m really looking forward to it.  The weekend following that trip I will have two more visitors in town: Laura Jerzyk and Quinn Rogers – two of my friends from back home.  We also may have two friends from Davidson coming to visit that weekend, but I don’t know for sure if that is a done deal.

Then, the weekend of the 19-21, another Davidson friend, Laney Schenk, is coming to visit.  I found out a few days after she told me she would be here that two other friends from Davidson will be in Vienna that weekend as well: Natalie Tagher and Kelvin Bates.  Finally, Patrick’s girlfriend Katie Lovett is planning on spending that weekend in Vienna with him/us, so we’ll have plenty to do. 

This is my U-bahn (underground) stop: Kettenbruckengasse.

The entrance to the Palais Corbellis where
my classes are held.

Thanksgiving weekend is going to be a marathon.  One of my friends from school, Peter Kelpin, connected us with a girl on our program named Allison (pictured here) who he worked with at camp.  We’ve since become good friends, and the other day we stumbled across a flight package over Thanksgiving that we could not believe.  For a total of 17 Euros (5 there and 12 coming back) we booked a trip for 4 days to Brussels.  Our tentative plan is to arrive Thursday night, get up Friday morning and take a 2-hour train to London.  Here we are planning on picking up my friend (and ironically Peter’s roommate) Paul Britton.  We’ll spend Friday seeing the sights in London and spend Friday night there.  I may or may not insist on dragging them to see the 7^th Harry Potter film while we’re there.

Saturday morning we’ll get up and train to Paris.  Again, we’ll spend the day seeing everything we can, spend the night there, and then get up the next morning and train back to Brussels.  Sunday we’ll see Brussels and spend the night, and our flight back to Vienna leaves early Monday morning so we can make it back for class.  After we leave Brussels (or maybe Sunday night) Paul is going to train back to London.  Obviously it will be rushed, but I’ll get to knock out a bunch of places at once, so I’m really excited!

The entrance hall of the Palais.

The last thing I’ll include in this post is a brief description of our tour of the first floor of the Kunsthistorisches Museum here in Vienna.  It takes you on a bit of a time-traveling journey (that can be a bit jarring at times).  First we saw the Egyptian collection.  Evidently, outside of Cairo and Berlin, Vienna has one of the best collections in the world.  They have set up a replica (with some real stones) mastaba that you can walk into.  It is exactly like the ones we went into, except it wasn’t 100 degrees inside.  Our professor asked if anyone had been to Cairo, and when Pat and I said yes, she got really excited and said everyone should take us out and get us a beer so we would give them a tour of the area and tell them all about it.  Some of the stuff they had was neat, but it still is not worth comparing it to the museum in Cairo, even though it was much more efficiently organized.

Click to enlarge. This is a classroom, fully equipped with whiteboards, a
projector, and because we have a music school, a piano.

We then went through the Greek and Roman periods.  The theme of the day was how the depiction of the human body changed over time.  Pretty much it went from the Egyptian pose (where the feet and head face one direction but you still observe the body straight on), to the idealized human form in the Greek era, to the Romans who were much more realistic.  Anyway, I’ll probably go back with my mom to see more of it, but there’s a bunch of interesting and pretty artifacts scattered through the first floor.  I’m sure the rest of the museum is interesting as well.

An hour into class, this is what was on our whiteboard for
the day.

That’s all.  Mom arrives soon (or she is landing almost as we speak) and we’ve got plenty to do this weekend based on the number of different lists I made.

A slow(er) week around the city

One the on hand, Vienna has been amazing.  On the other hand, my fantasy football team is off to a dismal 0-3 start.  Can my running backs please just stay at full health?  I guess I’ll take the trade off though…

For some reason I can only get four pictures to upload, so I'll try again later and see if it works.  Anyway, this week was my first week of classes where we didn't spend half the time trying to figure out where to get the syllabi and how to read it and where we were supposed to be at what times, etc etc etc.  Things have been fairly routine; the two outliers were on Tuesday we had a German quiz on which I did pretty well (we also had a test Friday, though I have not received those results), and on Wednesday I had my first tour for Austrian Art and Architecture (henceforth AAA).  We went to the Wien Museum (the Vienna Museum) and saw just the first floor.  We started with prehistoric artifacts, then looked at the Roman civilization that was here about 400 years, breezed through the “Dark Ages,” and ended with the Baroque era where we got to observe some stunning stained glass windows.  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but I’ll put some up when we go to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. 

It's kind of blurry, but this is the sign for
the "Long Night of the Museums"

Other than that, the week has been pretty relaxing.  Tuesday night I went with my roommate Tad and our friend Liz to watch Tobi (an IES staff member pictured in the last post here) play in an amateur football (soccer) match.  He’s recovering from an ankle sprain so he just played goalie.  We were given remarkably poor directions so we got lost and ended up having to ask for directions.  The man we asked happened to be Egyptian, and I got so worried about him asking for backsheesh and I had all kinds of flashbacks to walking around the streets of Cairo.  Fortunately he showed us the right spot and wouldn’t even accept any money at the end (that we thought we were going to be asked to give) so it all worked out great – oh except that not only had Tobi given us poor directions, but he also told us that it started a half hour later than it actually did.  So we saw 15 minutes and that was it.  But he appreciated our appearance and we had a nice bonding experience.

The museum opposite the Natural History
Museum

Thursday night there was a Rapid Wien home game, but it was a part of the UEFA Champions League (the all Europe tournament I talked about in this previous post) so it was completely sold out and thus we just watched it from home.  We played a team from Istanbul, Besiktas.  We actually scored first, but then they tied it on a really questionable play, and then they scored again to win.  I’d like to complain, but we had a great chance to tie, so it’s a little our fault as well. 

Friday morning I had a German test that went pretty well.  It only took 25 minutes so we still had to have class for about another hour afterwards.  Normally I go straight home and take a nap afterwards, but a variety of factors prevented that from happening.  First, Patrick’s parents arrived at about 8:40 in the morning.  Second, a group of my friends convinced me to accompany them/lead them to the Schweiserhaus at 10:30 in the morning.  By the time we got there it was 11:15 or so.  We sat and hung out for a little while and then went to the Naschmarkt where we all ate a kebap for lunch.  I finally got home around 2:30 and got to lay down around 3.  About 3:45 Patrick and his parents came by the apartment, so I got up and hung out with them for a while.  About 6 we left to walk to Schnizelwirt (my new favorite restaurant) for dinner.  The atmosphere there this particular night was really fun.  Our waiter had a tremendous amount of energy, and the rest of the people in the back room with us were lively and entertaining. 

Darwin riding a turtle

After dinner Pat and I went back to the apartment.  He had made plans with his parents to get up early the next morning, so he decided not to go out, and I followed suit due to general laziness and tiredness.  I heard him get up early Saturday but slept much longer.  Saturday night was the “Lange nacht,” or Long Night at the Museums.  For 11 Euros and you receive free entrance to 107 different museums around the city.  Thus, after my dinner of frozen pizza and yogurt, I met up with Pat and his parents at the Natural History Museum.  We started by seeing the Venus of Willendorf – a small fertility symbol that is 25,000 years old.  After spending a small amount of time looking at a couple other exhibits, we decided there are other Natural History museums (and I may go back with my mom this weekend) so we went to visit other, more unique places.

The Venus of Willendorf

First, we went to the Wien Museum (the same one Pat and I went to for class).  Since I had already seen the first floor I went upstairs and perused the top two floors.  The second floor was a longer history of Vienna up to around 1900, and the top floor displayed a variety of artworks by a variety of artists.  Mr. Muller is has a particular interest in Gustav Climt, so he was pleased when I told him there were five Climt pieces on the top floor.  I spent our last fifteen minutes there listening to a jazz band in a room adjacent to the lobby.  We then took a bus to the Military History Museum.  There was plenty to see in this museum that spanned from the Middle Ages through present day U.N. operations.

Our plan after that museum was to see the Schnapps Museum and then the Chocolate Museum before everything closed down at 1.  Unfortunately the bus ride back, along with the U-bahn trip out to the schnapps place and the line once we got there meant that it was 12:45 by the time we left the museum.  Still, I got to try the chocolate-banana schnapps, which tasted exactly like bananas with chocolate syrup poured all over it.  It tasted so good.

Today has been a pretty slow day, and now I’m just sitting, doing homework, and watching football.  My mom gets here on Thursday; it’s going to be really nice to see her, not have to pay for as much stuff, and to have a little piece of home here for about a week.  It’s too bad the rest of my family can’t come; I would love for my sisters to be able to see everything here, but I guess they’ll have plenty of time once they’re older to study abroad as well.  It should be a great week (I don’t think I have any tests or papers due), so it’ll be a great time to have visitors.  Plus, the Thursday that my mom leaves I’ve booked plane tickets to visit Madrid!  Time is going to start flying by, but it’s all going to be so much fun.