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.