June 1, 2006 - The First Real Entry

Alright this time I am actually going to give you and idea of what is going on here. The picture here is the view from my dorm room in Vienna. I am on the 7th floor and as you can see I have a beautiful view of the city. By the way, I have started a photo album with higher quality images and more of them that you can find to your right.

Getting to my dorm…

All my flights and transportation into Vienna went well. That is until I left the Hostel to check in at my apartment. It was close to the Hostel and a cheap cab ride away but when I got there, they told me that I am not supposed to live there until July and that they did not know where I was supposed to live in June. Great…I could sleep in the city park with hundreds of pounds and thousands of dollars worth of stuff for the first month. I quickly came the conclusion that this idea would not work so I went back down to the lobby and pondered my situation. I decided that I needed to check my old emails to see if it said anything about my problem. It did; I was supposed to live on the other side of town. It is complicated and information should have been passed on from one apartment to the other but I will not bore you with those details. So from there I set off to find my real living quarters. It was an interesting experience since I have never really used public transportation, couldn’t speak or understand the language, didn’t know my way around the city, and I was carrying all my luggage for 14 months. But it all worked out and I have this wonderful view to come home to each day...until July.

Ich Lerne Deutsch…

I missed the first day of classes because of the previously discussed problem. Class was a bit of a surprise also. When I was told that the students would come from all over the world. I thought they meant the students would come from English speaking countries all over the world. I was wrong. About half the class knows a little English, but there are only about 4 of us that speak good English. The rest of the class consists of about 5 Japanese women, a Polish lady, a Turkish girl, a Greek lady, a Romanian girl, and so on. Naturally, but contrary to my original expectations, the class is not taught in English. The class is 100% taught in German. It sounds difficult but with drawings, body language, and our small—but growing—German vocabulary we are learning quite a bit. My teacher is a fifty year old Austrian lady that laughs after almost everything she says. She is a very good communicator since her job is trying to teach people words in a language they don’t understand. Class is fun mostly because I am learning something that I enjoy and I know will be useful. Also it is incredible to be able to learn without the weight of carrying 18 other hours of credit.

Friends from North Carolina and Free Dinner…
The four Americans in my class are from the University of North Carolina and there are 10 more of them in higher level German classes. Usually we get either lunch or dinner or go out around Vienna together. I am the fifteenth wheel. My first restaurant meal in Vienna was at a small pizza place. It was really good but the best part was when the elderly couple next to us left. As soon as they walked out the door, our waitress said in broken English that the people who just left had already paid for our dinner (there were about eight of us) and had bought us an assortment of desserts. Immediately we all ran out the door to thank the lady and her husband. When we came back in our waitress told us that the lady used to be a very famous Opera singer and that she has residences in New York and Vienna. Of course, that was my first restaurant experience in Vienna and I just assumed that is how it works here…I have been proven wrong at every meal since then and furthermore it is embarrassing when the waiter yells at me in German after I try to leave without paying.