Today our German class met at a Heurigen, a traditional wine-garden/restaurant, on the outskirts of the city (half of the adventure was getting there). Unfortunately, I got there are realized I did not have the card in my camera, so I don't have pictures to document it, but it was pretty amazing. The patio in the back opened to rolling hills covered in vinyards there's an outdoor seating area with benches and long tables and it's a sort of traditional meal. There are 3 different kinds of drink specialties that you can order - obviously wine, grape juice (called Most), and Sturm, which is partially fermented grape juice. The food was really great too. And although we all knew there would be a quiz after the meal, everyone ordered a 1/4 liter of wine. I think it was the first quiz I ever took while drinking wine.

After our adventure at the Heurigen, I had my second meeting of "History of the Hapsburg Empire," which seems like it will be a really great class. The professor clearly knows what he is talking about, and I am surprisingly finding history to be pretty interesting. The problem is, I've never quite taken a class set up like this - no reading assignments, just a list of books that he recommends consulting throughout the quarter. We'll see how that turns out.

I finally got some practice time this afternoon which went pretty well. Things are coming back quickly, but I need to get my focus back. After 2.5 hours I was spent, as opposed to the 6 I was doing earlier this summer.

Tomorrow we have a bus tour of Vienna, which should be interesting. Aside from that, I don't have any real plans for the weekend other than practicing. I will begin lessons with my new teacher next week, so I better be prepared.

After just 5 days in Vienna, I'm already starting to get the idea of how amazing this place really is. The whole city is so beautiful, the arts are everywhere, there are virtually no homeless and very very little crime - it's very safe. The U-bahn is incredible. The food and beer is fantastic..... it's really just amazing here and I already feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the city - I've been exploring without a map and I have not been lost once (although I've been repeatedly told that getting lost is the only way to get to know the city).

We've had our first 3 classes of intensive German - 3 hours a day for the next 2 and a half weeks. 3 hours is a long time. I am in a class that seems a little easy for me, but the real difficulty is primarily related to staying awake though the class. My German is actually coming along pretty well. I do stumble plenty and I'm sure all of the Viennese know immediately that I come from somewhere else, but almost everyone will respond in German, rather than preempting in English, and I would say that I've been able to complete about half of my transactions completely in German. I really do love the language and I'd like to really become more comfortable. I guess that I've only been here for about a week, so I shouldn't expect anything too quickly.

I took some pictures of my apartment and just 1 or 2 of the IES Facility. You can see them on my Picassa sight HERE with all of the rest of my pictures The apartment is really great - I'm living with 4 friends in a 5th floor apartment (but no elevator) in the 6th district of the city. I really couldn't ask for a better place to live. It is very close to 2 U-bahn stops, several cafes, the Naschmarkt (the biggest market in Vienna), Mariahilferstrasse (one of the biggest shopping streets in Vienna), several supermarkets, bars, and restaurants. It's about a 25 min walk to the city center, where the IES facility is housed.







Speaking of the IES building, it is absolutely beautiful. It is housed in the Palais Corbelli, a palace belonging to one of the Generals in Franz Joseph's military. it is a beautiful 19th century building with tons of gold-leaf trim on the ceilings, paintings, chandeliers, etc.




Last night, a few friends and I went to the Rathausplatz Film festival and it was pretty amazing. The city sets up an enormous screen directly in front of the Rathaus (the incredibly beautiful town hall building) and show videos of music, opera, and ballet performances every night for about 3 weeks. They set up seating for thousands and there are about 20 restaurant stands that sell everything from Wursts and Bier to Sushi. And it's free! (well not the food). Last night, my friends and I watched Don Giovanni and there are some other great performances in the next week, so hopefully I'll be able to go back to watch those.


Today I don't have too much going on. German class, then an orientation, then hopefully a meeting with an academic advisor. I really hope that I can start getting into more diligent practicing - I've barely touched the piano and I should be starting lessons with my new teacher next week.

These last few days have been an incredible whirlwind and I am finally getting settled in my apartment in the heart of Vienna. I've been unable to do my first real post until now, but everything turned out wonderfully and the last few days have been fantastic. Here's the somewhat brief synopsis of what I've been up to for the last week:

As I was about to leave for the airport on Tuesday (that feels like so long ago!) I realized that my flight got super delayed and had to call about 5 different people to change it. A flight to Frankfurt and then to Vienna and I got in around 3pm on Wednesday. At the airport I recognized a few people from my program at the airport, looking a bit more lost than I was feeling. It turned out that they were heading to the same hostel as I was, so we got on a bus together and made our way to the Wombats city hostel. We explored Vienna a bit, found the building that our program was housed in, and returned to the hotel.

At this point, I realized that my computer would not connect to the wireless network at the hostel (although everyone else's could), and spent about 2 hours trying to fix the problem until I became convinced that there was something seriously wrong with my wireless card - there's still a strange message that I don't understand, but I'm going to ignore it). It turns out that everything is okay, but I did lose some sleep thinking that I would have to send my computer to get fixed because I couldn't call Toshiba from Vienna.



Anyway, on thursday, All 150 students in the program met at the Westbahnhof train station to get on a bus to head up to Mariazell (I'll talk about the town a little later). Of course, meeting 150 people in a three day trip, especially when you are deciding who you are living with on the 2nd day, is a bit stressful. It was a bit overwhelming to remember the 4 Lindseys, 3 Rachels, and just about multiples of most other common names (the RA's who put together the housing at Mariazell took full advantage of this - A 2 Robs 2 Chris room, a 3 emily room, and a biblical room including Sarah, Mary, Magdaline, and Ruth).


The weekend was really a great time. Lots of meeting tons of people, drinking together, playing volleyball, walking to Mariazell to sightsee and other random activities, along with plenty of orientation sessions, German placement tests, and housing organization (a bit more stressful than it had to be). We stayed in a Familiengasthaus, or a sort of sports hostel for families. The accommodations were surprisingly really nice. Mariazell, which was about a 30 minute walk away, was absolutely beautiful. It was so unbelievably picturesque and looked cleaner than anywhere else I had ever been (not so coincidentally, the pope had come a year ago and every building in the city was repainted for his arrival!) The town is famous for 3 things:

1) A very famous Basilica, to which most practicing Austrian catholics make their pilgrimidge.
2) Lebkuchen - basically the original gingerbread
3) Mariazeller Magenliquor - A very famous Schnapps that has been made by one family for 125 years. Only one man now knows how to make it and he will pass it to his children. But if he should die suddenly, that's it!

One morning I woke up at 5:30 from continued jet lag and decided to take a morning hike. Here are some pics. Very eerie but beautiful.




Anyway, today we came back to Vienna, and moved into our residences. I ended up in an apartment with 4 of my friends in Mariahilf, a really fantastic district (no. 6) near the center of the city. It is steps away from the Naschmarkt - the biggest open air market in vienna, as well as several cafes, tons of restaurants, and Mariahilferstrasse, the biggest shopping street in Vienna. It's also about a 25 min walk to the center of the city and the study abroad program center.





Anyway, this post has been very very long. Most will not be as long, but so much has happened in the last 5 days. I'm really loving Vienna, and my German is starting to come back - I've been ordering food, conducting transactions, and talking to my friends auf Deutsch. Tomorrow we begin our 3-week intensive German class along with beginning to register for classes, etc. I've been missing the piano pretty badly, and I'm excited to get back to practicing.

Please leave some comments, I'd love to hear from everyone. Check back often, I'm hoping to post frequently with lots of stories.

Hi everyone. I've been thinking for a while about keeping a blog to document my time in Vienna for the next few months, so this is it (after a few hours of trying to figure out HTML). Hopefully I'll be able to post a few times a week to let everyone know what I've been up to, upload some pictures, and hopefully hear back from all of you (I'd love to come back and see comments to my posts).

Right now, it feels completely surreal that I will be living in another country in a few days. It has always seemed like such a temporary thing while I planned it out, but 4 months is going to be a long time - pretty wild.

I leave Evanston this Sunday to spend a few days at home and then I will say goodbye to the US on Tuesday. I'm arriving on Wednesday, a day early, just to have a day to explore by myself before the program gets underway. On Thursday, we have a 3-day orientation in a small city outside of Vienna during which we will be choosing roomates and a place to live.

Well, I won't get too ahead of myself. For now, I'm going to enjoy my last few days in Evanston. I'm starting to get nervous, but I guess that's to be expected....