Wien, take 4

Ana and I are finally in Vienna! We have met up with Tim Irving (a friend frOm home) and a korean girl we met on the train for an afternoon tour of downtown. Went out for a last sachertorte with viennese coffee and later a kebap... Can't beleive that tomOreos is our last day! I picked up my bags from the hostel, except for the one with my laptop and important documents... Hopefully it is found before we leave!

Goodbye Graz

I have not really had time to be sad about leaving Graz- everything is has happened so fast here that even sitting on the train (with a roller duffel, small duffel, and two large backpacks) on my way from Graz to Vienna for the last time still seems like just another part of my routine. 

Even though the last week has been "normal," there are so many moments that stand out as having been really exceptional. Like Monday night, when Ruth and I made a quick trip to meet some of our new Austrian friends at a pub and ended up hanging out and watching a movie for the entire evening. Or last night, when the same three guys (+Maria!) came over, and Basti made us Kaiserschmarrn. Christoph brought Maria and I "goodbye Austria survival" gifts of Manner Schnitte and Mozartkugeln. In Maria's words, "unglaublich," unbelievable! 

Basti, Maria, Peter, Christoph, and me- last goodbye!

I have also managed to say goodbye to so many friends, spend an entire day hiking in the Vorberge (foothills), fail my first university exam (and therefore the class), score an A on an oral history exam, 

sell my bicycle (for the same amount I bought it for!), go for one last coffee at Café Binder, and move out of my apartment.

On Tuesday I escaped to the edge of Graz and hiked up the castle ruins which have been tempting me since I first arrived in Graz.... (click Read more)

Processing...

Since coming back from Croatia I have been trying to deal with the fact that I am leaving Graz in a week. There are so many things that I will miss about Graz... here are ten of them, in no particular order...

1. 

   Taking down the maypole in Hauptplatz

    There are yogurt vending machines at the 
   university.
2. I am free to think critically about american culture, politics, and history and have opportunity to epress my thoughts 
3. I'm not fluent in German yet. I can't leave before I'm fluent, can I? now where i can generally understand people, and am starting to learn to express myself. And there are so many other languages around me! 
4. Transport- bike everywhere. public transportation rocks. and it's flippin easy here. 
5. it is hard to have a "buybuybuy" supermarket when you have to pay for every (resuable!) shopping bag and walk home with it 
6. distinct coffee culture, sweet lokals, and 300 types of bread...

A day on the Croatian Coast

For the past week or so I had been debating where to go over the long weekend. I facebooked a classmate from Croatia, and she sold me on her home country. I was at first going to go with some other girls, but they had other trips planned or school assignments (some people here actually have to study) so I got on the bus at 10:00 with just my backpack. My shoulder bag stuffed with a jacket made a perfect  pillow, and I slept remarkably well considering. The bus was unloaded at the Slovenian border sometime around 2 am for passport control. A few minutes later a Croatian border guard walked through the bus, and we were officially admitted into Croatia.
Besides a short stop at a rest station (with a meters long line for the bathroom), I the next thing I distinctly remember is blearily asking the fellow next to me if the bus leader had just announced that we were in Zadar. At 5 am I stumbled off the bus, asked a taxi driver which direction town was, and walked through the gate as the sun hit the islands. My first hours in Zadar were spent walking along the white stone promenade and through the city. There is a "sea organ"built along the wall which is "played" by the waves as they roll in. The rhythmic splashing of the water was turned into chords which were quiet and peaceful in the morning and louder when the breeze picked up in the evening. You can listen to it on the Videos page. (click Read more)

Vienna III: Van Geest Edition

   I have been avoiding blogging all of this because every time I sit down at my computer I feel guilty for not working on my history paper... but that is in the final stages, so here is the week's news from Graz in summary.
   Monday afternoon I jumped on a train to go meet two very special girls who were passing through Austria on their way from Prague to Venice. Erika was my roommate for a year and a half, but studied abroad my last semester at Calvin. She and her sister Marijke are currently in the middle of a month backpacking around Europe. Wien Meidlung train station was the first time we had seen each other in two and a half years. There was much screaming and hugging :) (click Read More)

Pancake breakfast

Sunday brunch in Top 24

Click on the slideshow to go to the album.

Wiener Parents, ja!

   Mom and Dad were subjected to essentially the same Vienna tour that I did with my friends about a month ago, so you should recognize the locations of some of the pictures! We took the U-Bahn into downtown and did a walking tour around Stephansplatz and the Dom, down the main shopping streets (Dad was not as amused as Mom and I that "douglas" is the name of a makeup store chain), past the Oper (where Mom met a charming gentleman selling Mozart tickets), and through the Hofburg.

   In the afternoon we headed out to Schönbrunn and walked up to the Gloriette through the gardens. The weather started out clear and sunny, but by the time that we reached the huge summer palace it was a little cloudy, though not unpleasant! Mom and Dad went on a tour of the imperial apartments while I explored the Carriage House- Ana, it is definitely going on our list! 

   Over the next 24 hours we also made stops by the Hundertwasser houses, Belvedere palace and gardens, the Nachsmarkt, parliament, Stadpark, Manner chocolate store,  and espresso and tortes (including Sacher) at a Viennese Café/Konditorei... by the time that we finally got on the train to Graz, Mom and Dad were pretty exhausted!

  

Donostia/San Sebastian

   Kike invited us to visit him at 'work' in San Sebastian Friday morning. I had never been in a studio before and was amazed by the brightness and business of the MKLZ set! There was so much going on at the same time, both obvious  and behind the scenes. People running around controlling cameras and cueing the audience, sound and video mixing in the upstairs booths (sooo many buttons!), and Kike and his co-host Ilaski talking while a producer was whispering into their ear buds. A guy named Julian gave us a tour of the entire studio building, including the sets of a news program, tv show, and even a green screen stage. Afterwords we watched them film an episode of MKLZ and got to walk around the set. Basically we were given the vip treatment- and it was so much fun! A huge thanks to the MKLZ/EiTB/Amonarriz crews for their hospitality and the experience!
    After lunch at home we drove back to Donostia to explore the city. It is really different from what I have seen anywhere else. The buildings are "new" compared to others in Europe, having been re-built after the Napoleanic wars. They are a warm sandy colour and arranged along straight, orderly streets. The windows above the street level are lined with flower pots and have flags hanging from them. After months of the twisted passages and painted facades in Austria, Donostia was a little bit of a shock. I think that to really appreciate the city I would need to go back and spend a few weeks, maybe a month, living it. (click read more)

Slovenija

   This weekend has been a whirlwind tour of the two largest cities in Slovenia! I met the Petras at the train station and we caught the 10:36 train to Maribor. The town was pretty quiet since it was Sunday afternoon (and Palm Sunday at that!) but really lovely. The region of "lower Styria" was connected to the Austrian Steiermark (Graz's state) for much of the last 300 years. We wandered around the beautiful old town and enjoyed the riverfront park, espresso in the town square, and linner at a Serbian restaurant near the water. 

   At 6:00 we caught our next train to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We walked through the dusky old town and crashed at a hostel just long enough to re-charge for another day of exploring. The city is about the same size as Graz but has a different feel. The parts of the town are so different- there are pockets of counter-culture graffiti art, Venitian style bridges, Art Nouveau decorated buildings... all overlooked by a medieval castle. It is a real hybrid of old and new, urban and natural. There are huge green parks and a central market bigger than Graz's. To the north you can see the last of the alps. (click read more...)

Vienna 2: St. Stephen's to the Prater

Outside of the cathedral we met up with one of Mediha's friends who is studying in Vienna. She led us to the Hofburg, winter palace of Habsburg emperors and home of the Spanish Riding School. My group wasn't exactly full of horse lovers and the horses were not performing, so we jumped over to the rest of the palace. We decided to buy a combined "Sissi" ticket for the Hofburg and Schönbrunn and started with a tour through the imperial silver collection. The pieces were mostly from the 19th century and completely extravagant. Upstairs we walked through an exhibit on the Empress Elizabeth of Bayern. She married the crown prince Franz Joseph I when she was 16 and a little bit of a spitfire who spent as much time away from court as possible, mostly  riding and travelling. Her exhibit continued into the private apartments, which were my favorite part. There were no photos allowed inside, but you can take a virtual tour on the Hofburg website!

   We were absolutely ravenous by the time we had walked down to the Naschmarkt and chosen a place for the girls to get some Wiener Schnitzle. After we re-charged we headed to the closest U-bahn station- where I  found my first Starbucks in months! I dragged the girls in so they could smell the Seattle aroma of strong black coffee- they brew it strong in Vienna! I sipped my tall black on the U-bahn on our way to the Prater just outside of the Innenstadt. The area is an amusement park built around a giant ferris wheel, which was built in the park near the turn of the century.  We didn't go up, but we had fun and ate Mozart Kugeln! 

   Esgi and Mediha both had their cameras out- pictures to follow when we swap! 

1/3 of the way...

168/3 = 56 = number of days I have been in Austria!

I can hardly believe that my time here is 33% finished. School has taken over a large part of my time now, but I try to take a break from classes/friends/homework/avoiding homework/facebook to sit back and enjoy the fact that I am in Austria. Today it happened at Sorger's on the way home from class (I realized that Sorgar reminds me of the A&W in Creston, what Grandpa calls the "old folk's home")- time to sit down and sip a braun Verlängerter.

(new formatting- click "read more" for the full post)

Zeichensaal

For the past few weeks I have been putting hours in on my KWB (Konstruktiver Wasserbau) project with my partner, Anna. We have been designing a "Hochwasserrückhaltebecken" or flood retention structure. The course is in English but my partner and professor are both Austrian, so there is always some translation going on! For example, it took me most of the afternoon yesterday to realize at t_gr (Tief Grenz, which I took literally as "depth limit") was actually the flow's critical depth. Yikes!

Anna is a member of the Beton and Holzbau Zeichensaal, so we have been using their rooms for most of our project work. It has been so much fun! The Zeichensaal is a study and on-campus living space for a group of students for homework/projects, food, and meeting with friends. The closest thing that I can think of at WSU is the Engineers Without Borders office (Otherwise known as the Fortress of Scholartude or the "clubhouse") or the architects' studios. The Zeichensaal is similar, but is the size of an apartment and has a full kitchen, dining room, computer room with Autocad and analysis software,

Stammtisch und Cremeschnitte

I can't believe that it has only been two days since I last updated- so much has happened!

The fellow who was supposed to pick me up at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station)didn't show up at 5:00, or 5:30... perhaps it was a good thing that I was too tired to panic! I gave him a ring on a borrowed cell phone and he dropped what he was doing and finally met me at about 7 pm. thought that I was coming in on Thursday, not Tuesday, but by chance the extra key in his pocket (he had picked up another student earlier) was for my room! He hauled my bags and we jumped on a tram and headed into Graz.

My roommate was already home when I walked in my room, and introduced herself as Ruth- originally from the Seattle area but lives in Moscow ID, studies Mech Engineering at U of I, and attends E-Free. I had just flown halfway around the world and discovered that my roommate was from the Palouse.

We were up early the next morning to walk to the KFU campus for our first German meeting. Everyone was broken into groups for oral exams, and then back to the ÖAD housing office in my apartment building to have our Meldezettel (city registration forms) and housing agreements signed. Then back to KFU to pay our course registration fee and find where we were placed. So much walking and waiting in queues! On the plus side, I know the route between home and class pretty well, and made some new friends.





Petra invited us to meet her and her Austrian mentor in the Hauptplatz (city centre) for drinks and conversation at 7, so after a short respite at home I laced up my shoes once again and headed out. We ended up at a Stammtisch (lit. regular's table)at a traditional Steirischer restaurant (der Herzl), surrounded by a group representing Austria, the UK, USA, Poland, Canada, France, Spain, Czech, and more. The conversation began in German, but after 8:30 the restrictions were lifted and a mix of German and English filled the room as more and more people came, tables were added, and food and drinks flowed into the room. I learned from one of the long-time attendees that the Stammtisch had been started in 1945 by a few members of the post-war British administration in Graz to encourage inter-cultural understanding. They're now online at the Anglo-Austrian Society. I headed home around 10:30, but it was still going strong when I left!

Today started with a trip to drop off my Meldezettle at the Hauptplatz. I was a few minutes late to class and was squeezed in between a girl from St. Paul, MN and a chap from just outside of Manchester, UK. Our prof is great and keeps the class moving and all of his students engaged. We represent most of the northern hemisphere- from Korea to the Basque country (no, she's not related to Jone) to the four corners of the US.

Today's highlight was the mission that Ruth and I undertook in the afternoon to find an ethernet cable (for my internet), eggs (pita time!), and coffee. We wandered through the Altstadt (old part of town), found our supplies, stopped by a bookstore, and randomly chose a cafe to stop at as we walked home. The lady there spoke very rapid Steirisch (the local dialect), and we were not sure what exactly happened- we ordered a Klein Braun and Cappuccino, and somehow ended up with this incredible pastery in front of us called Cremeschnitte (we had to look it up online later). Imagine a thin

layer of flaky pastry with two inches of creamy custard and two inches of fluffy heavy whipped cream, and then top the entire thing off with another thin pastry and frost the top. Oh goodness. I definitely made popcorn on the stove for dinner tonight and am still feeling full!



My apologies for another long post- Tomorrow is "tour Graz" day!

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