Luddite

Hey Guys,

So late on Wednesday night my computer got destroyed by a virus. The virus disabled my network adapters so I could not get internet access. In an act of desperation I tried to remedy the problem myself. When that didn't work I turned to the Bentley Help Desk, which is the worst thing I could have done. Now, my computer will not boot. So, it looks like for the time being I will not be updating the blog until I can get my laptop fixed. (Seriously considering becoming a Luddite.)

Over the past week I have spent a lot of time in class. Not too exciting . Today I went hiking in the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) and ate at a delicious Heuriger (Austrian Tavern open in the Autumn). Also, thanks to having no phone, no TV, no Ipod, and no internet I have gotten a lot of reading done. Maybe I will finish Atlas Shrugged sometime this decade.

Tomorrow is Austrian National Day, where they celebrate their neutrality after post WW2 occupation. Celebrating neutraility is sure to have a very different flavor than the American 4th of July.

-Christy

(Miss you n00b14nn3)

$1.50

The euro just topped $1.50. Not only is it bad for me, it's bad for Europe. Almost every currency except the Yen and the Euro are holding down their exchange rate. Come on monetary authorities, do your job!

The MANkiw and Sumner

Alright, so far the lectures in my Economics classes here in Vienna have been less than scintillating. (Nothing like Mankiw's Ec 10 lectures at Harvard.) In light of this, I have been reading Greg Mankiw's blog and Scott Sumner's blog to supplement. Not only does Mankiw write a good Macro book, give funny lectures, all while devilishly handsome, he also constantly updates his blog with interesting insights into all things economic.
Scott Sumner is a Bentley professor who has of unconventional ideas about monetary policy. Not only that, but sometimes he likes to stick it to Paul Krugman, and Paul Krugman deserves to be stuck every now and then.

(I know, not a very exciting post, but educational.)

24 Hours in Budapest

Budapest. Around 3:30 we head out on strassenbahn 18 to Sudtiroler Platz to catch the Orange Ways bus to Hungary. It’s supposed to be 1500 Hungarian Forints ,but since we did not buy them ahead of time it cost us 15 euros. My 4 friends and I shell out the euros and get on the bus. This is the nicest bus I have ever been on. Even better, we are the only ones on it. The bus has a stewardess, a cute stewardess, who serves you cappuccinos and hot chocolate. The scenery between Vienna and Budapest could easily be mistaken for the Midwest. The landscape consists of wind turbines and corn fields. I watched “Failure to Launch” in Hungarian with English subtitles. One thing I’ve always taken for granted is the fact that most of the entertainment I watch originates in America. My favorite bands, movies, books, TV shows, pretty much all American. Here, their favorite bands, movies, books, TV shows are mainly American. Hungarian-speaking Sarah Jessica Parker is not nearly as attractive as English-speaking SJP. Same thing with the 007 movie I watched on the way home. 007 is not nearly as smooth in Hungarian. On a related note, watching TV here is horrible. When good shows come on they are in German. Not only are they in German, they don’t even attempt to imitate the voices and inflections of the actors. House’s sarcasm and derogatory comments are just not as cutting in when dubbed.
Ok, so private bus to Hungary. Beautiful Scenery. Delicious Coffee. Cute Stewardess. Comfortable seats. Harvest Landscape. Now we arrive in Budapest. At the bus stop we go directly to the ATM. The exchange rate between HUF and USD is about 180 to 1. My buddy tries to take out money, but is denied. We decide to go to a more reputable ATM later. We go underground to the subway system in search of a hostel. Having no Forints we use our credit cards to buy Subway passes. In Austria the checking of tickets is a sting operation. You can free ride the public transport 95% of the time. However, if you get caught you get a 70 euro ticket. Luckily, I have never been caught. The one time I did get caught I spoke in Spanish and got out of it with my invalidated ticket. In Hungary, they have people standing at the entrances and some exits checking tickets.
We take the subway into the center of the city and start to wander around in search of a hostel. While we are searching I go to take money out of the ATM. Once I get to the ATM I freeze. I can’t do math. Hungarian units of currency are in such huge numbers that I screw up a zero or two. Encouraged by my two friends, I take out 100,000 Hungarian Forints. Checking my banking statement today, that equates to $560 USD. I hate currency. If any future employers are reading this (and I pray to G-d that they are not) I am telling you right now do not make me work with currency. I hate currency and exchange rates. I like all of the financial instruments except currency. When the dollar was king, I loved exchange rates. In Canada, your money was worth twice as much, in Europe it was about equal. But now, our money is worth bunk. If we want 1 to 1 we go to Canada, if you want 1 to 1.5 go to Europe. If you want to blow all your money go to Switzerland (100 USD to 104 Swiss Francs).
So, we are wandering around Budapest. We stop, ask for hostels, get a free map, and then see the word “hostel” spray painted on the sidewalk. My Oregonian travel buddy had been saying all evening “Just look for sketchy alleyways, walk down it, and then you’ll find a hostel.” Sure enough, the spray painted arrows lead us around a dark corner, into an alleyway, up a flight of stairs, to two hostels. There were two hostels across the courtyard from each other. After talking to both proprietors, we go for the Gingko Hostel. We get a pretty sick 5 person bedroom, lock our stuff up, and head out for the night.
By this time we are famished. We embark for on a quest for Hungarian Goulash. We wander, we ask for directions, we get hungrier and hungrier. Finally, we send someone into a nice hotel to ask the concierge, and just around the corner is the perfect restaurant. We walk into the warmth and head to their second floor. We have a private dining room. We order wine and are presented with a delicious menu written in Hungarian and English. Everything looks so good that no one want to order Goulash. I had ham that was covered in cream, garlic, spices, thinly sliced potato, and cheese all baked in a crock. Five of us eat a great dinner which ends up costing around $40 USD. It was one of the best meals I have had so far in Europe.
After dinner we head to the Old Man’s Pub. We go in and we come back out. Next door there is a cafeteria style bar. A half a liter of beer costs 250HUF. 4cl Absinthe shots are 600HUF. It’s the weirdest mix of people I have ever seen. There are punks drinking wine and raspberry drinks, old people drinking beer, and tons of youngins taking shots of whiskey. We stay in the bar long enough to watch a soccer match, a boxing match, and sing along with Hungarians. One very drunk Hungarian man comes up to our table and starts speaking to us in English. “I want everyone in the here to sing. Do you know American songs? How about Backstreet Boys …You are my fire, my one desire…” Minutes later the whole bar is singling and clapping to “Stand by Me.” We sing another classic hits and head out.
On the way home we stop at a real club. We head downstairs to check it out. The bar was pretty cool, so I figured the clubs in Budapest might be pretty cool. I have never seen a more wiggers in one room in my life. Another thing I don’t understand is how so many Europeans dress like American gang members. I doubt they even know what a Blood or a Crip is. They imitate American culture with no concept of where those fashions originated. Baggy Jeans, backwards caps, and graphic tees with random English words. I’ve seen people here with shirts that just say “North Dakota” or “Minneapolis, Minnesota” not to mention all of the “I<3ny".>We spend a total of 90 seconds in this club before turning around. We go back to our hostel, do some history homework, the boys get gyro kabobs, and it is time to sit in the hostel and let the absinthe wear off.
Sunday
After breakfast at the hostel we don our backpacks and head out for some sightseeing. The Danube in Budapest is much more impressive than the chopped up Danube that we have flowing through Vienna. The city is very similar to Vienna, but has a distinctively Eastern European feel. There are a lot more open green spaces than in Vienna. We hit the main sights and head back to the bus station. We look all around Budapest for some Hungarian Goulash, but many of the restaurants are closed on Sundays. We make it back to the bus station with no since breakfast. The only option is Burger King. We all get the Whopper meal (which is way more expensive than our meal the night before) and take advantage of the free restroom. A few hours later I am back in Vienna. 24 well spent hours in Budapest.

The Disneyland of Clubs

Praterdome: The Disneyland of Clubs. My night starts off in Haus Erasmus. After a relaxing day of a city walk, coffee, snowfall, and running, I am ready to party. I dress up and head upstairs to begin “pregaming.” The inside of Praterdome is a theme park for adults. It is located inside of Praterpark, a real theme park in Vienna. Thursday night is lady’s night at Praterdome. That means girls get in for free before midnight and get 10 euros of free drinks. Male students get in for 6 euros with 10 euros of free drinks. Every room at Prater is a different theme: Country, house, rap, etc. There is room after room, after room. When you enter the club, they take your picture and hand you a credit card. Whenever you buy a drink they swipe the card. This is ingenious for them because you have no idea how much you are spending unless you ask to look at the credit card terminals (which I did, because I am stingy like that.)

We show up at Praterdome a little after midnight. I walk into the main part of the club club, turn left into a room pumping house music and BAM ¾ naked men with enough self tanner to paint a house is dancing on a pole. Apparently on Lady’s Night there are male “go-go dancers.” All of those strippers are 132% homosexual. The key indicators of homosexuality in this situation are tribal tattoos and tramp stamps.

It seems that in every European club there is a gaggle of photographers walking around taking pictures for promotion websities. A Praterdome photographer comes up to me for a picture, so I grab the arm of the person next to me, who I assume to be one of my friends. Wrong. Totally random Austrian. He stands there and takes a picture with me, not smiling. We exchange no words, but now there is a picture of me on the Praterdome website with a total rando. There must be an innumerable amount of these photos floating around on the internet of my friends and me. The next day when I checked my pockets I had tons of business cards from the photographers advertising that they had pictures of that night up on their websites. So, what happens at Praterdome doesn’t stay at Praterdome, it is plastered all over the information superhighway.

The rest of the evening goes on: I get a Heineken, dance, meet some very nice Austrians and Germans, etc, etc. Now it comes time to leave the club. When you exit the club they nail you. Since we show up after midnight I have to pay 3 euros to leave. Boys have to pay 6 euros. We all got 10 euros of free drinks, but no one went up to 10 euros (way too much pregaming). One rather sneaky member of our crew walks right out an open door and pays nothing. Once we get outside the club it is FREEZING. One night bus later we find ourselves at Schwedenplatz with no direction home. There are 9 of us and not a single one knows how to get back to the 7^th district. So, 4 people hop into a cab and speed off towards home. 5 of us are left on the curb. In Austria the taxis are Mercedes and other really nice cars. These taxi drivers follow the law. Up ahead of where we are hailing taxis is a cop van (Cops here travel in groups of 4 people in VW Vans). We flag down several taxis that refused to take 5 passengers. Finally, we flag down a Turkish cab driver. One of our American friends explains to the taxi driver in a combination of English, Spanish, and German that we need to get 5 people in the car. He looks at the cop, looks at us, and opens the trunk. We think he wants someone to hide in the trunk when we drive past the cops. Nope. He pops up a 5^th seat and we are good to go. 10 euros later we are back in the 7^th district: the familiarity of peep shows and kabob stands. There are 7 kabob stands at our public transport stop. Everyone pretty much sells the exact same items for the exact same price, but it seems that every student has a favorite kebab vendor. I used to go to Cetiy, until he asked me out for coffee. I like kebabs, but not that much. So, I was standing near a kabob stand, waiting for my friends to finish when this African John and his “ladyfriend” start speaking to me in German. I reply with my stock phrase, “Ich spreche etwas Deutsch.” (I speak some German). As if to warn them that whatever they say to me I will not understand. Long story short I walked away with a free kabob.

Friday

I go to Bamboo. Bamboo is an all you can eat Asian buffet 2 blocks away from Haus Erasmus. From 3-5 PM they have “Happy Hour”, where it costs 6.90 euros (instead of 13 euros for dinner). Now, when I say Asian Buffet you probably think of the US version: tacky Jade sculptures, cockroaches in the food, meat that might be cat, but is probably rat. Forget all that. This is the nicest buffet I have ever been too. They have beef, chicken, prawns, shrimp, squid and assorted seafood for stir fry. They have vegetables I have never seen before. But hands down the best part of the buffet is the sushi. I’ve had good sushi (best ever in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with Laura) and the worst sushi (China Buffet in Brattleboro, VT with Molly). This sushi lands a little closer to Cabo than Brattleboro. We came. We ate. We left in pain.

That night we go back to the Ottakringer Brewery for a mini Oktoberfest party. It’s not a very good party. Having been to the Oktoberfest in Munich everything else pales in comparison. If Oktoberfest was the Minnesota State Fair, the Ottakringer Oktoberfest would be Corn Days. It was my Bentley colleagues’ birthday. I went up to the DJ and requested the classic “Birthday Sex.” (Or if you listen to it on 101.3 KDWB “Birthday Shh.” The DJ informed me that the song had not yet been released in Austria. So, no “Birthday Sex “ for the birthday boy.

Just Another Monday

Contrary to what you may have read so far, I do actually attend classes in Europe. On Monday I had Economic Development and Opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe, Business German, and Ecological Economics. Scheduling classes at the VUEW is a nightmare. My 3 classes were from 11-4, 2-5:15, and 4-6. I left two classes early to attend the next one. Ecological Economics is the only class that I went to for the full time slot. I got back to Erasmus and made a bomb dinner: bowtie pasta with sausage, vegetables, and Napoli sauce with a side of garlic bread and topfenstrudel for dessert. The only hitch in dinner is that I shattered a glass pot cover and sent tiny glass shards all over the kitchen floor. I didn’t have a broom, nor could I find one, so I cleaned it up using a traffic cone and newspaper (American ingenuity).

Monday nights are Ride Club nights at for Erasmus and VUEW students. Ride Club is a small club near our University that is geared towards exchange students on Monday nights. They have drink specials that increase in price every hour. From 7-8 PM drinks are free, and by midnight long drinks are 4.90. It gets ridiculous. Every Monday I debate going, but my opportunity cost is so low that I have to go. Plus, you never leave Ride Club without witnessing something hilarious.

The subway system shuts down at 12:30. A lot of people leave parties at 12:00 and call it an early night so they don’t have to take the night bus. But for Ride Club there is a night bus just across the street that goes directly to our dorm stop until 5 AM. A Brazilian, a Bentley Student, and I board the night bus around 2 AM. The Brazilian is eating a kabob and feeling pretty good about his life. We run and just catch the crowded bus. The Bentley kid is pretty shnockered and sits on my lap. Two drunk Austrians start yelling things at us in German. One Austrian is skinny, wearing a red track jacket, and talking trash. His buddy has an eyebrow piercing, bleach blonde hair, a white track jacket, and is significantly bigger. They are drunk, the boys I am with are drunk, and I don’t speak enough German to know what is going on. The Brazilian is being cocky and gets the little Austrian pissed. The red jacket talks a big talk, but he was depending on his friend to fight for him. I attempt to diffuse the situation for the duration of the bus ride, but these guys are being total assholes. They say that we have a problem. We say “keine problem”, but they still point to us and make aggressive gestures. At one point I am standing between the Brazilian and the red jacket and the red jacket says something to me in German that I assume was derogatory. The Bentley kid is getting pissed. He’s got the “I want to beat your face until your family won’t recognize you” righteous anger working on his side. He gets up in his face and does the rapid fire insult, don’t touch my friends routine. He promised me that he wouldn’t hit anybody unless they touched the Brazilian or me. No use getting deported over two Austrian talking nonsense.

Surprise, Surprise, once we get to our bus stop they switch from words to action. I walk towards the door and the skinny red jacket sticks out his arm and grabs the bar so I can’t exit the bus. By this time, I’ve had enough BS, so I push him out of the bus. When he falls out of the bus doors, I take a swing at his face. The Bentley kid jumps out, puts his head in a headlock and gives him a couple of blows to the face. The Brazilian did not have control of the other guy, so the white track jacket grabs Bentley and spins him like Sonic the Hedgehog into the crosswalk. Bentley’s fighting instincts are curbed by the fact that he is wearing a very expensive watch.

This is the second fight I have been a part of in Austria. They like to talk way more than they like to fight. They tell my Brazilian friend that he is too drunk to fight. He goes through the whole ordeal without throwing a single punch. The middle of the fight is a blur, especially because the Brazilian is speaking German and English and the Germans are yelling obscenities. By the time Bentley kid got his watch off and into my hands an English-speaking German and a kabob salesmen had become involved. We decide that getting deported isn’t worth giving these kids the beating of a lifetime. So, we walk away after giving them a few lesson punches. The red track jacket kid’s face is beet red. The side of his face was cut and he was yelling about being punched in the face. We walk away, half triumphant, half ready to turn around and go in for a few more punches. We told them that we were cool unless they touched me, which the red jacket kid did, so now he has a red face to match. Ending the night with a fist fight really makes me miss America, where people don’t get by running their mouths off like that without serious bodily injury consequences. (PS mom and dad I am safe, I was confident in my escort’s fighting abilities, and people constantly want to fight Americans. I didn’t start the fight, but we did finish it. Love you guys. No more fights. I’ll stay safe. )

Two Days in Vienna

I am back in Vienna. I am alive, and I have over 50,000 Hungarian Forints in my pocket. This week has been a whirlwind. One day I am in class learning about producer surplus and the next thing I know I am doing absinthe shots in some Hungarian dive bar. This post will only cover part of my week because I actually do have homework here. It’s rare, but it has been known to happen.

It all started on Wednesday. I woke up and headed on the U-bahn to the VUEW for Angewandte Mikroökonomik (Applied Microeconomics). First of all, I had no idea where the hell my class was. The VUEW is the single worst piece of architecture I have ever seen. (It’s uglier than the Government Center in Boston, quite a feat). Despite the fact that the VUEW is the largest business university in Europe, their building is a labyrinth of dead end hallways and wasted space. The main building is divided into 4 sections (ABCD) and is flanked by a ragtag band of buildings almost completely devoid of labels. It’s as if someone took the original blue prints and just started drawing rectangles and squares and when his hand cramped up he went ahead and built the scribbles. Luckily the VUEW will get a new building soon. :)

My hypothesis is that since Austrian students are entitled to attend University they make the University labyrinthine so only the intelligent can find their way to class. So, I eventually get to class (10 minutes late), just as the professor walks in. When I first came to Vienna I was told that the Viennese were pünktlich (Punctual). I love the Austrians, don’t get me wrong, but I have yet to have any Austrian meet me on time. So, I go to class, watch a power point slides where everything is written in German and translated by the professor and two hours later I leave class to meet with my Tandem Partner.

Even though I am studying German, Spanish is my forte. Romance languages are so much easier than Germanic languages. I want to learn German, but I have given up on the notion of being fluent. So, in order to improve my Spanish I meet with a native speaker and we exchange grammar tips, cultural insights, etc. Aka we talk in Spanglish.

We talk for an hour, but Wednesday is rushing by and I have a “cultural event” to attend with the Buddy Network: the Ottakringer Brewery Tour. At this point, I have not eaten since breakfast. We go to the Ottakringer Brewery in Vienna. After the tour is over, there is a tasting of Vienna’s finest beers. They have all their specials on tap and the tour comes with unlimited tastings.

Wanting to experience the culture fully I take .3 liter “tastings” of Ottakringer Helles, Goldfassl , Ottakringer Dunkles, Ottakringer Schnitt, and an unfiltered beer called Ottakringer Zwickl (Weiss und rot). End of story, by the end of the tour I am schnockered. My one saving grace is that midway during the tour they bring out a basket of warm pretzels into the beer hall. I leave the beer hall, go home to my dorm, and nap. After my nap, I get some Americans together to play a rousing game of Minnesota whist. http://www.pagat.com/whist/minwhist.html (You should play.)

Thursday

I wake up: It’s snowing. Vienna went directly from summer to winter. The first day I arrived in Vienna my buddy told me that it was probably the last nice day in Vienna. He was wrong. For a month it was warm, beautiful weather. I was actually upset at how nice it was. When I packed I was thinking winter. I had channeled ski chalets and Alps, and all that is cold. All of September was beach weather. Starting this week Vienna dropped almost 20 degrees Celsius. Being Minnesotan, I took the windy, cold day and decided to take a 3 hour walk around Vienna. My end goal was to find a coffee shop where I could finish my short story.

I put on my knee length wool coat, high heel boots, and scarf and set off to find a coffee house. After wandering around the 15^th district, I came to the realization that Vienna repeats itself. Billa. Interactive Games. Bipa. Kebab/Pizza Place. Billa. You can be in a Billa and see another Billa. I have no idea how they stay in business. I walked all around Vienna. Every once in awhile I hopped on a strassenbahn and rode it a stop or two to hasten journey. Yet, every coffee shop I look at is missing something. I ended up back at Burgasse Stadhalle (the stop I live next to) and wander into Mokador. Mokador was the kind of coffee shop I had been looking for for 3 hours, and it was right next to my stop. Sweet.

I wrote, I drank coffee, I watched the snow fall. The perfect Viennese afternoon, complimented by a glass of prickelnd (lightly sparkling) water and a cappuccino.

I get back to my dorm and work out. I work out only because I know what terrible things I am going to do to my liver that evening. Weightlifting here is a tough experience. Everything is metric, so going from 10 kilograms to 15 kilograms is a HUGE jump. Also, Europeans do not know how to work out. So, I’m up there, running on the treadmill, jamming to some Jay-Z, and a kid saunters on in wearing European swim trunks and flip flops. This kid proceeds to lift free weights and do bench presses. Beachwear workout gear.

I finish working out, come back to my room, and lo and behold, my roommate is back. Now, I haven’t seen my roommate for almost 2 weeks at this point. I saw her for a total of 30 seconds at the University. We were ready to put her picture on the milk carton. (Helmut especially misses her. He was going to send out search parties.) She comes in, watches some TV, and tells me that she is planning on living elsewhere for most of the semester. Bottom Line: I have a single room. Moving from a triple at Bentley to a single in Austria is AMAZING. Granted, I like my roommate, and she was teaching me about Austrian culture, but, being able to listen to the Talking Heads at full volume at 4 AM is priceless.

I shower, I dress, I say goodbye to my semi-roomie and head upstairs to the party kitchen. You see, on Thursday night, I went to the Disneyland of Clubs. Look forward to reading about yelling at Turkish cab drivers in Spanish, my first free kabob, and renting a private bus to Budapest.