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.