Grüß Gott!

On the eve of my departure to Rome for Easter break, I realized that I had been neglecting my blog since coming to Vienna.  I've been very busy getting settled in for my four-month-long stay, buying the essentials: kitchen utensils, a semester ticket for the Vienna public transportation system, a europe-friendly cell phone, Coheed & Cambria concert tickets, you know, the basics.

 

We started our stay in Freud's city with a brief tour and dinner at the University of Vienna's brewery's restaurant, where we got to meet the staff of our program's various courses (I think this sentence wins for the most possessive phrases).  The fact the the U of V has a brewery is a little ironic considering that Central College, the school through which our program is run, maintains the illusion that it is a dry campus and is in the middle of a fiery debate over the fact that their health office wants to hand out free prophylactics to encourage safe sex.  I blame the Puritans for screwing our country up so much...

 

I apologize for that diatribe.  On with the show!  The basic layout of our courses here in Vienna is as follows, at least as it applies to me: we can take courses through Central College, which hires real-life Viennese professors to teach us in German, but at a pace and vocabulary level that we can handle.  We then have the option to take additional courses through the U of V.  I'm taking an German Literature course with Austrian Alan Alda, who also leads our mandatory Austria in Context course.  He's definitely my favorite so far.  We also have what my friends and I have come to call "Organic Grammar," owing to the way our professor kind of wanders through the class all willy-nilly and hippie-esque.

 

The mammoth tower of the Stephansdom Cathedral.

 

Last weekend I also participated in course about the music of Vienna, more specifically the Vienna School of classical music.  The course took place on Friday and Saturday morning and was, of course all auf Deutsch.  While I could follow along just fine, I was a little frustrated to find that I know exactly bupkis about classical music.  I have resolved heretofore to "creatively acquire" from the int0rnets the complete works of the various Vienna School artists and commence to listening to it!  The course culminated this past Monday with a concert in one of Vienna's many concert halls.  The concert was a performance of string quartet compositions from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.  The concert was absolutely amazing, appropriately mind-blowing, and satisfyingly full of eccentric-looking and frazzle-haired Viennese musicians who kept tempo with their heads, or, in the case of the cellist, their entire bodies.

 

The Habsburg palace in Vienna... possibly my favorite building in the city.

 

I am also taking one course at the University, Love, Desire, and Honor in Medieval Literature.  Now, when I say it was a disaster, I only mean that the professor spoke at 120 mph and at about .02 decibels and that my only saving grace was that I had read Morte D'Arthur auf Englisch before and could therefore figure out that we were talking about Lancelot and Guinevere traipsing about behind poor ol' Arthur's back.  That said, I have no idea what any of the other works we're gonna read are.  Therefore, I'm just going to "audit" this class, meaning that I participate in it, but don't receive a grade or have to take the final exam (phew).  I will be taking some kind of course in English instead... more on that story as it develops.

 

The cathedral at Schottentor looking very good on a fine spring-like day.

 

The final portion of my credit load here in Vienna comes in the form of practicum.  In fact, this past Monday, I took my first steps through the doors of what is effectively a Catholic kindergarten with trepidation.  Over the course of the next semester, it will be my task to exercise my skills as a native speaker of English in teaching little Austrian kids the language of the world.  The kids are between the ages of seven and ten with a few eleven-year-old outliers.  And even though I was afraid they'd eat me alive as a foreigner, it turns out that the school itself is quite international, with a lot of kids from Bosnia, Czechoslovakia, and other such refugee-producing places.  In fact, the kid who I would say spoke the best English comes from somewhere in eastern Africa (not Darfur...).  

 

Very pretty monument on a hill over one of Vienna's many palaces, Schönbrunn.

 

Mostly, I was nervous about my first day because I wasn't really sure what I would be doing with the kids.  The director seems to be a little disorganized and so I was less than informed from the get go... I wasn't sure how long I was going to be with each class or how much English I should use.  It all worked itself out in the end though.  In each class I asked the teacher how much English I should use and then introduced myself to the class and talked about my family, America, and my travels to Europe.  It's good to know that kids are pretty much the same everywhere you go.  When you ask them Wer hat ein Hund? you get about 10 different little hands thrust at you to go along with 10 little voices telling you all about their dogs, the dogs' names, hair color, eccentricities, bowel movements, and so forth, mostly in German with a little English thrown in.  They're very eager to show off how much they know and how much English they can speak and it's amazing how raptly they pay attention.  I'm really looking forward to singing nursery rhymes with them, teaching them vocab with pictures, reading to them, and doing whatever other little things come up.  And, of course, as a nice little cherry on top... a couple of the teachers complimented me on my German!

 

Yes, Vienna even has Italian restaurants with paintings of Mulder, Scully, and Agents J and K if they all had questionable fashion sense.

 

Vienna has kept me busy... busier than Schwäbisch Hall, even though we aren't spending as much time in class and have had virtually no homework so far.  Still, living in a city for the first time with a roommate from Germany (Norbert, he's from good ol' chilly Rostock... more about him in another post) and having to fend for myself in more ways than I ever have before as left little room for missing the small town coziness of my Baden-Würtemburg town.  Austria and Germany definitely are different, though, and so far I can't say which I like better, though I do have a strong feeling I may apply to Vienna for a Fulbright when the time comes.

 

Beate, my tandem partner from Schwäbs, and me.

 

In the meantime, I have to catch a flight in the morning, so I'm going to call it quits here.  A lot of other stuff has gone on, but I'm tired and need to get up early.  I will say this: in my off-time I've still been enraptured, if not completely obsessed with this "geofiction" project of creating an imaginary country and my country's website is now online (http://knabia.rob64.com) and I am now an active participant in the game!  I hope all is well in America (I am a little homesick, I swear).  Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with the Pope and he doesn't like to be kept waiting...

 

I'm currently at work on my country's currency.  There are just so many graphic design possibilities in geofiction.  At this rate, currency may overtake flags!