last post from an austrian ip address

Well this is it. This is my final post from Vienna. Wahnsinn (craziness).

The last week has been insane. The entire time I was either programming, eating, sleeping or drinking (alcohol). I hardly had time to breath. And when I did breath I usually choked on the beer. Yuk yuk...

I have not had a whole lot of time to hang out with my brother and his friend but they have managed to find things to do. They usually sleep during the day and then at night we go out with a crew from Kolpinghaus (my dorm-type place). All of my close friends have already gone home, so the crew is smaller and smaller every night. My brother and his friend are heading to Munich tomorrow for the German exchange and I will be left in peace for about 24 hours. Then Sunday at 7:30am I hop on the first of two flights to get back to Chi-town, Illinois. Pretty exciting, eh?

I am really bummed right now because I am quite sure I just bombed the test for the class I really liked this semester. The professor had promised us that we would get a version of the test in English but when we got there the tutors had no idea what we were talking about. We promptly wrote an e-mail asking for pity on our poor tests. We expected them in English. Argh.

I do not really have anything interesting to say except that this semester rocked out hard. The people all the food and the classes and the food all ruled. I would do again if it did not mean another year in college. I will be lucky to get 5 credits for this semester, which puts me far behind the rest of the people in my class. Oh well - I do not really want to go into the real world yet anyway.

Okay - this is where I sign off... or something like that. Gimme a call sometime after 5pm on Sunday - I will be back in the fast-paced life of an Elginite!

the lost boys

My brother and his friend made it -- after getting separated for three hours going between the Munich Airport and main train station. Holy crap did that suck. My brother text messaged me: "Umm... I lost Brandon [his friend], what should I do?" I think we could have bought a car for the amount that we probably spent on cell phone calls during those three hours of them being lost.

They found each other eventually after his friend called his mom at home in the US from a payphone who then called my brother's cell phone. I think they met in front of a Burger King. How appropriately American.

Everything is good now. My floor is now a bed of matresses. I had to do some acrobatics to get out of my bed this morning and not step on either of those two. I do not think stepping on them would have woken them up though. Last night there was a get-together in my student house because it was some girl's last night. She talked to me a couple times but I still do not remember her name.

Anyhow, any get-together at my place means a minimum of 10 bottles of wine. My brother and his friend helped out on those. And on the one I had in my room. And on the ones we took to the Museums Quarter. From there we went to a Karaoke bar where I very poorly sang "Why Don't You Get a Job?" The monitors blow at that place, so you cannot hear what the hell you are singing. That is a poor excuse for me not being able to sing but it is true. It was fun nonetheless.

Afterwards we fell into our beds around 2:30am. I had to get up early and was at the university by 10:30am. I programmed for a bit and then programmed some more. I think I just might get all of this programming done after all.

Nothing terribly exciting has happened with these two youngin's yet but I will be sure to write it up here when it does. Until then I am out.

forbidden territory

I was in a casino. Booyah.

Last night a couple girls mentioned they wanted to go to the Vienna Casino, so naturally I said I would like to tag along. That began the search for a shirt and jacket. Someone said I had to look snazzy to go to the casino, so I borrowed a shirt and jacket from a French guy who lives on my floor. When we got to the casino two girls were coming out in jeans and t-shirts. Oh well.

We paid 21 Euros at the door and got 25 Euros in chips. Since the minimum bet on all games except the machines was 10 Euros, we cashed in our normal chips for slot machine coins. I always told myself I would never play slot machines, since I know they are for suckers, but I already had 25 in chips and I had nothing else to play. I now know why people like those things. There is something about pulling that stupid handle that is so thrilling. I cannot understand it and I cannot explain it - you just have to try it. Anyway, I was up to about 40 Euros at one time but then quickly lost it all. So it goes.

After all of us had lost our money we went to the floor with the actual games, including Roulette, Black Jack and Paroli. The most interesting was this high roller dude playing Roulette. He only used 20 Euro chips and on every spin he nearly covered the table. He must have laid close to a grand down every spin. I only watched for two spins and both times he hit it big. He had one chip on the number and a bunch of chips on the 2 and 4 number bets touching the winning number. He must have made five grand while I was watching. That was pretty cool.

After that I watched some people lose horribly at Black Jack for a bit and then we decided to head home. Casinos are not too much fun when you do not have money to lose. 21 Euros was plenty for me.

We hopped on a night bus to get back to our place and decided we were going to play some Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory when we got back. We got back around 3am and set up our nerdy LAN party. There were five of us with five laptops. Since I rule I was on the team of two. It was me and an Italian guy versus a French guy, a Russian guy and an Italian girl. My team kicked some Axis bootay.

By the time we decided to call it a night it was too late. It was already morning. It was getting light outside - around 5:30am or so - so we all went to bed.

Needless to say, that was a cool night. I learned that slot machines are indeed for suckers and that I kick ass at Enemy Territory. Seriously - I was like 60-20 every map.

days till I come home: 17

sharkingly refreshing

Last night was sweet.

We heard about some exhibition that was opening up that was going to be serving free food & drinks the entire evening, so we figured we were interested in this exhibition. We got there around 8:30pm and there were already quite a few people in the place. The place, by the way, was pretty swanky.

It turned out to be a photo exhibition called "Disappearing Bangkok" or something like that. After reading some of the descriptions of the exhibition I figured out how the whole thing was put together. The dude who took all the pictures is a chairman at Shark - maker of the Shark Energy Drink (which is almost exactly the same as RedBull). He wanted everyone to come look at his mediocre pictures, so he got his company to sponsor a huge party with free food & drinks. That was a sweet deal for us. We got free drinks until 11pm (many of which included some amount of Shark) and occasionally there were people walking around with platters of Sushi. I told you the place was swanky.

Anyhow, the craziest thing was I met three girls from UIUC at this party. I heard them speaking American (not English, mind you, since almost all students in Europe can speak English) and thought I would say hello. Turns out they are in Vienna for some LAS course for five weeks. It's a small world after all. If you girls, by some equally crazy coincidence, happen upon my website, drop me a line.

Around 11:30pm (after the free drinks were over), the group of people from my student house went to another party close to our house. The place is usually packed whenever someone deems it a 'party' night but it was oddly empty. That was awesome for us - we had the dancefloor to ourselves! We rocked out there until 4:30am or so and then decided to call it a night. A full night of drinks and dancing all for the price of zero Euros. You cannot beat that.

Unfortunately my parents cannot make it to visit due to some family stuff, so this weekend I will most likely be sitting in front of this computer screen cranking out some code. It should be fun.

Well I am done for now. Out.

laziness conquered at last

I finally got around to posting all of my photos from the last two months. Last month I was in a new city every weekend, so I tried to pick the best photos from each trip. Click on the photos link on the left to see them!!

Oh I also changed the look of the menu a wee little bit. The Austrian flag is simply three stripes - red white red. That is what my menu is now (turned on its side of course).

All right, lemme know what you think of my pictures. Out.

holy jit it's shune

Well it is now less than one month till I will be back in States. Luckily, I have put off all work that I have needed to do until now, so this last month I will always have something to do! Actually though, I do not think it should be that bad. Here's a rundown of the work I need to do:

Computer Animation:
My partner and I have made an agreement with three other groups in our course. There are a total of four exercises that need to be done and there are four groups in our collaboration. You draw your own conclusions as to how we worked that out.

Workage factor: 3 / 10

Web Engineering:
This is by far the coolest course I have taken here. Every two weeks we had an assignment on a brand new topic, which meant we had two weeks to learn about the topic and then do the assignment. All of it related to the internet and it is all up-to-date, relevant junk. MySQL, XML, XSLT, XML Schemata, Java Servlets, Java Beans, etc.

We have one more assignment and then an annoying two tests, since the course was separated into lab and lecture. The assignment should be easy but I do not know about the tests.

Workage factor: 5 / 10

Technical German:
This class sucked - when I actually went to it that is. It met once a week for three grueling hours. The chauvinist professor, who claimed to be somewhat of a feminist (I do not understand it either), stood in front of a class of 50 or so students and told lame stories about lame topics. It was pretty lame. Every once in a while he would introduce one or two new technical German words and proceed to define them for at least an hour each.

Despite it's utter boringness, I plan to take the test for the class. I will sit in my room for two days straight and read an entire semester's worth of notes. It worked for a French guy I know, so hopefully that will work for me too.

Workage factor: 6 / 10

Software Engineering
This course was cool but because it took by far the most work of any course I took, it automatically gets knocked down the coolness ladder. The whole course was learning various parts of software engineering to ultimately design and program a text-based, Multi-user Dungeon (MUD). That is one of the old, boring games where you type 'look' and you would get something like 'A hideously ugly ogre brings his sabre within inches of your throat' and then you have as much time as you want to decide what to do in this highly exciting, highly advanced game.

But seriously, the class was good. The only problem is two Austrians and I have to program the server for this thing. We have already had a full month to work on it and it is due in two weeks. Guess how much programming we have done so far? That's right. NONE.

Workage factor: 9 / 10

On top of all this work I should be doing, my parents and my younger sister are planning to come over here this coming weekend. My brother and a friend of his are planning on coming during the last week of June, which happens to be finals week. Procrastinating rules until you actually have to do the work.

I have become more efficient at cranking out code at the last minute since I have taken these courses, so I think I should be able to manage all of this stuff. Now I just have to hope that UIUC will accept these classes as credit for technical electives, otherwise I will be at school for at least one extra semester, maybe even a full year. Not that being at college longer would not rule, but time is money and... money is money, both of which are required to stay longer.

Other than that, Vienna rocks as usual. Saturday I went to a not-birthday party (as he called it) of a Spanish dude I went to Budapest with. It was not his birthday, so he figured that required celebration. Sunday morning I had a headache. Then I cranked out an XML Schema and DTD in a couple hours and called it a night.

I just realized how long this post is, so I will end it here. I'm out.

home sweet home - in Vienna

Well, I am back in Vienna after an awesome four days in Budapest and a short one-day trip to Bratislava. Also, I did not get a chance to make a post last week but a week ago I was in Munich for a couple days to visit my old exchange partner from high school and to see my Mom. Needless to say, all of my travelling rocked out HARD.

Munich was great. Whenever I hang out with my exchange partner, Martin Glas, I always have a good time. I crashed at his sweet pad, which is about an hour from the downtown area with the underground system. We swam on Saturday and then that evening we caught up with my Mom. She was there on a layover, so she had Saturday free. Martin, a couple others from the exchange, my Mom and I went to dinner at a great German restaurant off the main Marienplatz. The food was good, the beer was great and the company rocked. I do not want to get too mushy on ya here, but I had not seen my Mom in almost four months, so it was sweet to be able to eat out with her and a bunch of friends I had not seen in literally years.

During the week I did a bit 'o' schoolwork.

The time it took you to read that sentence is about how much time I spent doing the work. Muwahah... Anyway, onwards with my travel stories. Last Friday, which would be four days ago now, I did a little side-trip with two American girls to Bratislava, Slovakia, which is only an hour away from Vienna by train. The city was nice and the food/beer was cheap but still tasty. Bratislava is not much of a tourist city, so despite the awesome, cheap meals and a relaxing side-trip, we were ready to head back to Vienna at 8pm.

Saturday morning at 11am, seven other students and I set forth on a remarkable journey east to Budapest, Hungary. That sounds so lame. But it was true! Eight of us went for a sweet ass, four-day trip to stay at a girl's apartment in Budapest. That afternoon after getting to the city we took a small tour of the city. The place is beautiful. There are tons of old buildings, like most cities in Europe and the Danube river flows right down the center (and onward to Vienna).

Sunday we took a free boat ride down the river and got a great view of the most important buildings that were situated close to the water. The Parliament building was especially monumental-looking. That day we also went through an impressive Dali collection at a museum in town. The whole collection belongs to some German bloke who was friends with Dali, so he got his hands on some awesome pieces that I had never seen before. The exhibition also included some crazy-ass display from a modern German artist. Some of his work was beyond my comprehension. Some of it just sucked.

Monday was probably the sweetest of all. It was in the mid-90's and sunny all day. We went to a thermal bath... complex, I guess you could call it, for the morning and afternoon. It was great. There was a wave pool outside with no heating and inside the place there was a handful of hot baths that were oddly relaxing after being in the sun. I also experienced the oddest, most uncomfortable sauna ever. The air in it was so wet and hot that it actually burned to breath. I have no idea why anyone would find that appealing. It blew.

Today we went to a museum displaying the history of Hungary during the Nazi and Soviet occupation of the country. The place looked really impressive but sadly it lacked translations. If they get some more English translations in there it will be even more impressive.

Now I am back in Vienna! The 'rents are coming sometime next week I believe, so I have to get crackin' with this schoolwork stuff. I am eating up my friend's internet time, so I gotta end it here. I will try very hard (maybe) to get some photos up here. I have not done that in a while.

All right I am out. E-mail lines are open if anyone gets bored! Ciao.

cities beginning with 'v' for $400

What a week. I will try to fit as much information into this post as possible without writing a whole book.

Last week I got to go to the USA vs. Czech Republic game in the Vienna Stadthalle Ice Arena. That was plain awesome. Two Czechs, another American and I bought tickets for 15 Euros a piece from a scalper guy at the U-Bahn station before heading to the game. The arena was packed with Czechs. I guess Vienna is a bit closer for the Czechs than it is for the Americans. USA tore it up the first two periods. At the beginning of the third period the score was 2 - 0 for the Americans. Sadly, during the third period the Czechs managed two goals leaving the game at a tie after official time ran out. No points were scored during the extra period, so I got to see my first shoot out ever. That was hot - really really hot. It was just like Mighty Ducks, except our team lost. The Czechs got their first shot and after that no one scored leaving the game 3 - 2 for the Czechs.

Saturday morning I caught a 6:30am train from Vienna to Venice (here come the V's). So began my crazy travelling experience. The other people I was planning on going with had switched their tickets to Sunday, since they could not get reservations on the Saturday train, so I was stuck going by myself for a day. I will go into that in another post - I want to get the major stuff out so I can go see the exciting conclusion to the crappiest prequel-trilogy ever: Star Wars Episodes I - III.

Saturday I ended up finding a hotel about 25 minutes away from Venice by bus for 42 Euros for a night, which was actually really cheap for a single. That included a private bathroom, tiny TV and really tasty breakfast. On Sunday I rolled out of bed early so I could get some sightseeing in before I met up with the other Americans around 2pm. I walked around the city for a couple hours and was very impressed. The narrow streets and dozens of canals seemed awesome at first.

Just a quick sidebar thing, or whatever you call it, for those of you who do not know, there are no automobiles in Venice. By 'no' I do not mean 'some' - I mean no automobiles. The entire city, which is rather large, is strictly pedestrian only. Of course you can take boat taxis and gondolas and such but then you would leave Venice with an empty wallet after about five hours. So in case you ever want to see Venice, which is indeed a cool city and I am sure pretty romantic if you come with your signifcant other, be ready to either cough up a lot of dough or walk a heck of a lot. The food and hotels and just about everything that costs money except Gelati is damn expensive, so walking is a must.

left - Juliet's balcony; center - boat race in Venice's Canal Grande; right - St. Mark's resting place along with hundreds of gross, domesticated pigeons

Gelati, by the way, is one of the major food groups in Italy. It is a staple of life. We quickly adhered to this custom by eating at least one cone with two scoops every day. Depending on how rigorous our walking routine was that day, we sometimes bumped it up to two cones. Gelati, by the way, is the most amazing ice cream you will find anywhere. I am sure one scoop has enough fat to feed the Russian army for three winters but it is so GOOD. It was the cheapest in Venice too. On average we paid 1.80 Euros for two scoops. For a pizza that fed one hungry person or two only slightly hungry people, we paid about 10 Euros. Add thirty percent to Euros to get Dollars.

So back to our trip. We toured around Venice for two full days and by that time we had had enough. The winding streets had lost their appeal and had simply become tedious and the canals just meant a flight of stairs up a bridge and a flight of stairs down. The city was cool but two full days was plenty to see all of the big sites. If you are a museum buff then add another day to fit those in.

Yesterday (Tuesday), we took a side trip to Verona, which was about an hour and a half from Venice by train. Verona is the city where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet. The city was a nice break from Venice - there was actually some room to breath. The city retained its major wall that goes half-way around the city and it has a cool castle in the center. The castle was ok from the inside but I was more impressed by the moat and the really long, awesome, old-looking stone bridge that extends from the castle's front. The city also has a Roman coliseum and amphitheater but each had a fee of 3 Euros just to go inside, so we decided to save our wallets the pain and just look at them from the outside. We also got to see Juliet's REAL fake balcony straight from the play!! I have no clue how it became such a big tourist attraction but was packed with school kids and Chinese tourists. I managed to get a picture of the balcony between the fat kid leaving and the giddy Chinese girl coming out.

Well that was my trip in a nutshell - I will have to go into some detail on the funnier, finer points of it later. For now I think I am going to find food and figure out what I am up to tonight.

Ciao, Tschüs, Later, etc. - catch ya later.

another week gone by

I swear time is speeding up. The weeks seem to go by faster and faster and it SUCKS! When I came here I had visions of travelling to some awesome, exotic place every weekend and now I have a little over a month left and I have only been outside Vienna a couple times. Last weekend I spent most of my time in front of a computer screen for the Software Engineering class I am taking. It is definitely cool but the time I am spending on it is far far FAR more than I ever wanted to. It is only worth a couple credits anyway, which does not match the amount of time I am spending programming.

I did manage to catch one of the world championship ice hockey games on Saturday. Czech Republic was playing Slovakia right here in Vienna. Unfortunately, it was a pretty popular game, so our local ticket scalper was asking 70 Euros a pop. We opted for the free, massive television in the tent outside the ice arena. The place was crazy! Slovaks and Czechs alike were jumping on tables, singing songs that I could not understand in the least bit and drinking lots of beer. I took part in the cheering for Czech, since I had come with a Czech friend of mine. It turns out I was on the right side - Czech won 5 to 1 without much effort. They dominated the whole game.

peanut butter & hershey kiss cookies

I have become somewhat of the house cookie-baker in my student home. I guess that is cool and kinda bad. People are always asking when I will make my next batch of cookies. I do not mind baking them because I eat a ton of them everytime I bake. If only I could cook something healthy I would be set. But cookies just taste too damn good... I ate two apples yesterday, so I figure they will cover for the next dozen cookies that I eat.

Well it is time for Computer Animation class. I spent four hours yesterday trying to get the programming environment designed for UNIX working on my Windows laptop. Holy crap did that suck. My professor/teacher guy had no clue how to do it either. He had not planned for such a large class, so there are never enough PC's for everyone to work at the same time. Eh well.

All right I'm out.

SOMMER!!

(Sommer = Summer, only in German)

So right now it is 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside. It is SWEET! I am actually wearing shorts right now. The whole weekend was amazing weather. I guess it is supposed to rain this week but it will stay in the mid-60's and then hopefully warm up once again.

Friday afternoon Kaitlyn, an American girl also studying at TU Vienna, and I took a train to Leoben - a small city two hours south of Vienna by train. A friend of Kaitlyn's is going to a mining school there, so we thought we would take a little weekend trip. The town was much smaller than Vienna and I thought it was excellent. Vienna is by no means as busy or crowded as say Chicago or New York but it was still nice to be in a smaller place for the weekend. We took a little tour of the little city and got some good ice cream and called it a night.

Saturday morning all three of us hopped on another train to Graz - a city one more hour south of Leoben. It was still smaller than Vienna but it was bigger than Leoben. The city was really beautiful and the weather was perfect. It must have been in the low 70's all day. We saw a couple churches and the place where some castle used to be. We hiked for about half an hour up countless stairs to the top of the mountain/hill in the northwest corner of the city. From there we got a great view of the whole place. I took a bunch of panoramic pictures and I will try to get those up here soon. We had an amazing lunch including some of the best potato salad and Sauerkraut I have ever tasted. We slept for a bit in a really nice park, caught a good view of the city after dark and then hopped on a train back to Leoben.

May First is a big day in Austria. I guess it marks the first day of Spring, though I never found an official explanation of why they throw such big celebrations. There was a fair in the center of Leoben that we checked out for a bit. We ate a lot of food and lots of sweets then Kaitlyn and I grabbed a train around 3 o'clock in the afternoon back to Vienna. In Vienna the festivities were huge. At 7pm I met up with a couple friends in Praterstern - a permanent carnival-type place in Vienna. The place was absolutely packed. All of the rides were 25% off because it was May 1st, there were several live music stages and there was more food than you could imagine. Unfortunately the music was not too great and the food was expensive but it was still lots of fun. We walked around the place for a while and caught the fireworks show at 10pm. It was not too bad but not as good as 4th of July shows you see back in the States. I suppose those are tough to top.

I have a block course starting today called Computer Animation. It should be cool... I hope. It only goes for two weeks and it is in English. One day is a two-hour lecture and the next is a three-hour lab. It has potential. I thought the class started at 2pm, so I was frantically trying to find the classroom right at 2. I had forgotten my cellphone in my room, so I could not call the only other person who knew where the class was. I went all the way back to my room, which took 25 minutes, and text-messaged the guy. I got back to the university and he messaged me that the class did not start until 4pm. I was running like a madman for a hour for no reason. BAH! Oh well, I had time to change into shorts and grab my phone, so I guess it was not that bad. The lecture starts in about 15 minutes, so I am going to get a quick game of Backgammon in.

Catch ya'll later.

time flies...

Well it seems I am writing in this Blogger only once a week now. Time is seriously flying by. During the past week I have spent a good chunk of time programming and another good chunk of time going to bars / hanging out with my people. My people are pretty cool. Lots of Frenchies, who I have come to like, my Netherlandish roommate (Netherlandish sounds so much cooler than Hollandish), my programming partner from Czech Republic, a couple awesome people from Poland - everyone is plain awesome. One day I might realize how amazing it is that I am studying in Vienna and hanging out with people from all over the world. Right now I think the wine from last night is impairing my thinking.

Anyway, school is okay I suppose. I am going to drop one of the FIVE programming classes. It is just not possible. Over the past couple weeks I have only had work for two of the classes but now the work is starting up for the other three and I simply cannot do it. I am already spending a good hunk of time in front of this computer screen and I really do not want to make that hunk much bigger. The classes are great but the weather is getting better here and that is inversely related to my motivation. I do get my work done though and I do it well. My Czech partner and I just programmed a weblog using SQL, JDBC, JSP's and Java Servlets. Hot. Seriously hot.

Well I have to get going to my Technical German course. The class kind of stinks - the professor stands up there all night and never stops talking. It really does not do me much good to simply listen to German. I am actually going because right after class is the meeting time/place for a dinner tonight. I am not sure what we are eating but it is cool to hang out with new people.

All right I am out - I am already late for class and I have to walk ten minutes to get there.

cookies and java beans

I have been quite lazy in the past week but now I am back. A lot of stuff, most of it being cool, happened last week and I will try to recap most of it now. I mentioned in my last post that I was going to attempt to bake some chocolate chip cookies for a 'Euro Dinner' last Wednesday. Well, after searching for the ingredients for an entire afternoon, I successfully baked a couple dozen very tatsy cookies! Everyone at the dinner thought they were great. A french girl even asked me for the recipe. Sweet. I put in a couple pictures of my baking attempts. I had to go out and buy a bowl, measuring cup and mixer. I then had to convert English measurements into Metric ones. Well let me tell you - that ain't easy. For whatever dumb reason, as you all know, we use the cup to measure just about everything. In Metric everything is in Liters for liquids and grams for solids. Well, I just bought a liquid measuring cup and attempted to do it all in liters.

Despite the messed up measuring and the really tiny eggs that I used, the cookies turned out great. They seemed a tad dry to me because of the eggs but no one else seemed to notice. I ended up making more cookies yesterday for a common lunch in my dorm place. Everyone brought a dish including an awesome potato salad made by a couple French people, tasty little sandwiches with a cool name that I forget made by an Italian girl, pigs-in-a-blanket type things made by a Ukranian girl and lots of other amazingly good food. Sometimes I feel spoiled living with Italians and French who can cook really good food.



The Java Beans part of the title refers to the homework that I should be working on rather than typing in this Blogger. This Blogger is important though! And homework is boring but actually pretty cool too. I know I am here to study and I should be more motivated to do some work but I am in Vienna, Austria. I have problems getting motivated in Urbana, Illinois where there is not much distraction. Despite my lack of work, the classes I am taking are really cool. I just downloaded enough documentation to keep me busy for an entire month - I have to read and learn it all and then create a program in a little over a week. Excellent. Pressure does me good.

Well like I said I have plenty to read now, so I am going to go curl up with my JSP manual and have myself a good read. I hear it gets exciting after they install the server!

All right I am done. Try not to drool on your keyboard as you look at my amazingly tasty chocolate chip cookies.

stuff a plenty

All right - the photos from my Easter trip to Berlin and Amsterdam are up! Click the picture of the dude holding his thing to check 'em out. He was standing guard outside some expensive museum. Needless to say, we decided not to go to that museum.



As for the past couple days - I have felt like I am actually at school!! I am taking way too many programming classes... five to be exact. I had assignments for two of them that were due yesterday (Sunday) and today (Monday). They gave us the assignments about a month ago... but that was right before break - did they actually expect me to work? So anyway, I had to crank out a MUD client and a Mastermind Servlet in the past week. It wasn't easy and even the final code didn't do everything correctly. Eh well, I'm over it.

I did manage to find some time to check out some bars and such in the past week though. The one that we have found to be the best is a place called Flex. It is a dirty hangout spot for 20-somethings. It is right on the Donau river with tons of picnic tables outside. You can bring your own booze and sit outside or head inside for a dirty, awesome atmosphere with good music and average-priced drinks. Last night we went there for a "film evening." They played the making of Metallica's album St. Anger. Man was that boring. I don't get how mega-billionaires can have so much to complain about. After that we watched a bit of one of Jet's tours, which rocked hard with the awesome sound system in the place.

I am going to attempt to make chocolate chip cookies for a dinner on Wednesday, so I will let you know how that goes. Other than that - I really want some Leberkaese, so I am going to go get some. After cranking out code for a couple hours I could use a hot, greasy slab of unknown meat. Man, I am almost drooling. Whoops. Make that I am drooling. Gross.

All right, that is all for now.

COMMENTS!

Real short. You can now leave comments on these posts. Click the comments link at the bottom. Write me! K, buh-bye.

tasty bread

First of all I've got to apologize. I swear the photos from Easter will be up really soon. I attempted to make a cool index page for the whole set but it looks really lame, so if I get around to it I will make it cooler tonight and post all of them tomorrow.

Now onto important matters. The weather here has gotten awesome in the past couple days. It is 60-something outside right now. I am not even wearing a coat! I'm a huge fan of warm weather. I think my mood gets better as the weather gets warmer too. Is that weird? The forecast I saw on the bigscreen TV used for advertisements in the subway station (that is a lot of prepositional phrases, still with me?) said it is supposed to be 20 degrees Celsius tomorrow! I'm stoked. That is about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Friday and Saturday it is supposed to rain though, which sucks.

I realized the less I write in this blogger the more the days tend to blur together. It seems like yesterday that I was skiing and the day before that I was chilling with Neuman at a Balzac Coffee in Berlin. But yeah, last night I went with a group of foreign students to a Turkish restaurant. Holy crap - they had the tastiest, most perfect bread EVER. The inside was incredibly soft and the outside was the perfect crispiness and very flaky. I never thought I was a fan of the flakiness but it seemed perfect last night. At this restaurant though, they know their own food. They are prepared for the piles of bread flakes that inevitably accumulate on each and every table. After our meal, which was not enough food but I think they can get away with it because they give you free, amazing bread, a dude came around with a pair of DUSTBUSTERS to suck up all the bread flakes! That is right, dustbusters!!! I thought that was pretty hilarious. I thought the guy should go all out and get holsters for those things but no one else seemed too amused.

School is going all right I suppose. Yesterday I had a lecture for my advanced programming course. I got into a group with two girls, who I am pretty sure are both Austrian. I did not have much time to talk to them. One of them shaved the sides of her head, which might make for a quicker shower but it is downright ugly. Why would a girl do that? Maybe she will find herself a skinhead and they'll make ugly, bald babies together. Or maybe they would be born with hair only down the middle, like a mohawk. That would be pretty sweet. A baby born with a mohawk. Where was I? Oh, but the other girl seems normal and I remember her telling me her name but I usually forget names within seconds. Andrea maybe? I will have to ask her again or sneakily figure it out - I always feel weird asking a person's name when I am positive I have asked before.

All right, I have to go figure out this programming assignment that is due on Sunday. It is a client for a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD). Wow... after typing that I realized how much of a nerd I am. I have always known but that was one of those times where the reality of it seems to hit you all at once. So yeah, have a great day or whatever and hopefully by tomorrow all my pictures will be up. I'm out.

the illini

Well it definitely sucks about the Illini. I really wish I had been back at school during the past week or so. I'm sure the place was insane. Hopefully they will kick ass again next year. It is still sweet that they made it to the championship game. Unfortunately I did not see a single game in the entire tournament - no one in Europe seems to care about American college sports much. Boo.

Anyhoo, I am slowly getting into real work now. Sad, isn't it? I am taking a bunch of progamming courses and they all just toss you in the deep end and hold your head under. I am not sure if you understand what I mean by that and I am not sure I do either. It sounded good when I was typing it though. But yeah, I am taking Software Engineering (C++ & Linux), Web Engineering (Java) and Advanced Object-oriented Programming (Java). Fun stuff. I have been reading manuals since I got back from skiing on Saturday. I also downloaded roughly a billion different development tools in the past couple days and I have to learn how to use all of them within the next week or so. That should be interesting.

Last night my roommate, a French guy and I went to a jazz club close to the Rathaus. We had been there before and the music is usually pretty good and it is always free on Mondays. Last night, however, the music was not very good at all. The band consisted of a piano, a bass, a drumset and a female singer. She needed more practice. I can't really complain, since we did not pay anything to get in but I did feel obligated to buy that 1.70 Euro glass of wine.

We ditched the mediocre jazz around ten and headed to... HOOTERS!! Those capital letters probably got you really excited about the exotic Austrian Hooters but unfortunately I am playing the bearer of bad news today. The place was almost empty, our waitress was wearing a coat and the chicken wings needed a lot of work. I will have to try it again on a Friday or Saturday night and I will report back. After hooters we hit up a brewery called 1516. They make their own beer and I was quite impressed by it. It was sweeter than most and I really liked it.

Well, I have to go to class now, so I will end it here. I leave you with the image of the fries I ate in Amsterdam - the guy practically put a whole jar of mayonnaise on the things. It was disgusting.

learning to ski

I just got back into Vienna once again after being in Slovakia for two and a half days. A group of five of us went there to check out the end-of-the-season skiing. While we were on the train heading to Bratislava, I realized our group and almost laughed at how odd and awesome it was. We were five guys, one Czech who spoke Czech (and Slovakian, which he says is almost the same language), German and English, one French who spoke French, German and English, one Swedish who spoke Swedish, German and English, one Finnish who spoke Finnish, Swedish, German and English and me, the American, who spoke German and English.

Anyway, we got into Liptovsky Mikulaŝ (spelling is probably wrong, but the 'aŝ' on the end sounds like the 'age' in mirage) around 3pm on Wednesday and found our hotel and the slopes. The slopes closed at 4pm, so we did not get to do any skiing the day we got in. Instead, we put our stuff in the hotel, which only cost 8 Euros per night and then we headed back into town. The ski area was about 25 minutes by bus from the actual town. The bus cost about 60 cents. We ate dinner and drank some great, cheap beer - it was only 50 cents or so for half a liter. We stocked up on groceries so we would not have to come back to town the next day and then we hopped on the bus back to our hotel.

Thursday morning the French guy and I rented skis and skiboots for 5 Euros a day. All five of us bought our ski passes, which were about 6 Euros a day. Then we hit the slopes. I had gone skiing a total of maybe four times in my life prior to this week, so it was interesting trying to figure it out without much instruction. I was going to try to count the number of times I fell but I ran out of fingers and toes. I stuck with the short, easy slope while the rest of the guys checked out the bigger ones. I fell a bunch of times and got a nice bump on my left hip, because I always seemed to fall on my left side for some reason.

Friday was much the same except we waited to get to the slopes until 10:30am or so. On Thursday they had been very icy in the morning. I stayed on the small slopes in the morning and then went with the Finnish and Swedish guys to the hardest slope in the whole place during the afternoon. Boy was that fun! The view was incredible from the top of the mountain, so all of my falls were definitely worth it. Anyway, I fell more times than I can possibly remember but it was fun. The Swedish guy stayed behind me and took a couple pictures of me falling - I will see if I can get those.

An hour after the slopes closed I had to run to catch the bus back to the train station. I got back into Vienna around 11:30 Friday night. I was extremely tired and quite sore but two days of skiing in Slovakia was definitely amazing.

Now I have to work on this assignment that I have put off for quite a while. I will try to get the rest of my Easter pictures up soon and see if I can get the pictures of me falling while skiing too. That is all I've got for now. Later.

back in Vienna!

Well, I made it back to Vienna, Neuman made it back to Chicago and Blake made it to his friend's place in Stuttgart. All is well. Our week up North was a blast! Unfortunately I do not think I will have time to write about everything tonight. I will write about our trip over the next couple days.

As you might notice, I did a big remake on the zwebsite. I shrank the thing quite a bit to make it fit in the commonly-used 1024 x 768 resolution. If it does not fit perfectly right now I will figure it out and finally fix it this week. I added descriptions to all of the pictures from Vienna and I am in the process of adding descriptions to the rest. All of the photos from my Berlin/Amsterdam trip will be up there soon too. All of this is thanks to my awesome parents who got me a laptop! Neuman brought it with him when he flew into Berlin. I had to carry it around for a week but it was definitely worth it.

I think I will end it here for tonight but I do want to mention one thing. I took the night train from Berlin back to Vienna on Saturday and got into Vienna early Sunday morning. As I got into the train station the place seemed so familiar to me. It was the oddest sense of 'home' that I have ever felt but it certainly was that. I was relieved and happy to be back in my own room and bed. I don't want to get sappy and sentimental on you here but the feeling was so unexpected that I thought it was worth mentioning.

All right, the rest of my photos will be up in the next couple days, so check back! Now it is time for bed.

saint patty's day

I have been meaning to write a post for a couple days now and I finally got around to it. I have been trying to hammer out my exact plans for the next two weeks - Easter Break. I will fill you in with everything we have figured out so far.

Saturday night, Blake, an American from my German class back in February, and I are taking a night train from Vienna to Berlin. Unfortunately almost all trains leaving Austria go through Salzburg first, so instead of a 5- or 6-hour train ride it is in fact a 10-hour train ride. Oh well - that is why we are taking the night train. We are going to get into Berlin around 9am. Neuman, a buddy from UofI, arrives in Berlin at 1pm on Sunday. We will check out the city a bit and spend the night. The train tickets we bought from Berlin to Amsterdam were cheap but cheap means you have to travel at crappy times... like in the middle of the day. So on Monday afternoon we hop on a train to Amsterdam, which takes roughly six hours. We will spend three nights there, which I think will be very sweet. We then come back to Berlin on Thursday the 24th, which I know may not seem smart but Neuman has to fly back to the states out of Berlin.

We spend another two nights in Berlin and actually get a chance to see the city and then Neuman takes off on Saturday afternoon and Blake heads to Stuttgart or some other city in Germany to stay with a friend for a couple days. I am not quite sure what I will do after they leave and I have not yet bought a train ticket, so my second week of break is up in the air.

Anyway that is the plan. Right now it is incredible outside - probably around 60 degrees or slightly warmer. Next week it will only be in the 50's, but I can deal with that much easier than below freezing.

And, as the title says, today is Saint Patrick's Day! Even though there are not many Irish people in Vienna, there are still a couple Irish pubs. I will definitely be checking one of those out. We have already gone to one pub a couple times. The first time I was there I managed to spill my friend's 4-Euro Irish Cider all over my pants. That was not cool. I don't think I have washed those yet... If I do not spill anything, tonight should be a good night.

With that I think I will have to end this post. Blake and I are still searching for hostels for next week. My advice to everyone: book hostels more than 5 days ahead of time. It does not work too well if you procrastinate like me. It makes things more exciting I suppose but it still is not too smart. All right, I am out.

PICTURES!!!

You read it correctly. There are now pictures up from Vienna!!! Click on the Photos button on the left to check them out. Sadly I did not have enough time to write descriptions of the pictures - perhaps those will come later. As for right now I am just happy to have pictures up. I also did not bother to sort them. They are all just thrown into one big page.

Kids, shield your eyes... some of the people from my German class were not so polite in front of my camera. On the whole though the pictures are good. All of the pictures were taken somewhere in Vienna. After Easter Break I will likely have more to put up. All right - enjoy.

ain't so bad

Well, it turns out not all of the lectures at this university are like the one I wrote about in my last post. I had another one on Wednesday and it was far more interesting. I actually understood a good portion of what the professor was saying and his slides were in English, so I paid attention. I think I will not be taking that first lecture I went to. That first professor was almost unbearable... very quiet, difficult to understand and boring. Oh well. I think I found some courses to replace that one.

Anyway, Vienna is going well. It is finally getting a bit warmer here. I do not know if it will last but it sure is a nice change. It hasn't snowed in nearly 48 hours, which is a very good sign.

A week from tomorrow (Sat.) marks the beginning of our two week Easter break. I know I do not really deserve a break because up to this point I have not done much work at all but I just have to follow along. During my undeserved break I am going to head up north to Berlin, Amsterdam and possibly Brussels. That is only the first week. I am still not quite sure what I will be doing the second week. Possibly skiing in the Czech Republic. I will try to keep track of everything and let you know how it all goes.

Last night was the welcome meeting for the Buddy Network here at the Technical University. All of the exchange students at the TU are assigned buddies - students who have been at the TU for several years. We got to see what the Buddy Network has planned for this semester. If you wanna take a look at all the sweet stuff we are doing go here: Buddy Network. Anyway, there was free food and wine and afterwards the whole crowd moved to a nearby student housing place for another party. The music pretty much stunk but I talked with people from all over Europe.

Today I've really got to figure out my classes and then there is another big party tonight. I am working hard as you can read and I hope all of you are working hard too. Or something. I'm out.

first real lecture

Well, I just got out of my first actual lecture of the semester. Despite what you may have thought, I can tell you first-hand that lectures in Austria are just as boring as they are back in the States. The professor spoke German (of course), which did not help his cause. It was a lecture on Technical Programming in C++ and it seems that the course starts from the very beginning. I already took a course in C++ back at UIUC, so the lecture here might turn out to be not too useful. Anyway, I only understood maybe 30% of what the professor said. I was sitting in back, he did not enunciate very well, a lot of the words were technical things I had never heard before and my mind gave up on translating after realizing it was not going to understand much.

So for a first lecture I think it went pretty well! Despite not understanding the professor, he stuck to his lecture notes, which I bought at the beginning of the class. I understood the notes just fine, so if he continues to stick to the them I don't think I will have a problem.

Right now I am going to go to the grocery store. As great as it is that Europeans frown upon preservatives, to me it simply means I have to go grocery shopping more often. Oh well - I can stand grocery shopping at least slightly more than I can stand clothes shopping.

Ooh, I got another book to read now. Without a computer, books have become my main form of entertainment. (When there isn't a party to go to.) I already read The Hunt for Red October, Airframe, A Darkness More Than Night, and Hornet Flight. I just borrowed a book from another American called The Last Kingdom. I'll let you know how that goes.

Time for food. Later.

standing and typing

Much to my chagrin I discovered what time the internet rooms close on Saturdays. 4pm. Guess what time I decided to get here? 3:57pm. So right now I am standing up using a computer outside the internet room. It is really annoying but I need my daily internet dosage.

So this week was officially the first week of classes. I went to a grand total of two hours of class. It was tough. The first week or so is just introductory lectures to explain what classes are about. After going to those you decide if you want to take the course and then sign up, etc. It does not seem like the greatest system to me... but I just have to go with the flow.

I think I will be taking five or six courses. Only two or three of them meet on a regular basis though. The other courses are two or four weeks long or something random like that. I think I will have four-day weekends all semester. I was somewhat happy when I realized what my schedule was going to be.

Anyway, I really don't have much to talk about since I spent most of this week finalizing my courses, eating and sleeping. There were a couple parties. There were a couple bars.

Oh, I got a new cellphone number for all of you who are frantically calling my other one with no luck. New cellphone number: +43 650 7005741. I would update the "Secret" page but I think I need to be sitting to work on HTML. I also really want to put pictures up but I don't have the programs to do it. I might be able to convince someone to lend me his computer. Hmm... That's a good idea. I think I am going to try to borrow a laptop for a bit. I am no great photographer but I have taken a bunch of pictures.

I have been chatting on GAIM (AIM ported into Linux) this whole time, so this post doesn't seem to be about anything in particular. I think I will end it here to stop wasting your time. Later.

aaahh!!! real work

The title of this post is a tribute to the late Aaaahh!!! Real Monsters from Nickelodeon... man was that a great show.

Anyhow, this past weekend was pretty sweet. I got to hang out with my old exchange partner from high school - Martin Glas! He took the train from Munich to Vienna and I met him at the train station at 10 o'clock Friday night. We went out to a bar and caught up on junk - you know how it goes. We had to walk back to my place since I still have not figured out how the night buses work. The U-Bahn (subway) stops running around half past midnight and after that there are night buses that run every half hour. The problem is figuring out exactly where the things go. At my student housing place I paid €9 per night for Martin to stay and they gave him a mattress, blankets, a pillow and towels. I thought that was pretty cool.

Saturday we toured around the Museum quarter and the City Hall area. I don't remember if I mentioned it before but there is a huge ice skating thing set up outside the City Hall. It's a mini-fest that goes until the 6th of March. There Martin introduced me to Glühwein - hot wine with cinnamon and some other stuff. On a cold day that stuff is awesome. After that we got a cool tour of the Burgtheater (castle theater). We got a good history of the place and we got to go backstage. I found the stage to be the coolest part because it's a huge toy. The entire stage revolves silently to allow entire scene changes in 40 seconds. There are also a series of platforms that can lower and raise to allow a max of 4 (I think) separate scenes to be ready to go all at once.

Later that night we went to a couple bars with a friend of his who lives in Vienna. I finally got to see some of the places that the 'locals' go to rather than the usual tourist or exchange-student bars. They were very cool.

Sunday was unfortunately rather uneventful. Martin's train left at 4pm, so when we woke up at noon we really did not have time to do anything worthwhile. We grabbed some pastries for brunch and I tried to make sense of his German physics book. All the cocepts are things I have seen before but trying to understand all the German words for everything was a challenge. After he left I did some eating and played a bit of soccer in the basement of my student housing place.

Yesterday and today I have spent most of my time trying to figure out my class schedule. Schedules here hardly even fit the definition of 'schedule' it would seem. One course I want to take is only two weeks long and doesn't start til' May. Another one is four weeks long and starts in April. I think I have two or three courses that actually meet at a regular time throughout the whole semester. Don't get me wrong - I am not complaining about having tons of free time, I just find their way of course scheduling to be rather odd. All this searching and planning is the real work I was talking about in the title of this post. Of course it is not real work but it's the closest I have done in over a month and I'm pooped.

I am gonna go buy myself a pair of Leberkäse sandwiches and head back to my room to finish reading The Hunt for Red October. It's a tough life but somebody's gotta do it. I'm out.

healthy once again!

Well I survived my annoying cold. It was no fun at all... I had a couple nights where I barely got any sleep. Eh well, I am all good once again. I have a bunch of junk to write about, so here I go.

Monday after I wrote the post about being sick I did indeed sleep for almost the whole day. It was quite nice. Then that night I met up with Sharkey! That was awesome - I had not seen him since August of last year or something. We had some famous (and expensive) Austrian coffee and then walked around for a bit. We went to the Rathaus (city hall) because it looked cool from a distance. For about another week there will be an ice skating rink as well as an ice skating path right outside the Rathaus. It looked pretty cool - an iced-over path through the park outside made for skating. The whole thing was lit up with a bunch of different color lights, so it was cool. Then we grabbed some dinner with the rest of his UofI friends that he had come with and called it a night.

Tuesday was the final day of my German course. We took a test and made plans for that evening. I was still a bit sick that day but I figured I could sleep a lot before meeting everyone that night. I did some laundry again that afternoon and discovered something extremely cool and top secret. I am telling this only to you. I realized the coins that you have to buy from front desk were almost exactly the same size and thickness of a 10-cent piece except the 10-cent piece had ridges on its edge. I decided I would see if the machine would accept them despite the ridges. After about 15 tries, the drier accepted the 10-cent piece!! Instead of paying 2 Euros to dry one stinkin' load of laundry I now only have to pay 10 cents! I am sure they won't be too happy when they find 10-cent pieces in the machine's coin box but oh well.

Anyway, I did laundry and slept that afternoon. Around 7ish the whole class and our awesome teacher met at a pub / wine tavern place in the center of the city. It was a small out-of-the-way place. One of those things that you normally would not find unless you were looking for it. It turned out to be very cool. We ordered a couple bottles of wine for our group of 10 and had a great time.

Wednesday we went to the Pathological Museum here in Vienna. That place turned out to be... interestingly gruesome. Some of the pictures and models left little to the imagination. I think I will just leave it at that, hah. I would say it was worth the 2 Euros, though.

After the museum I cruised the 'net a bit. Then Cyril, one of the French guys from my German class, and I grabbed some Kebab from the local open-air marketplace. The Kebab was very tasty and only cost €2.50. As we ate we walked towards one of the big shopping areas. We finished our Kebab and went into a massive electronics store. I'm just mentioning it because it is a lot like Best Buy except bigger. It was probably twice the size of a regular Best Buy spread out on two (or was it three...?) floors. That was the highlight of the evening. After that we went home and I slept a lot again.

Yesterday was not terribly exciting. I attempted to search for classes, which was much more difficult than I had anticipated. With most of the webpages being in German it isn't easy to decipher what exactly the class is and what previous knowledge is required. Eh well, hopefully I will figure it out.

Then last night a couple of us went to the Austria vs. Spain soccer game. I think I understand why soccer never got big in the United States... nothing ever happens!!! The game was quite uneventful and it ended 0-0. Even in boring games like baseball there are usually a few runs scored. In basketball the score is constantly going up; Football has guys knocking other guys down, which is always entertaining even if points aren't scored; Hockey is lots of hard hits; etc. But soccer is just a bunch of guys running back and forth down a field kicking a ball. They never knock anyone down except for the occasional boring trip or slide tackle, whatever it is called.

Despite the 0-0 score it was still cool to go to a sporting event in Austria. The crowd was crazy the whole time, singing weird songs to the tune of Jingle Bells and a couple other odd selections. They also set off some very impressive smoke bombs up in the stands. I guess for 11 Euros it was a pretty good deal.

Tonight my friend from Munich is coming to Vienna. It'll be sweet. I'm out for now.

sick

This will be a short post - I just ran out of kleenex. As the title says, I am sick and it is really not cool. The free Vienna newspaper actually had a headline a couple days ago about a flu epidemic. I think it said something like 4% of the population is sick right now. I am pretty sure I just have a common cold but it stinks nonetheless. I don't think anyone wants any details, so I think I'll leave them out. One quick thing though - I have no idea how to get over-the-counter medicine here. It is not sold at the grocery store and it is not sold at the 'drug store' type place. The 'drug store' type place is where you get shampoo, toilet paper, hygiene stuff, etc. The grocery store is food and some of the hygiene stuff. But neither one sells OTC medicine! I think I have to go to the Apotheke (pharmacy) but I am kind of intimidated, so the Ricola cough drop things I found will have to suffice.

Last night we went to an English theater for the first time to see Meet the Fockers. The movie was hilarious! I'm not a huge fan of Barbara Streisand but she did well. Overall it was a pretty good sequel. The theater itself was interesting. The price for tickets depended on where you wanted to sit. First row was the cheapest, second through ninth row came next and then everything behind ninth row was the most expensive. I thought that was kind of weird. We ended up paying €7.90 for eighth row seats (around $10). I think I will wait til I get back to the States to see the rest of the big movies coming out in the next couple months.

All right I think that is it for now. I left class early because of my nasty cold, so I am going to go to bed now.

finally free internet!!

Sweet. Double super sweet. I got internet access today at the university!! Holy crap is it nice to not have to pay for internet anymore. I spent at least $25 on internet access in the past three weeks. However, now I have unlimited free access at the computer labs at the university. It looks as though they are usually pretty crowded (and the semester hasn't even officially started yet) but I don't think getting a spot will be a huge problem. I don't mind waiting a few minutes if it means I don't have to pay.

Since I last wrote a real post I have done a couple cool things. Over the weekend the weather was very nice. We went to the Donauturm, which is a space needle type tower. From there we got an excellent view of the entire city and surrounding mountains. They also have bungee jumping there but I thought the €85 per jump was a bit steep. After the Donauturm we went to a cool place called Hundertwasserhaus. It is a large house designed by an artist named (surprise surprise...) Hundertwasser. It is quite unique. He designed a couple other cool places in the city including the place where garbage is burned. I'll try to snap a few photos and once I figure out a good way to post them I will put them up on the site.

On a much less cultural note, I found a DanceDanceRevolution machine! Which sucks. It is €1 per play (about $1.30) and I have already played a good ten times. I think it is quite dangerous that I found that thing... If I write about how expensive everything is in Vienna it will probably be because I've blown on my money on the stupid DDR machine.

Wednesday we bought tickets to see the big soccer match between Austria and Spain. We bought some good Austrian beer and pre-partied at a guy's apartment while watching Futurama. Unfortunately when we got to the stadium everyone was walking away from it. Turns out there was too much ice on the field or something. Apparently soccer cannot be played on the ice. Bogus. Anyhow, the game was rescheduled for next Thursday, so we will be buying some more beer and watching some more Futurama.

Today, like I wrote above, I got my internet name and password, which rocks my socks off. Now all of the money that I would have been spending in Internet Cafes can be spent on more useful things... like the DDR machine.

Sharkey and a couple other U-of-I-ans, all of whom are studying in Paris now I believe, are coming to Vienna on Sunday. That should be awesome. Then next weekend my friend from Munich is hopefully going to be coming here. That should incredibly sweet - I don't think I have seen him since high school graduation.

Well I think that is all I've got for now. Meet the Fockers just arrived in Vienna yesterday, so I think we are going to see it on Sunday. I never got a chance to see it in the States. Anyhow, catch ya'll later and e-mail me a lot.

contact me

Just a real quick post here. One of the guys in my German class let me use his computer for a bit, so I was able to update the contact info page. If I had time I would change the menu so it wouldn't say 'Secret' anymore... but that will come later.

Until then, click on 'Secret' to see my contact info in Austria. I have a mailing address and a cell phone number (if you want to call international!) if you want to send me crap. I can also always be reached via the two e-mail addresses listed on that page.

I'm going to a soccer game tonight between Austria and Spain. It should be sweet. That's it for now.

adventures in laundry

Well, my laundry is done. It was, however, somewhat of an ordeal. There are only two laundry rooms in my student housing building, so it is necessary to reserve the laundry room ahead of time. Luckily when I checked the room was open right at that time, so I didn't really have to plan ahead. I paid 2 Euros and the girl at the desk gave me a key to the laundry room and a small token. At this point I had no clue how anything worked but the girl had said the room wasn't reserved for the next two hours, so I could use the room that whole time. I figured that meant I could do as much laundry as I wanted in the next two hours. How nice that would have been if that were true!

I dragged my bag of laundry one floor up (I live on the fourth floor and the laundry room is on the fifth) and went into the room. In this room that was probably 6ft. x 10ft. there was one lonely machine sitting in the corner with a massive set of German instructions hanging over it. Everything in the instructions pertained to laundry, so I actually had to go back to room to get my dictionary just so I could figure out how the thing worked. Ten or fifteen minutes later I thought I had it figured out, so I opened the thing up and found the machine was extremely tiny on the inside. It is probably close to half the size of all washers I have seen in the USA. Anyway, I stuffed as much stuff as I could into the tiny machine, which turned out to be not even half of all the laundry I needed to do. I put the token into the machine and at that point realized that for the 2 Euros I had paid this machine was only going to let me do one load of laundry and there was no drier in the room. 2 Euros ($2.60) just to get my clothes wet!

I started the thing up and the timer on the front panel slowly rose to 40 minutes. I think I overloaded it. Anyhow, I came back about 40 minutes later and the thing still had 10 minutes to go. In the last ten minutes the thing spun so fast I thought it would take off. I actually stood back a couple feet just in case. The thing ended and I now had a load of wet laundry.

I went back downstairs to return the key and asked if there was a drier somewhere I could use. Turns out I would have to pay another 2 Euros ($2.60) to dry my clothes! $5.20 for one load of laundry. Down at school I think I pay $1.50. So I opted to go with the drying rack things they had at the front desk, which were free to borrow. It took all day to dry my clothes and they are all stiff as boards because they never got any fabric softener. Either I will have to start wearing clothes longer before cleaning them or I'll have to find a cheaper place to do laundry.

Well that was most of yesterday (Saturday). That is all the time I have for this post. Adios.

post

Hello once again. I do not think I have anything terribly exciting to report but I'll write what I have done since my last post. I don't think I can remember all the details like in my last post but I will see what I can do.

Sunday night after I wrote my last post I went with a couple people from my German class to a ballet in the City Opera House. Yes, you read that correctly. A ballet. A girl who lives in my student building is studying opera, so she goes to the Opera House every week. I had never seen a ballet or an opera and I was not doing anything, so I figured I would go with. We got standing room only tickets for just 2 Euros and then we had to pay 90 cents to check our coats. The ballet was... interesting I suppose. I was more interested in the orchestra than the dancers. The music was excellent - it almost made me want to dust off my saxophone. I would really like to go to a classical concert here. I think that would be really cool.

On Monday I was introduced to a very tasty local specialty: Leberkäse. The name directly translated is "liver cheese" but actually the stuff has no liver or cheese in it. It is kind of like a hot dog or bologna but it comes in loaf-form. I am really not sure what meats are in it but it is darn good. There is a small shop right next to the university that sells Leberkäse sandwiches for 90 cents a piece. Since Monday I have eaten four or five.

Monday night a couple of us went to a club that I think is mainly for foreign students. It was pretty cool. They put on some Michael Jackson and Footloose, so I felt right at home.

Tuesday I don't think I did much. I had class and probably ate some Leberkäse. Oh, I did buy some chocolates on Tuesday - these things called Mozart Kugels. I am not really sure what Mozart has to do with them but his face is on every wrapper. They are dark chocolate with chocolate creme and marzipan filling. They are quite tasty.

Yesterday I went to a museum with a couple people from my class. It was the Belvedere Museum of Baroque Art or something like that. Some of the rooms were really impressive - moreso than some of the art. The most famous thing from that museum is a painting of Napoleon on a horse. I think it is one of the most famous paintings Napoleon and I am pretty sure I remember it being in one of my history books years ago. Next time you read about Napoleon and you see a painting of him on a horse... it is probably the one I saw. Sweet. The only bad thing about the museum was we forgot to ask for the student price, so we paid 6 Euros to get in.

Last night I went to a party with my buddy from the university. It was a going away party for a girl who studied here last semester and is going home at the end of this week. It was definitely fun but it was very difficult to understand German with loud music and a couple glasses of wine. I can understand my German teacher without any problems but younger people speak so fast here that I find myself asking "What?" pretty often.

Anyway, I think I need to go do some laundry. I have been putting it off as long as possible but I think I am out of clean socks. Now all I have to do is figure out how the laundry works in my student housing place...

colder than cold

Heyo. It has been a few days since I have actually had a couple free hours to do some casual Internetting, so this post might be a bit long as I slowly remember everything I have done.

Since my last post it has gotten a few degrees colder every day. In a few days it will surely be the next Ice Age. OK, I guess it is not that cold but it is darn near close. There have been winters like this in Chicago many a time but I think I never noticed them as much as I do here. I have to walk everywhere (which is a very nice change from using my car all the time) over here, so I am always out in the cold. I almost never bring a hat and gloves with me in the US save for maybe some gloves for driving but over here they have become a necessity.

All right, on to what I have done. Tomorrow will be the one-week mark and it feels like it has been a month. I have already become pretty good friends with the people in my German class because it is only a 12-person class. None of us knows anyone in Austria, so we are all very happy to make friends with other people who are still working on their German.

FRI:

Friday night we tried to find a good club or bar to go to, so we went to the first one we found. It was pretty cool inside but the average age of the bar seemed to be at least 30. We had a beer (a darn expensive one at that - 3,30 Euros for one beer!! that is about $4 for a single 0.33L beer) and then went in search of a better place. Mind you it was a typical nose-dripping cold, Austrian night and we decided to follow a guy who claimed to know of a good place. It took us a good 45 minutes to get there because of some contruction and the club didn't seem too great. We ended up all going home around midnight without having done much.

SAT:

Saturday we went to the center of town around 3 o'clock and started at the largest church in Vienna - Stephansdom. I was very impressed. It is one of the largest churches I have seen in Europe and it is also ornately decorated. We decided to pay 3 Euros to walk to the top of the thing, which turned out to be quite a task. When we got to the top the view was blocked by scaffolding, which was incredibly annoying. It was only possible to clearly see out of one of the four tiny windows. Despite the poor view the church was still quite impressive. We then went to Peterskirche (Peter's Church) and Michaelerkirche (Church of Saint Michael). Both were cool but neither was nearly as large as Stephansdom. Michaelerkirche was cool though because it was the first place where Mozart's Requiem was played following his death. It took us a long time decipher that from the German but we are quite confident that that is what the stuff in the church said.

We were pretty churched-out after having visited three, so we found a nice coffee house and plopped down for a solid two hours. The prices were about the same as a Starbuck's but we got real, extremely tasty Austrian coffee. I had a Häferlkaffee (I think that is how it was spelled), which is a huge cup of coffee with lots of steamed milk. Despite its simplicity it was excellent and perfect for a very cold day. After that we split up for the night. Unfortunately the cold has been cutting most of our outtings very short.

SUN:

Today we met up with our German class teacher and went to the Vienna City Museum. It is a very nice, not-so-big museum that holds the history of Vienna. The coolest things were large models of Vienna from two separate times. The largest model was a good 15 feet square.

After the museum we walked around a bit as our teacher showed us a couple buildings. I tried to pay attention but again it was quite cold. I do remember seeing some cool sphinxes, which I will have to go back and see once it gets a bit warmer. We walked to the city hall where some sort of festival was going on. There was ice skating and some very bad American music from the 70's and 80's. If it hadn't been so cold we might have tried ice skating but by the time we walked to the place we were frozen stiff and the ice was already pretty crowded.

That brings me to the here and now. In the here and now I now have an Austrian cell phone! I finally got it from the same place I use the internet. My number is +43 0676 7344211 in case anyone wants to call me.

I think that wraps up this post.

just a quickie

OK, like the title says this is just a quick post.

Today was the first day of my German course and it was pretty sweet. I expected to know less German than most of them but it turns out I am just about right. The class has three Americans (including me), three students from France, one from Norway, one from the Czech Republic and two from Turkey. I think there might be one more but I don't remember... I remember only a couple names. They aren't easy.

Anyhoo, things are lookin' good. After I get my university ID next week I will be able to use the internet for free at the university, so then I can start uploading some pictures. Until then you will just have to use your imagination. Tonight most of the people from my class are going to go out for food or drinks or something - it should be good times.

Oh, also if I get some spare time on the 'net I will try to fix the comments thing. Right now this blogger is on my EWS account and the rest of the site is on the CITES space, so it kinda mucks things up. All right I am done for now.

i made it!!

OK, first off... I MADE IT! Wahoo. I think I could make this post about a mile long but I will try to only put in the good stuff. I slept pretty much all of yesterday and just now found an internet cafe otherwise I would have posted earlier.

My trip over here was not too bad. However, I did not get more than a half hour of sleep on my flight to London because I sat next to the loudest, most erratic snorer in the entire world. First of all, this guy could fall asleep in a matter of 30 seconds. Right after takeoff the guy was out. Then came the snoring. It wasn't an even snore - every few seconds he would breath in and make an awful noise that sounded like he was swallowing a frog or something. That doesn't even begin to describe the sound and volume of this guy, but it's a start. Everyone within a good ten seat radius gave this guy a look at some time during the flight.

Even Jules (one of the young, rather attractive, British flight attendants on my side of the airplane - the other one's name was Fiona, which I thought was cool) felt sorry for me during the flight. When she first noticed the guy's snoring she said something like "What a big cranker" or "What a big wanker," I dunno which one but it sounded really British. During one of the rare moments I was asleep she brought me earplugs. When she saw I was awake again and she mentioned the earplugs just as the snorer did one big snore, woke up and handed his cup to her asking her for water. Thirty seconds later he had downed the water and was asleep again. This guy was crazy. Oh, he was a rather large man, which did not help his snorer persona.

I then spent a couple hours in the London Heathrow airport, which was okay I suppose. They never really announced when planes were departing, they only announced when someone was about to miss his flight. The gates were posted on old TV's throughout the place but because it was an international airport I thought it might have been nice to announce when planes were boarding.

I grabbed a cab when I got to Vienna, which cost be frickin' 37 Euros - roughly 50 dollars. Since I hadn't slept in twenty some odd hours I did not feel like trying to figure out the Austrian underground. I then slept for a really long time and it was awesome.

Today I found the grocery store and this internet place that I am at right now. I bought the fixin's for peanutbutter & jelly sandwiches and some Italian oranges. I had the spread the pb & j with my fingers. It was so tasty.

Well that is just about everything that has happened so far. I could write another five pages but this is good. Hopefully this browser will post correctly. It was being dumb a bit ago. Feel free to email me - once I go to the university tomorrow I think I will have easier access to the internet.

t minus two hours

There are now only two hours left before I head to the airport. I have to get there a million years before the flight leaves just to get through the security. Eh well.

I was going to take a picture of all my luggage before I left but... I packed my camera. I will take a picture of what I'm sure will be a mess when I attempt to unpack in Vienna. It is times like these that I am thankful I am