The Works
Over the past two days, I've really felt like I've been back at Holy Cross, because that is the only place (besides here) where I was gone from my room for literally 12+ hours at a time. Now Vienna can be added to that list.Orientation has continued at a furious pace, but it is seriously the best orientation I've ever been to. They have done a wonderful job of keeping things moving forward, with rotating speakers, topics, tours, and so forth. Yesterday morning featured a pep talk on university life in Austria - yeesh. I have a feeling that the transition from small, friendly, relatively easily navigated liberal arts Holy Cross to huge (60,000 students...and no, I didn't add too many zeros), decentralized, disorganized, ginormously scary Universitaet Wien is not going to be painless. Everything at the uni here is organized by department. That means that each department has different rules and regulations regarding everything from class times and sizes to how to register for classes to exam schedules. Thus, taking classes from more than one department is apparently rarely done (liberal arts what?), and I can't even ask the help of my peers - only the polysci people will have any clue what is going on. The Fulbright Commission has thankfully done a lot of the grunt work for us, but it is still very intimidating.
Anyway, yesterday morning, we had another Austrian speaker, a woman who was the Foreign Affairs editor of Die Presse, a very well-read Austrian newspaper. She spoke about the Austrian "condition," which essentially was a brief history of the quirks of the Austrian folk, and she did a fantastic job - very engaging, entertaining, and informative.
The afternoon
session consisted of 2 tours - one of the university campus, such as it is, which left me feeling even more overwhelmed (must move past this...), and one of an exhibit at the Belvedere called "Das neue Oesterreich" (the new Austria). The exhibit was amazing - 16 rooms of artwork (many Klimts!!!!!), multi-media stations, and historical artifacts cataloguing Austria since 1918. The layout was very innovative and our guide was really good. The only problem was that it was way too big to take in everything in an hour. I will probably head back at some point in the near future to complete my perusal. The photo is part of our group at Belvedere.Following the exhibit was the best part of my day. Johannah (Jo) and I were going t
o purchase transportation tickets (we rode without them to Belvedere - I'm a criminal), and we decided to stop at this little cafe and have dinner. We ended up staying there almost three hours, talking over peach wine, baked camembert, and crepes. It was rather scary how much she and I have in common. Whether we were discussing our experiences with school and education, religion, our families and their ages, and our boyfriends, one or the other of us was continually exclaming "oh my gosh me too!!!!" It was really really REALLY nice to connect with someone here and to be able to talk about more than what is going on in my life here. Photo is, of course, of Jo and me.This morning I headed back to the Commission for our last formal orientation day. The morning brought two more guest speakers. The first was a woman who is a career FSO in the Austrian foreign service. She has spent a lot of time in America and is one of the few Austrians I have met who really has a positive view of our country, which, I must admit, was rather refreshing. She spoke about the history and current status of Austrian-American bi-lateral relations and tri-lateral relations with the EU. It was SOOO interesting (especially since that is really related to my research topic I am working on here), and I am very glad I was able to meet her. The second speaker talked about Austrian domestic issues over the past 50 years, which was also interesting (although he wasn't as engaging as the first speaker.)
This afternoon, we went to the National Library and toured both the beautiful historic main building and the m
ore useful, but less lovely research facilities. Our tour guide is my new favorite person (see photo.) Literally. He was amazing. Picture a middle-aged man with a thick German accent. He has a bit of a pot-belly, a full beard, and Harry Potter glasses, and he has the most enthusiasm for his job of anyone I have ever met. Ever. I am not exaggerating when I write that he would turn to our group and ask, "vould you like the periodical room to see???!!! Yes??!!! Okay! We go!!!" He would then go bounding (yes, bounding) off towards the periodical room, where in a very excited whisper, he'd explain about the 2000 or so academic journals available for our perusal. I've never been more riveted by a tour guide in my life :-D I'm platonically in love. *sigh*After the library tour, I *finally* set myself up with a Handy (Austrian slang for cell phone.) I was hoping my Blackberry would do the trick, but the clerk couldn't unlock it, so I bought an old secondhand Nokia for 30 euros and a prepaid sim card. Hurray! Now I can talk to people here and not have to pay $1.00/minute or call them from my computer! Yay technology.
Afterwards, I met up with four others at a cafe, where we sat for about 3 hours. Cafes here are amazing. They all have free wifi set up, and if you order a coffee, they let you sit for as long as you feel like it! So we stayed until we wanted dinner, when we walked to a restaurant with "the best falafel in the city." It was rather good, I must say! I finally got home around 11, and tomorrow I have to be up even earlier than usual for our tour of Melk, which should be amazing.
Hope you are all well, and I hope you aren't too bored by reading about my adventures (such as they are) :-D
Ciao.
posted by Carly Fowler @ 11:07 PM
1 Comments:
Melk? As in Melk Abbey?!?!?! I love you and miss you soooooo much, though it sounds like everything is wonderful over there! I'm happy for you! I love you brains.
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