So, I am going to try to make Sunday my updating days (that will last until what do you think - midterm?) but it will be my valiant effort!
I already talked about my journey from post-Spain, until I arrived in Vienna, which was exciting, to say the least! If you go to the MAPS section of my blog, there are now two maps of my journey. The first was a projection, which has been posted here for sometime now. The second is updated, real information, from graduation day (May 12, 2012) until my arrival in Vienna last Saturday.
But here it is:
My original projection, for the entire year was 46,619.6 kilometers to travel. This new map, for three months of travelling, I have already covered 42007.9 kilometers! That's a lot of planet covered and still a lot to go!
Anyway, we arrived in Vienna Saturday night. A group of us had booked together, we all met the driver at the airport and he drove us to the apartments we would be calling home for the next 8 weeks. I am living in Vienna's 10th district, Favoriten (we later were told that we are in the 'ghetto' though it is the absolute nicest ghetto I've ever seen!). The apartments are very, very spacious, big for even American standards - something I had not expected at all. After a month in Spain I was growing used to the tight quarters that are common in Europe.
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| Living room of my apartment |
My roommate missed orientation, but she arrived early Sunday morning and we got to know each other, then I took her to meet the rest of the cohorts. We had all been getting to know each other a lot since Wednesday and all seem to have clicked very quickly. Everyone was curious about the missing girl from our cohort so they were all excited to meet her.
On Sundays everything is closed, but we took some time to take a walk around the neighborhood and see what we could find. There is a bar across the street from us
Mabel's No90. So far, that has quickly become our hangout spot.
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| Di (my roommate), Rach, and Sam at Mabel's |
Monday morning, first thing, we all went to the grocery store. We arrived Saturday after the store was closed, and it wasn't open on Sunday, so we were all ready to ditch the bar food and get some food in our (very small) fridges. Then we all locked ourselves in our rooms and studied for class that was to begin the following day. 100 pages of International Law on the computer screen (we had yet to receive our textbooks) was most definitely the highlight of our entire journey!
Tuesday, the Globals coordinator, Guergana "G" picked us up to walk us to campus. We are quite a distance from campus, about an hour (but we are only about 30 minutes from the city center).
We had orientation just for the Globals about an hour before the orientation for all the graduate students. Between the two orientations we went to the bookstore to pick up our books. The program fee covers our books, but they had run out of some of our books, so as of now, I am still short 1 book, some girls are short 2. It was nice to get a chance to mingle with some of the other graduate students. Webster University really is a global university. As we went around the room, people were introducing themselves from Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, etc. One really good-looking guy stood up and said he was from Serbia. Of COURSE he was! Seriously - what is in the water there!?
Our first class was International Law (Tuesdays 6-10pm). Our instructor is Polish and works for the United Nations so she spends half her time in New York City and half her time in Vienna (teaching in both cities). She works in Human Rights issues and is very interesting, she is also very detail orientated and likes examples, as she was constantly asking us for examples of NGOs, IOs, treaties, customary laws, etc. So, I imagine the tests are going to be very specific. The class is structure pretty basic: two quizzes, one final exam, one final paper, and a presentation. Because the classes are all only 8 weeks long, we had to pretty much decide on our presentation topic (which would also be our final paper topic). I am going to be writing on Women's Right to Health laws (mostly on reproductive health). We shall see how
that goes!
Wednesday was our International Relations Theory class, same time (6-10). The instructor is Italian and is Director of Research, Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy. I made the mistake of wearing my Spanish football jersey. In my defense I have no loyalties to any European football teams, I happened to be in Spain for the Eurocup, which is why I had it. The rest of class he kept calling me "Spain" though (since he doesn't have names yet). He told me he may not let it affect my grade. (My undergraduate professor told me a few days later that one of the other professors is teaching
Politics of Soccer and I got a small taste of his lesson plan!). Same basic structure. Midterm, final, final paper. We also will have group work each week. Midterm is on a
Sunday and the last class will be on a Saturday, so we can have our final on Wednesday! Ohy!
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| On the way home from class! Becky, Amber, and Sam |
Speaking of my midterm being on a Sunday (the 23rd) - that is the last day of Photokina, I have my Professional Seminar classes on Fridays, so that pretty much killed my hope of going to Photokina.
And speaking of cameras, before class Wednesday morning, I made my way to the camera store to see if they could do something about my camera. The guy who was helping me went through all the troubleshooting things for me: checked battery on his charger (50% full), checked his battery in my camera, tested the internal battery (I had already gotten a new one to try to see if that was the fix), cleaned battery contacts. Nothing brought my camera to life. So, he packed it up and sent it off to the repair center, and I bit back tears.
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| The hospital for my baby at the moment |
Thursday we took a bus tour of the city. After the hour or so tour, Kurt and I went back to the Hofburg Palace, I wanted to see the gardens where the Mozart memorial is and he wanted to go to the arms and armor exhibit. He knows a lot about ancient weaponry so it was really informative for me!
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| Karlskirche |
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| Hofburg Palace |
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| Pretty certain this gun would knock me on my butt! |
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| Mozart Memorial before my battery died |
Kurt told me about a show he had gotten tickets for. Mozart and Strauss, in a smaller venue, and the performers would be dressed in period costumes. I bought tickets for the show for that evening and we headed back to the apartments (well meandered - went the long way). Sam decided she wanted to go to the show as well, so she reserved tickets and the three of us went out that evening.
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| There was also a ballet dancer and opera singer! |
I figure, I am in Vienna, I am going to take in as much classical music as I can afford! The show was really entertaining, I liked the size of the venue and the performers were all very good. The pianist rocked Turkischer Marsch (
Click here if you are unfamiliar) which is one of my favorite pieces. The venue had very good natural acoustics. It is an old house, at one time Mozart performed there with his sister!
After the show we walked up to Stephansplatz to see Saint Stephan's Cathedral at night, the meandered around the city, getting up to the river and back down toward Stephansplatz, just talking and enjoying the weather. We had our "Oh my goodness, we are in Vienna!" moment then. It was so beautiful, the weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, and the city was lit up, there were lots of other people out walking around, and it's an easy city to navigate.
I think I am in love! I can see why this city inspired so many great artists and musicians!
Saturday morning, Di, Rach, Amber, and I went to Naschmarkt, which is a large, open-air market in the city center. We didn't walk the entire thing and it was raining the entire time, but it was a lot of fun to see all the different stalls with fresh foods. Before heading back we all stopped at the cheese store and got some amazing cheeses!
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| Di and Amber buying some stuffed olives. |
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| The really awesome cheese guy! :-D |
I spent the rest of the day studying and managed to get the two chapters for International Law read, which only left two articles to read. So, I went out with all the girls. There was supposedly a "Welcome Webster" party at one of the local clubs (Aphrodisiac). We all dressed up and went out, the cover was 12ϵ and it was pretty lame. and way overpriced (10.50 for a gin&tonic - no.) But we made the best of it. We were the only ones dancing for quite sometime. It got a bit better by the end of the evening, but by then we were all pretty much done.
And today, I have done nothing productive. I got my two articles read, cleaned a bit, but for the most part, have had a nice lazy day. We just had a wine and cheese get together for a few hours to relax (since unlike me, most people have been studying all day!) and hang out.
It is really hard for me to believe I have only been in Vienna for a week, and with Webster for 11 days! We have all been going so hard and fast the whole time that I feel like it's already been forever, I am losing track of time.
But so far this is working out brilliantly, my cohorts are
amazing - everyone has such interesting, different backgrounds with such fun stories, and varying personalities. So far we all get a long really well, hopefully that lasts for quite sometime since this is going to be one crazy, long year!
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| Me and my Roomie at a Cafe! |
