Here's to You, Mr. Yip

I only realized a few days ago that I’ve completely neglected this blog the past month. I’ve made a list of things to talk about here, so now I’m finally taking the time to go through it all. Ready? Set. Go!

Halloween. Now, normally Austrians don’t celebrate Halloween. I think it’s an American/Canadian thing, actually. But apparently it’s becoming a lot more popular for young Austrians to celebrate it, so… Eva (my buddy) had a party, with costume required. I was the only non-Austrian, which was pretty cool. The best outfit was Eva’s boyfriend Daniel, who dressed as Yasser Arafat. Apparently people were staring at him on the subway, which I can believe, since people were also staring at me. I was dressed as a black cat. I kinda based it off of Pam’s Halloween costume in season 2 of The Office, and also I was doing it as a tribute to my darling little kitten that I miss very much.

November 11. Celebrated by some as Armistice Day, and some as Veteran’s Day. Celebrated by me for being the first snow of this winter in Vienna. I woke up at 10:30 and looked out the window, and stood gaping and slowly blinking for a moment or two. Then I pulled the closest shoes on, grabbed my glasses, camera, and keys, and ran downstairs. I stood there in my long-sleeved shirt and pajama pants, and started laughing like an insane person. Seriously, snow? In November? Since then it’s snowed a few more times – once was even like 3 inches. I was amazed… and everyone thought it was hilarious how amazed I was. I’m from TEXAS! Also since the first snow I have worn at least two pairs of pants whenever I go outside. For a couple days I wore three. It’s really cold! Oh, and I’ve also been listening to Christmas since then. You know, it’s like snow is associated with Christmas. But now that it’s after Thanksgiving, it’s more acceptable to listen to Christmas music, so I listen to it even more.

A peer advisor at UT had sent out an email to us UT students at WU and the WU students who were coming to UT next semester suggesting that we meet. So I emailed the WU guys, and 3 WU guys and 3 UT girls managed to meet up to talk about our exchanges. Now we’re planning on going to a soccer game to see Vienna vs. Linz. I’m not really into soccer, and I’m not really into being outside in the freezing cold for hours, but I still think it’ll be fun. Plus, when in Rome…

On Sunday, November 18th, my mother’s friend (and my friend’s mother) Susan arrived to visit me. One of her suitcases got left at the Paris airport, so she was filing a claim in the baggage claim area, which I wasn’t allowed into. She didn’t come out until an hour after her plane arrived, and I had been so worried that she had missed her connecting flight, or that I had somehow gone to the wrong terminal. We went to her hotel, which was right off of Stephansplatz (prime location, if you ask me), and were hassled by the receptionist, who told us that if I was to spend the night, it’d be 50€ a night. Psh, whatever! We went to my dorm to deposit all the goods that she brought me – 12 cans of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (which I ate every single day when I was younger - no joke!), a whole bunch of packets of both Goldfish and Swiss Miss hot chocolate (with marshmallows!), a package of oreos, and a set of long underwear. Basically, she’s awesome.

That night we went to mass at Stephansdom (St. Stephen’s Cathedral). I’m not Catholic, and it was in German. I didn’t know what was going on until the message part (we call it message, I don’t know what it is in Catholic), which I could actually understand. After that we went to this concert at Schönbrunn that was amazing! The ensemble consisted of two violinists, one violist, one cellist, a clarinetist, and a pianist. They played a bunch of songs by Mozart and Strauss. During the songs that were opera songs, this guy and girl came out and sang and acted out the songs. During the songs that were from ballets, a different guy and girl came out and danced. It was really really cool.

Monday, we woke up at 4:45 to catch a 6:08 train to Prague. We left the hotel like 10 minutes late and I was convinced that we would miss the train, but we were somehow there 5 minutes before it left. We spent like half of the 4 hour trip in the dining car. The rest of the train was set up with compartments, like they have in Harry Potter! That in itself was very cool to me. We exchanged our money into koruna… I got 100€ worth. From the train station we took a taxi to Prague Castle. It’s really cool, and big, and from far away looks a little bit haunted (or scary at least). The cathedral inside (St. Vitus’) is practically overflowing with tourists. Susan, being the hardcore Catholic and all-around crazy person she is, took an HOUR to walk through the cathedral, while taking pictures of almost every single thing inside it. After lunch and exploring the rest of the castle a little, we walked down towards the rest of the city, first stopping at St. Nicholas’. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eventually we made it to the bridge over the river that splits the city into two parts. On the eastern side we stopped in just about every tourist shop on our way. We settled down at a restaurant at the Old Town Square, where Susan had a couple beers and got a bit drunk. On our taxi ride back to the train station, she asked our taxi driver about a million questions, and in doing so quite mortified me. In the dining car on the way back, there was a couple from Maryland sitting behind us whose daughter was studying abroad in Italy (I think?), so we talked to them a little.

On Tuesday we didn’t have much time to do something because I had class and a presentation, so we just went to the Rathaus (city hall) and the Parliament. In front of the Rathaus was a Christmas market (Christkindlmarkt). There were all these tiny little buildings, and it looked like a little Christmas village. Lots of shops were set up to sell “punsch”… warm alcoholic punch. Woo, nothing like getting a good warm kick at 10:45 in the morning when it’s (literally) freezing outside. After my class that night, we went to Café Sacher (at Hotel Sacher) to have the famous original sachertorte. Umm… it wasn’t that good. I was a little surprised. Neither was the Himbeere (raspberry) Soda that I had. Disappointment! But, we were actually in the café at the same time as the Maryland family from the train. Scary coincidence! Since dessert and drinks together were like 20€, we got dinner at a cheap little food stand (that are all over the city) – I got dürüm döner (kinda like a fajita burrito) and Susan got a hot dog. I love just looking at the words “dürüm döner” because of all the umlauts over the vowels.

Wednesday was “day of the churches.” First we went to Schönbrunn to do the tour inside (which I had already done before) and look for a bit at the gardens and park. Then we went to three different churches – Dominikaner, St. Barbara, and Jesuit. It was not interesting to me. And churches are very cold inside. After that, though, we went to a restaurant where we had some schnitzel. Yum!

Thursday was Thanksgiving! In the morning we went to the Votive church, which was cool looking, but after going to so many churches… not so exciting. I actually fell asleep in a pew while Susan looked around. Then we went to the Museums Quartier, where another Christmas market was set up. The drink I had there (Glühmost) was really good – it was like (alcoholic) apple cider. From there we went to the Hofburg – the old imperial palace. We went to the Sisi (Empress Elisabeth) museum and imperial apartments, which were both pretty boring. We met Tina to have our Thanksgiving dinner at TGIFridays, but we got there too early to have their special Thanksgiving dinner. Plus, we looked at the menu for it, and it looked very non-Thanksgiving-y: bbq turkey, bbq ribs, chicken wings, coleslaw, corn on the cob, and pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie, yes. Everything else, no. We had (not very good) nachos instead. Tina went home, and Susan and I went to Billa to buy some better food to eat. We ate in Susan’s hotel room while watching The OC in German. It was the Christmakkuh Barmitzvakkuh episode from season 3. On Friday morning, Susan left to go back to Houston.

One of the classes that I had in November was this European law and economics class. It basically taught us all about the law-making institutions of the European Union. At the end of the first day, we realized that we basically got extra credit for participating and asking questions, so on the second day the Americans completely dominated discussions. Six of us were sitting in the front right and we asked so many questions. Most of them were genuine questions about things that made no sense to us – like heads of state versus heads of government. To Americans it’s the same thing, but in most European countries it’s not. They have a president (head of state) that basically does nothing (ie. the Queen), and a chancellor/prime minister (head of government) that does the real work. The course met for three days, 6 hours each day, and then on Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) we had our exam. It was my first exam while here!

Then on Saturday morning I woke up at 5:15 to catch a 6:14 train to Munich to see Barbara, my German exchange partner from 10th grade. It was so amazing seeing her again, and we talked just as easily as we did four years ago. Her roommate Alena actually did the exchange too, so that was cool. Barbara took me on a bit of a tour of the city because, even though she really didn’t know what a lot of the stuff I asked about was. It was actually pretty funny, and she was like “Sorry, I’m not a very good tour guide.” We ate at a traditional Bavarian restaurant, and kept walking around. Altogether, I think we walked at least like 4-5 hours! That night we went to a bar with Babsi’s friend Jessica, who used to work at Disneyworld. She told us about a bunch of stuff there, and made it sound really awesome. And Jessica’s boyfriend was our waiter, and gave us our drinks for super cheap (2€ instead of 6€). The only downside was that on both sides of us was this one birthday party with all these rich kids wearing expensive clothes and acting like they owned the place.

We didn’t wake up on Sunday until 11:30! We went to this BMW exhibition/museum thing called BMW Welt. They had all these current (German) models of their cars, and people just walked around looking at them and reading the information on them like at a car dealership. Then they also had this area where you could learn about how they choose the colors, textures, and materials for the cars, which was actually more interesting than it sounds. We couldn’t figure out what the point of the place was, though, since it was free to get into, there are no salesmen, and you don’t actually buy cars there. After that we went to the Olympiapark from the 1972 Olympics – the one where all those Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered (look up the movie “Munich” on imdb). It was too cold to spend much time there though, so we returned to Babsi’s apartment. For dinner we went down to Oberhaching, and had some delicious Italian food. We also got ice cream at this ice cream café that we went to many times when I was there in 2003. If you didn’t know, last time I was in Germany, I ate ice cream once a day… at the very least. So going to this café was like a little joke with me and Babsi. We also stopped by her father’s house, which is where we stayed when I was here. The little dog Sally was terrified of me even after 2 weeks, and (of course) was still terrified of me 4 years later. Sadly, I left this morning at 9:28 to come back “home” to Vienna.

Of course, when I got back, I could not find my key. I found my keychain, which is on a lanyard, which I also had. The key had just fallen off. I searched through my bags multiple times before giving up. It goes to figure the ONE TIME Tina’s not here is when I can’t find my key. I went across the hall where Alison and her roommate took mercy on me. I was only there for like 45 minutes before Tina came back and found the letter I left. Luckily she had an extra key so I didn’t have to pay the housemaster 50€ to get a new one. The rest of today has just been relaxing and filling out the last of the TWENTY-ONE postcards I will be sending tomorrow… which will cost me at least 30€ to send.

There you have it, my last month. It came out to almost 4 pages in Word (Times New Roman, 12 pt), so if you made it this far, congratulations to you!