I survived my first week in Vienna! A lot of stuff happened this week, so I’m sorry this post is kind of long! The adjustment to life here has been a lot easier than I anticipated. I finally got over my jet-lag a few days ago (although I’m still going to bed while my roommates are going out lolol) and I’ve been getting used to cooking for myself. Honestly, that’s probably the hardest thing. Not only do I not cook, but I’m trying to learn in a foreign country where I have to go to multiple stores multiple times per week, just to get the things I need. Milk is only sold in liters, and I’m having a terrible time finding cheddar cheese, BUT THE WINE IS DIRT CHEAP! You can literally get two bottles of decent wine in the grocery store for the same amount of money you would spend on a cup of coffee here in Vienna (granted, the coffee is VERY expensive, but it’s fantastic).
German classes started this last Monday, so I have now had a week of classes here. We have a three-week period of “intensive German,” which means we have three hours of class a day and basically nothing else. This has left a lot of time open to exploring the city! Vienna is absolutely gorgeous, and there’s new things to discover around every corner.
Last Sunday I went to a street fair in one of the outer districts of Vienna with a bunch of other students. It was raining, and we got there too late to actually enjoy the fair, so we just went to dinner at a beer garden. It was horrible. It was already over-crowded because of the rain and the fair, so the last thing they needed was 30 American college students to come in and try to order food. When we ordered at the table we were told they were out of chicken, so all of our orders were basically discarded and we had to go up to the counter to order, where they proceeded to yell at us for not understanding German. The service was terrible and the food was mediocre at best, so needless to say they didn’t get a tip (waiters aren’t dependent on tips in Austria the way they are in the states, so oftentimes it’s not the customer who matters most).
After our terrible experience most people were headed back to their apartments, but a few of us really wanted to explore a little more. About 9 of us and one of our RAs decided to hit up another beer garden for drinks and dessert, and it was the BEST DECISION EVER. This bar was FULL of people ages 16 to 25, and even some older couples with their kids, and everyone was just having a fantastic time and wearing traditional Austrian garb (dirndls and lederhosen). There was a band playing classic German music that everyone was singing along to, and people would jump up on the tables and sing along for some songs. At one point they played “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and EVERYONE was singing along. It was pretty fantastic.
Wednesday morning we got a free tour of one of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or the Museum of Art History, by one of our professors. It was incredible. We were only there for an hour, but I’m taking an art history class so I’ll get a free pass and I can go WHENEVER I WANT. It was mind-blowing to walk past some of the most famous paintings in all of history really without even a second glance. We stopped in front of Raphael’s Madonna del Prato and all of Professor Crockett’s (my art history professor) lectures about how the art canon established by Vasari, Bellori and Winckelmann is bullshit came rushing back to me (I loved that art history class). We also walked through a room full of Caravaggios and my favorite poem from that class came back to me: “Caravaggio, art was dying in his hands, Caravaggio” – a quote by Bellori stylized by Professor Crockett.
Raphael’s Madonna del Prato
Anyway, Wednesday night was a big one. The RAs took us to a bar/club called LOCO which has DIRT CHEAP DRINKS on Wednesday nights. From 7 to 8 drinks were €0,50! And then they went up in price every hour after that. Needless to say, it was a great night. The bar was full of high school kids drinking themselves silly, but that just made the atmosphere that much more fun. Probably a third of the people there were IES kids (and the place was PACKED). They played a bunch of American party hits and apparently they later had karaoke. I got there at 7:30 and stayed until about 10, before the karaoke started.
Me, Eddye, Patrick, and Orli at Loco
Friday was a pretty good day too, for the most part. After class Cheney, Serena and I walked to the Prater, which is a huge park in Vienna that used to be the Habsburg hunting grounds. That night I had dinner with some friends, and then we tried to go out to some clubs because a bunch of them had no cover charge this weekend. We went out around 11 though, which is apparently way too early (Austrians don’t go out until 1 or later), so we never found the right atmosphere we were looking for and ended up bopping around the first district for a while. At one point we settled in a fancier club to try to wait it out, but everyone was a lot older than us so after an hour we just left. I ended up getting to bed at 1:30, probably before a lot of Viennese even got to the club!
Serena and Cheney at the Prater amusement park!
Eddye, Orli, Becca, Maya, and Anna at our dinner party!
The boiz of the dinner party: Derek, Matt, and Grant! (other Grant).
Saturday was probably the best day so far. We went on a bus tour all around Vienna, including the Belvedere, the Hundertwasserhaus, and the Vienna woods. I got a really cheap, really big slice of pizza which satisfied the craving I had been having, and then we went to Schönbrunn Palace. Schönbrunn was the summer palace of the Habsburgs and is now basically a park and a museum and it’s breathtaking. We went through the labyrinth there and trekked up the hill to the café there. It was definitely a tourist trap, but it was worth the €6,50 I paid for an ice cream sundae. We left at sunset and the place was amazing. Definitely a day well spent – I took over 250 pictures but I was EXHAUSTED so when people started going out I just edited pictures and then went to bed haha.
Me at the Upper Belvedere!
The Hundertwasserhaus!
Schonbrunn Palace, AKA my future residence
Me after finishing the Labyrinth at Schonbrunn
The Schonbrunn Gloriette
View of Schonbrunn from the Gloriette
Today was much mellower – just some coffee and hanging out with friends. I have a little studying to do still, but nothing I can’t knock out in a half hour.
This coming week I’ll find out if I got the internship I applied for, working as a native speaker in a high school, and I’m going on a bike tour of the Donau (Danube) Island!
Tschüss!
Grant in Österreich 
love the pics! Miss you!
Blog away – so enjoying your travels!