Das Essen

I love food. It is my goal in life to eat my way through the world. Okay I have more goals than that, but it is a pretty formidable task.

I think I have been doing a pretty good job of eating Austria. Austrians love their coffee, their various sausages (Käsekräner, Bratwurst), Schnitzel, beer, wine, bread, and various pastries, of which there are too many to mention. That said, there is still a McDonalds two blocks away. And Starbucks across the street from the Staatsoper. This is the capital city, and you could find food from every corner of the world if you looked hard enough. Last week I enjoyed some amazing pay as you want Pakistani buffet, the week before, I (somewhat) satisfied my Mexican food craving.

My favorites so far have been Käsekräner, wine, and Topfenstrudel. Käsekräner is basically sausage with cheese chunks in it. They sell them on the street in a hollowed out baguette. Looks dirty but they are very popular. Or you can buy them in the store, sometimes wrapped in bacon.

I have developed a taste for wine, by mere virtue of living in a land where wine is cheaper than Coke. Actually, I magically liked it when British Airways gave it to me for free on my flight over here. I don't know what good wine is yet. I just pick the one with the prettiest label. I did try Gruner Vetlander and I liked it. I have also learned a few Austrian drinking songs. We listened to them and sang along in our German class. They are along the lines of, " My nose is so red, because I am drunk. I am drinking the good wine." Yes, this is what I learn in school here.

I could probably subsist on strudel for my whole life. I could sit in a smoky Kaffeehaus with a waiter in a tux and think deep important thoughts just like Mozart did, I'm sure. Apfelstrudel at Cafe Sperl, a traditional cafe in my district, is fabulous. Topfenstrudel anywhere is amazing. its filled with a crumbly warm cheesecake type substance. I have tried Sachertorte of course, but talk to any Viennese and they will make an off the cuff remark about how Sachertorte isn't how it used to be, the original recipe, Hotel Sacher isn't good and over priced...and on and on. I don't particularly care for it. However half the fun of eating is ordering something you have never heard of. I can't remember most of the names of the pastry delights I have eaten.

Of course living in my own apartment with a lovely kitchen, I cook and eat in most of the time. The Naschmarkt, an outdoor market hundreds of years old, is a five minute walk away. I have my favorite dried fruit person, my favorite veggie person, my favorite nut guy, hummus guy. Not that I call them that or anything, but the stands all sell the same thing and are competitively priced. I find that the salespeople are very humble and very friendly because they really want you to buy their products. I also speak exclusively in German to them. Shopping at the supermarket is a different story. Its a little less enjoyable. You have to pay for plastic bags, and then remember to bring them and reuse them so you don't have to pay for more. Which, I suppose is a great way to get people to recycle. The checkout line is fast and furious. There is no one to bag your groceries and you better have your money out and ready, while you throw all of your food back into your cart as it is being scanned. Of course, the ATM usually gives me hundred Euro bills, which seems to annoy the cashiers, and then they ask for 2 or 22 cents, I can never tell which, because they talk so fast. After I have had them repeat "zweiundzwanzig" a few times, I have held up the 20 people behind me.

The good news is after I have been yelled at by some disgruntled cashiers or accused of shop lifting (true story) I can come home and cook. I am a fan of making a huge pot of chili or soup or risotto and eating it for a good week or two. Eventually though, I decided I missed baking so much I had to figure out the metric system. And convert Farenheit to Celsius once and for all. I was able to procure some wheat free flour, which seemed like a miracle in a land where hearty wheat bread is sold on every corner. But it is pretty easy to find wheat free food here. Our apartment has a beautiful bundt pan so I set out to make a lemon cake, with no recipe and no measuring instruments of any kind. ( I still can't figure out what they use here to measure flour and such. A scale?) Luckily, since I spent last summer baking upwards of 14 hours everyday, I trusted by baking intuition and it paid off. The cake didn't last for more than a couple days though.

In other news, I am in the midst of studying for midterms, though I have no desire to at all. Then, this coming Friday, I will be off to Scotland and Ireland for 6 days, then back to Vienna for Easter weekend, when my friend is visiting me. Time is certainly flying!

Study Abroad: Easier said than done... but totally worth it

I am fairly sure that would be my slogan, even though I am only about half way through my experience (!)

Studying abroad is hard, much harder than I anticipated. This was not something I thought about when I was in the application process last semester.However, I never thought about the fact that you are living. in. a. completely. different. culture. Living being the operative word. Living is different than visiting or vacationing. Everything is different. Obviously, language and culture, but everything down to grocery shopping, food, toilets, laundry, professors, its all different. At first, this is both new and exciting and incredibly unsettling. At first, I was half overjoyed that I was finally here, and half wondering what the hell I was thinking. There are a few moments where I thought I couldn't handle living and studying here. I would look at a plane in the sky and wish I was on it. As a result, I felt like I wasn't totally here. I was half here, and half somewhere else.

But standing in the clouds at the top of a mountain in the Alps made me feel like I was fully here, and the world was mine.


So.. last weekend I went skiing in the Alps! It was an IES organized trip, and all of my roommates went too. We went to Radstadt, which is in Salzburg, and about 4 or 5 hours away by bus. It was nice because everything, including 2 meals a day, rentals, lift tickets, and accomadations were taken care of. So all we had to do was ski!

Radstadt was not a big huge ski resort like you would find in the US. It was obviously a huge mountain, and our lift ticket covered several mountains close by, reachable by bus. But there were no huge crowds, few crazy snowboarders, and no huge cafeterias serving questionable food. The slopes were also a lot less crowded most of the time. And the snow was amazing. Because it came from the sky.

There is also nothing in between the bunny slope and the easiest runs. The easiest here is blue, and I would say its equivilant to a blue in the US. There is no such thing as green here. That made it a little daunting for beginning skiers. But I thought it was awesome. I haven't skied in maybe 2 years, but it came back to me. On Sunday we basically kicked the ass of 2 mountains. We went to the top of another mountain Zuchensee, at least twice. I did a couple of blacks, which are equilivant to US black diamonds, and it was amazing. It was like skiing in butter. But we accidentally went down some moguls in the afternoon, and since the sun was on the other side of the mountain, it was like skiing blindfolded.

We went back to Radstadt in the afternoon before we had to get on the bus and go home. We went to the top a couple more times before our bodies gave up. Overall, 6 hours of skiing on Sunday. And I didn't fall down once. I don't know how it happened. But at lunch, when people were recounting how many times they ate it and there skis flew off, I realized I hadn't fallen. So the rest of the day, I was on a mission, and I succeeded! It was exhausting though. Skiing in ungroomed powder, you have to plan your route about 20 feet ahead of time. But there were no major injuries to anyone on the trip! Apparently that is a first.

My body was pretty angry with me for the next few days...but it was totally worth it.