Hungary past

Note: The following events happened two weeks ago, I wrote them down then but am updating them now because I have been so busy. I had my final for our Salzburg German class today (easy), arrived in Innsbruck (beautiful), and will be leaving tomorrow for a 10 day trip around eastern Europe (Krakow, Prague, Berlin, Dresden) until classes start in two weeks. It was sad to leave Salzburg, but it’s been a little overwhelming arriving in Innsbruck and trying to get my bearings before we leave tomorrow. Oh well, back to what happened two weeks ago:

6-19 First Day in Hungary

So who can say “best field trip ever?” Apparently the Nanovic Institute at ND since they set up and sent us on this sweet trip we’re on now (no charge for us). So expectations about Hungary: a cold, wet desolate communist-stricken country trying to piece back together its government. Only notable for a peppy dance whose many interpretations can be found on cell phones worldwide and a fictional dragon named Norbert from J. K. Rowling’s imagination. So far, it’s been my favorite country. Ever.

A few days ago, we were given an itinerary about our stay and it included things like lectures and other boring stuff, allowing us only a half a day in the large capital of Budapest (Ricky suggests at least 2 days). We were expecting a depressing country and an even more unbearable field trip ‘education’ experience. Today started early with us waking up in our Viennese hostel, grumbling about the French group of girls who would not shut up the night before, and enjoying another hearty hostel-breakfast. We then took 3 modes of transportation to the train for the 3.5 hour ride to Budapest. There were no compartments in the train unfortunately, so no HP time. During the ride, we brushed up on the fascinating history of the country, customs, and we tried to memorize some key Hungarian phrases (I keep forgetting them and when I thank someone I usually mumble something between English ‘thanks’ and German ‘danke’ it seems to do the trick).

Arriving in Budapest was really cool. The city has a fascinating mixture of all baroque/classical structures with paint poetically peeling off, communist functional structures and new, modern, western-influenced office buildings. In the train station we were unexpectantly greeted by a number of friendly, English speaking Hungarian students from the university we are staying at. It was really nice of them. We then rode on a 40 minute bus with them to Estergom, outside the city. On the way the students chatted with us as they were excited to practice their English on native English speakers. We arrived at a basilica randomly in this small town, took a tour (in German, much to the dismay of the Hungarians) and climbed the tower (it was there and had to be done) to view Slovakia across the river. This part of Slovakia used to be Hungary but were taken away after WWI as punishment to Hungary for fighting on the losing side. The Hungarians here (and in Czech and Transylvania, Romania) have always associated themselves as Hungarian, refusing to change their language, and really held onto their traditions. Therefore Hungarian traditions, folklore, and music are most preserved in these areas.

Afterwards, we drove to the small catholic university we were staying at of about 5,000 students in the middle of nowhere. We were given some teacher apartments to stay in (with a loft with beds and a bathroom) which we were really excited about. We had a few hours to spare, so some students invited us to the local and only pub in town that all of the university students go to. There we were able to get a hefty pre-dinner buzz for only about 2-euro! We also discovered palinka, essentially a fruit flavored vodka that all the locals seem to love. Imagine vodka with a smooth fruit aftertaste. During this time we had finally discovered the score to the Michigan ND game (it was Sunday afternoon) and we all started to get depressed. But then we realized we weren’t at ND and there was nowhere else in the world we would rather be than right there in this middle of nowhere Hungarian pub with these students. It was an interesting environment. Drunk old men kept trying to talk to me but I had absolutely no idea what they were trying to say. The Hungarian language is complicated and every word is at least 3 syllables long. Their toast is something like 10 syllables long.
After pubtime, we went to the welcome dinner at the university. Traditional Hungarian fare and fun were served as we were accompanied by a folk band. Then a traditional dancer man with a sweet handlebar moustache got up and started doing a dance that involved a lot of jumping and slapping. He then invited us all up with him and he attempted to teach us to dance, it was pretty amazing. Here are some of my favorite parts of that experience:
Gürtler trying to stay in tempo
The fact that the only English words he knew were “left, right, okay, and nice to meet you!”
A Hungarian conga line where the leader got to swing a broom around and slap people on the but with it
Fiddler on the Roof-esque circle dances

We closed the evening with another unforgettable visit to the local pub. There I tried Unicum, Hungary’s national drink. It’s essentially a grappa, made from 50 some herbs that was (and still is) used as a stomach settler. Imagine every herbal flavor in the world mixed with potent sinus-cleansing liquor. Top it off with a harsh bitter aftertaste that punches your taste buds numb for the next 15 minutes. We also learned three different ways of saying cheers: 1. Not clinking glasses because some Hapsburg emperor clinked beer glasses when executing favored Hungarian rulers. 2. Clinking glasses anyways and saying ‘screw it’ because it happened 200 years ago. 3. Clinking glasses and saying something that sounded like “Balsamic Highno” essentially ‘F*** him, Highno’ in Hungarian. The latter was of course our favorite. By the end of the evening, some of the people in our group couldn’t remember what the cheer was and ended up giving up and cheering “Fuck-achino!!!” We’re not really sure what that came from, I guess a mixture of the f-word and an Italian based food. Tomorrow should prove to be even more interesting since our schedule has the evening planned out as being “Budapest nightlife with Hungarian students.”

Wieners in the Opera!

So we’re back in Vienna! Yay! Again I can laugh about all of the Wieners walking around me (since Wiener is German for ‘Viennese’)! Today we woke up from our first night in a European youth hostel and we got to experience our first free breakfast. Essentually stale bread and some vegetable oil product resembling butter, a wide assortment of jams of fruits you would never expect to see in jam-form such as cranberry and apple, cheese, and some kind of meat product. It was just what we needed to start our long day.

Our first hostel

Such an amazing picture of such an amazing man

After we were refuled, Gürtler took us out on his personal tour of the city. As I said earlier, I really love Vienna. Every building whether two or two-hundred years old has the same baroque charm, even in the buildings that are more than a half hour walk from the altstadt city center. Unfortunately this was the only full day we have to stay in the city. Last night we left after our class and got in the city in the evening with just enough time for Gürtler to take us out for a late night snack/drink, his treat, at a little known, local place. I swear this man is amazing. Anyways, one day is definitely not enough time to explore this grand capital of Austria. We took pictures of the neo-gothic Rathaus, pictures in front of the neo-gothic Rathaus, and pictures of people taking pictures in front of the neo-gothic Rathaus. We saw some other buildings too, I’m sure. At one moment in time, few were there to witness, Goethe and Gürtler were standing side by side. After our tour, we were given 5 hours of free time to wander the city and do whatever we wanted. Going to a flea/farmers market, I discovered my new favorite meal, kebabs. Essentually a giant column of meat (lamb or chicken) that’s constantly turning and being roasted and constantly dripping with fat in a rather enticing puddle. When you order a kebab, the meat is shaved off and falls in the fat-puddle. The shaved meat and fat-puddle are all then delicately swept into a pita with lettuce, onions, cucumber/yogurt sauce, and red pepper powder. Its essentially a Turkish Gyro. There were also rather exciting barrels of sauerkraut. Then Christian and I broke off to take a tour of the Stattoper or city opera which was really cool to see. Unfortunatly most of the theater was destroyed by a bomb in WWII and it was so important, the city quickly rebuilt it in 10 years, but it wasn’t to its original baroque glory. Nevertheless, this little story proves that the Viennese like to follow my credo: “Don’t fix it if it ain’t baroque!” I met some quite nice ladies there and got the digits. Being in the lobby though, I swear I saw a group of theater-managers complaining about a bunch of notes they had received. I wonder what that was all about. After the oper we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museen (Museum of art history) to see some art! Yarb! In te Egypt section, I definitely found a strange green box with no label and awkwardly made eye contact with the girl standing next to me, don’t really know what that was all about…

Christian found his Egyptian Twin

HI from the Kunsthistorisches Museen

We met the Gürt for dinner at another really nice restraint serving more authentic Austrian fare, including my favorite noodle-dumplings Spätzle. After dinner, a group of us wanted to go check out the Opera (a different one plays every night). By the time we got to the opera, it had started a half hour prior and the two euro standing room only tickets were all sold out. Not to be discouraged, we waited outside the doors to see if any bored opera SRO attendees were leaving early and willing to surrender their tickets to us. Luckily after pantomiming “Pardon me Madam and Missour, may we procure your Opera tickets if you have completed your visit to the opera house and are currently vacating the premises?” to confused asian tourist couples and offending Austrians by immediately mistaking them as American tourists (he was wearing an Illinois Harley Davidson hat! …to an Opera!) we finally collecected enough just as intermission was ending.

Inside, we had excellent seats with a bar to lean on and a little screen for a translated libberetto! The opera, however, was very strange. It was called ‘I Puritani’ by Ballini. At the beginning we were kind of confused with the plot as the set looked rather like the lobby ofo the Hesburgh Library and there were (we assumed) Pilgrims wearing Pleather costumes who were watching a rather fat lady drunkenly stumble around the stage. Being many of our first operas, we found the whole thing strange. I especially liked how any time a character had an inane thought pop into their heads, they would sing about it for about 10 minutes, but then the plot would quickly move along real quick between these moments in quick a-melodic dialogue-singing. In the end, you think everyone’s all happy, the couple’s together and he doesn’t have to be burned (horay!) but literally in the last two sung lines of the opera (as the female is singing “I’m so happy, I’m confused”), the jealous third party of the love triangle comes and strangles the girl’s love and she reacts by singing another hefty line of “I’m so happy, I’m confused” and the curtain closes. I think that last line wrapped up how we felt about the end of the opera “I’m so happy its over, but I’m really confused.” Though I poke fun, the performers were excellent and talented. We definitely had fun yelling “brava!” as the singers bowed and flowers were thrown onto the stage.

We then managed to find our way back to our hostel and are preparing for our trip to Budapest tomorrow.

Vienna's little walk of fame

Pope in Vienna

I'm about two full weeks behind in my posting so I'll give you a quick update on what happened two weekends ago. Essentially we went to visit our homeboy, Benidict, in Vienna.

On Saturday we still had class (and a test) which really sucked. But we had a half day so after class some of us went to europark to check out Salzburg's mall which was interesting to see the Europeans version of a shopping mall (about 3 H&Ms and a couple of grocery stores). They don't seem to have it quite right, but it was an interesting experience since for the first time I was not in a big touristy spot and everyone was expecting me to speak German which was really cool and fun. But I do have to say that their waterfalls are pretty awesome.

After the mall, a group of us went to go see a performance in the student church of the Salzburg University of Mozart's Requiem. We figured we had to see a Mozart symphony while in the city of his birth. Requiem is famous because its his last work and he never finished it, ironically it was a funeral mass. The performers were excellent and it was really fun. However since it was in a church, a lot of the nuances in the music were lost in the 6 second echo which kind of sucked and it was a little too minor and slow for me.

The next day we had to get up at the peach crack of dawn and walk to the train station for a 7am train to Vienna because all of the buses don't run that early on Sundays. Therefore you have Guetler leading 14 half asleep students through the streets of Salzburg at 4:30 am at his infamous walking speed that rivals the land speed records of most species of African gazelles. This was just as the bars were closing after a seemingly successful Saturday night and Guertler had to ward off the drunken hordes from attacking us with merely an umbrella. It was pretty intense. Once we got on the train things really picked up as it was our first European train ride and we had little 6 person compartments to sit in. As you can imagine, I immediately going from compartment to compartment asking anyone if they've seen a toad named 'Trevor.' Then we enjoyed ourselves the rest of the journey by quoting every line we could remember from the Harry Potter franchise that took place on the Hogwarts Express. Wait that's incorrect, it started with quoting, then ended with acting out whole scenes. I think the dementors attacked us about 3 times and various pairs of glasses were repaired throughout the trip (Occulus Reparo!). We were extremely slap-happy from a lack of sleep. As you can tell, we're probably the coolest group of kids you could come across.

We (I) tried dressing up with the materials we had available.

Once in the city, we had a long walk to St. Stephan's Platz to the Dom or Cathedral in the city. Vienna is a pretty amazing city and every building matches one another in a whimsical baroque way. Plus there are just random museum/palace things and monuments all over the city who's architecture are all crazy ornate and detailed. The Hapsburgs were really successful in making their capital city impressive. More on that later, we would be coming back to the city the next weekend to receive Guertler's personal tour of fun and giggles at another breakneck speed.

Once at St. Stephan's Platz, there were so many people in the square, we couldn't get more than 200 meters from the church. Fortunately they had set up all these big screen televisions all over the square, unfortunately it was raining. I began to get grumpy because I hadn't eaten much all day and I figured we could've just watched it on TV at the Heftie rather than cough up 27 euro to come here if I wasn't going to even see the pope. The Austrians were freaking out about this event. There was nonstop news coverage concerning it weeks before and after the event on 8 different channels. Mass was a little boring because it was all in German and I don't know very many biblical words in German yet, we had to stand, and it took like 3.5 hours because the choir would randomly go off and sing half a symphony any chance they could. Communion was pretty neat as all the priests poured out into the square and placed themselves amongst the crowd with personal altar boys holding umbrellas for the priests.

It was surprisingly efficient and probably the shortest part of the mass. Gotta hand it to those Austrians... After mass, Benedict did come out on the stage really far in front of us, and that was pretty fun. The crowd was going nuts and they kept screaming "Benedicto! Benedicto!" and waving their respective country's flags around on umbrellas. He spoke to the crowd which I unfortunately couldn't hear but it was kind of funny because the wind kept blowing his robe over his head. Not his whole robe, but his red stole part. After the frustrating 20+ year old girl got off her boyfriend's shoulders in front of us got down I was finally able to get a picture of him:

After mass, we were given an hour or two to walk around the city before we had to catch our train back to Salzburg. We mostly just walked around and enjoyed the free pope-presents offered to us during the day such as pope-water, pope-bread, pope-ponchos, and pope-bandannas.

Mmmm Pope-bread!

In the end it was a fun trip that proved to be much more fun than I was anticipating.

Horay for the pope!

Life in Heftie

So as I said before, it has mostly rained so we’ve come to explore pretty much everything that is the Hefterhof hotel. So our morning begins with us being unable to get up from our extremely comfortable beds. Feather pillows and knit sheets. It’s amazing. After the morning ritual shower fight me and my roommate have (about who gets to shower second and get 20 minutes of extra sleep) we get ready and groggily stumble to the Frühstucksraum (breakfast room). On the way, I usually inadvertently walk through some important Austrian meeting or business deal going on because this hotel is more of a mini conference center with a few rooms. As you walk through the cloud of cigarette smoke, all the Austrians look up and have this indifferent but kind of confused look on their faces. It wouldn’t be bad if they didn’t stop talking and all stare at you when you pass. After you survive the trial of 100 Austrian death stares, you finally get to the Frühstrucksraum and there with a big grin is Prof Gürtler who greets us with an overwhelming “Guten Morgen!” as he finishes off his 3rd or 4th cup of coffee (if you ask, he claims he has 8-10 cups a day then will laugh hysterically, this man is a god). Then, before you, you have a feast buffet. Every bread imaginable, cheeses, cold cuts, eggs, cereal, I love European breakfasts. As you feast (if you’re in the vicinity of Gürtler) you’re required to speak German but if you sit strategically away you can whisper in English. After breakfast, full of food, you waddle off to class and try not to fall asleep in a food coma for the next three hours. Then it’s time for lunch. Lunch is a full 3 course meal, with 3 different entrée options, and none have ever been the same since we’ve been here. From Gnocchi to Goulash, we’ve been fed just about every rich meal you can imagine. Just when you think that the hotel is fattening you up for their wurst, you feed off the fat you’ve accumulated during the first two meals for dinner because we’re on our own for dinner. All we have is an archaic microwave that nobody really understands how to use.

Hayley is quite frustrated with the Microwave

No words or keypad, just a knob and really misleading pictures that don’t seem to have anything to do with microwaving
and we have a minifridge. Even though we get a 6 euro stipend a day, we’re all trying to save for travel and most just eat a frozen pizza or 2 euro worth of fruit or nothing at all. Evenings are an interesting mix of frantically trying to go outside (if its not raining) and doing homework. We all live at the end of a hallway, in 6 rooms and you can imagine that it’s really easy to focus with everyone around all the time. Another interesting aspect about the Heftie is the rather haphazard room cleaning that goes on. Fresh towels and sheets are given at irregular intervals, and the blanket fold/pillow combination is different every day. Our favorite is when they chop our pillow. Essentually stand the pillow on its side and karate chop it down so its nice and pointy, kind of like a napkin folded into a swan at a nice restraint but with a pillow and a lot less complicated. Also the nice cleaning lady always stops us in the hallway to speak to us when we walk by and we never have any idea what she is trying to communicate to us. We usually walk away extremely confused and trying to get her creepy smile out of our heads. Otherwise, this place is heaven and it will be missed greatly when we leave next week.




Usually just chillaxin is what happens when in the Heftie, however things do get exciting when there are bugs to be extracted. The walls also have holes in them that makes you feel like you're room is a hardware store.

Classes

Okay so I apologize for the long delay in posting. We're already more than halfway through our classes here in Salzburg and I've been extremely busy. We just got back from Budapest and Vienna and I've written a lot about our amazing adventures, so expect a lot posted real soon (or as soon as I type it up).

So let me tell you about these wonderful intensive German classes we've been having. After a placement test two weeks ago, I was placed into the lower level of the two classes offered here. I guess I am satisfied with my placement because it sounds like the upper class would be too much over my head. However it seems we are using the same German textbooks we used in my German 201 class I took two semesters ago which kind of makes me feel like I'm taking remedial German, but I'm okay with that (really, I need it...) Also all of the students in the upper course are in their 6th, 7th, or 20th year of exposure to the language.

I was extremely nervous about the upcoming class since: (a) I hadn't really practiced my German all summer (insert lame excuse here); and (b) prior students had told us that our teacher, Frau Offenberger, is a really tough German who takes no crap and has a legendary 'stare of death.' Well we walk into class on the first day (we have it from 9:00am - 3:30pm with 1-3hrs of homework daily) and there, sitting at the desk is not the German she-devil I was expecting but a woman who looked akin to as if Mrs. Claus had taken a liking to wearing cravats under her shirt and strangely fitting knitted sweaters. As we entered the room, she smiled at us and welcomed us to the course and did the teachery things teachers awkwardly do in the first few minutes of any course. Her demeanor can only have been described as grandmotherly, there was no stare of death but always a kind smile, and at several points in the day I wouldn't have been surprised if she pulled open her bag and served us all chocolate chip cookies, or a German equivalent. Little did we know that this was merely a front that was presented that first day to cover something no one could have prepared us for. I have now gotten used to her teaching style now but that first week was extremely difficult. So here's a typical five minutes in our class:

• Frau Offenberger asks us to give a sentence or asks us a question in German, usually an excersize in whatever grammar we're currently reviewing
• You answer, to the best of your ability
• Frau Offenberger stares at you blankly for at least 10 seconds. This is no ordinary, "Is that 55 year old German man really wearing blindingly yellow florescent capris?" kind of stare but a stare that goes directly into your soul and makes you question your very morals and all you know or all you think you know until you have nearly forgotten your name in a whirlwind of pronoun declensions and verb conjugations.
• Whether your answer was correct or not, you then frantically mumble something new, trying to crash through the awkward silence and trying to correct whatever you got wrong, usually sabotaging your answer even more
• Frau Ovvenberger's stare changes dramatically with merely the twitch of an eyebrow to a stare that begs a question akin to "how was that actually a legitimate attempt to communicate with someone/"
• You then hang your head low in shame as she corrects you and your classmates mourn for their fallen comrade

In the last week. most of us have found ways not to be fooled by her deadly enchanting stare. I have discovered that a confident blank stare back can easily lessen the awkwardness of the silence. However sometimes a concerned "Ist das logisch?" needs to be fired in extreme situations.

Otherwise class has been chugging along and I cant believe we are halfway through. Every day we pretty much cover the same amount of material we would have covered in a week of German at ND. This puts the intense into Intensive Language Course. My 20 minute attention span is also being tried every day as we go for more than 1.5 hours without taking a break.

Coming up next: Life in the Heftie and the Pope-trip. yeah. Get excited.

The Sound of Rain

I imagined studying in Salzburg to be fun and exciting where we would be working intensly on our German during the day and then go in the city in the afternoons and evenings to practice or frolic around the city like the Von Trapp children. However it has definitely nothing but rained since we got here which is quite unfortunate. This means that we are essentially stuck in the Heftie, unless we get the nerve to run a quarter mile through the European icy coldness to Spar to get some food for dinner. It's usually a strange assortment of cheap yogurtey and lunch meaty things we’re not sure what they are but have generic quasi-american names that don’t sound very appealing like “Choco-Drink” and “Sauer Milk” but they all taste amazing. However, this country has given us the strange but everpresent urge to run into eachothers’ rooms at night in long nightgowns all afraid that somehow result in us gleefully singing about our favorite things. Hopefully this will end with the rain. One other problem we’ve been having recently is that a couple of us have considered making our own Lederhosen play clothes from the colorful curtains in our room and we’re afraid that this may have a dire impact on the hotel bill for Notre Dame.

The only somewhat nice day we’ve had was fortunately the day Güetler took us into the city to give us his tour on Sunday. The first place we went to was the Mirabell Garten which is this really pretty garden in the Neustadt (note that the Neustadt is about twice the age of America). This is perhaps the most recognizable place in Salzburg for most Americans as the second half of the “Do a deer” song was filmed in various places throughout. I immediately recognized it (having just watched the Sound of Music a week ago in preparation for my stay in Salzburg) and while Prof. Gürtler was trying to explain to us the historical significance of whatever he was saying in German, I kept getting distracted and was trying to recreate my favorite moments from the movie. Unfortunately nobody really realized what I was doing until after we left and I got a lot of “oh THAT’S what you were doing, why didn’t you tell me?” Somehow I’ve reached a status where anything that would seem strange for someone other than the cast of Godspell to do in public would not warrant a second glance from anyone in this group. For example: hopping up and down stairs in a Salzburger baroque park while humming to myself. I finally convinced a couple of people to join me in running/skipping down a stretch of arbors in the park which resulted in, arguably the best picture in existence. After we got back I showed everyone the scene from the movie, and THEN they got all excited about the park and wanted to go back.

Sooo a needle pulling thread!

Faaaaa a long long way to run!

After the park we went to the Mönkberg one of the two hills in the midst of the city that had some great panoramic views of the city. We finally ended in the Altstadt where we had a couple of hours free in the city to roam. After getting bored with the Getreidegasse, a neat lane with all these cool iron signs advertising the shops (long are the days of cobblers, blacksmiths, and bakers unfortunately it’s now a collection of American and Scandinavian fast food restaurants along with super trendy, expensive, randomly specific European clothing shops that exclusively sell things like a combination of cuff-links and sashes) we all decided to go to a neat Biergarten I had heard about, Der Augustiner Bräustübl-Mülln. Its essentially a cloister where the Monks brew beer and it is perhaps one of my favorite places in the city. So there is a giant shelf of white clay beer mugs in two sizes, liter or half liter. You take your mug, wash it out in a special washing station, pay your ticket and give it to a monk who heartily fills up your mug from a wooden barrel to the brim as if it were water (take that, Guiness!), topped off with a friendly foam. You then have a mideval food court of sorts where you can pick up classic Salzburger dishes: warm apple strudels and schnitzel with noodles along with cheeses and meats. They have these awesome beer-halls you can sit in that look suspiciously like South Dining Hall at ND except they’re a tad bit smaller, everyone is smoking and drinking, and there are amusing phrases written on the walls. Our favorite was: (A good drink makes the old young). It was sunny so we sat outside under old trees and a wonderful atmosphere. The beer there is amazing, it’s the locals’ favorite. It’s unfiltered and hearty and one liter will fill you up like a 5 course meal. Das schmecht mir gut!

We had to leave as we had to be back to the Heftie early because we had our classes beginning the next day. Rather than take the bus, we decided to walk, which may have not been the best idea after walking around the city all day. It ended up taking about 45 minutes from the Augustiner and we were very tired and blisterey by the time we got back. We also had a tough time getting there because nobody had really given us any directions as to get back which can always be fun in a massive European city.

So this was all on Sunday and I’ll try to fill you in on the rest of the week before we leave for Vienna on Sunday. More to come, soon hopefully!

Tschuss!

Shopping Cart Guy

So yesterday was our first real day in the city.

We started the day with an absolutely wonderful Austrian breakfast, I love the food here. Then we had a meeting about pretty much the entire year. I'm sure there was a lot of important stuff in it but because the whole thing was in German, most of it went over my head. Nevertheless, I'm absolutely sure that my language skills have improved over the past two days. I'm still hindered because I'm not at the stage where I recieve immediate understanding, I have to translate things to English in my head still which kind of makes me a step behind. This also gets frustrating because people will ask me things in German and I'll hesitate, but I understand, then they ask me in English and I get all frustrated because I couldve done it in German. Then I realize its probably all for the best since I would have responded in an overly enthusiastic but incomprehensible guttaral mumble that probably wouldve offended any Icelandic people in the area because I had just unknowingly insulted their parikeet.

In the afternoon, we were taken via bus to the Salzburg train station and kind of got the lay of the land of the city for the future.

Okay I dont know why I wrote about that last bit, it wasnt anything too exciting. Oh, actually on the bus back I did accidentally call our program director by the German form of "mrs" and I dont know if he actually heard me but it was really awkward. I was like "Frau Guert...." then there was an awkward pause and he didnt make any form of recognition so I hoped he hadnt heard. However laughing about the incident later, the girl sitting next to me, Madeline definately heard me and said it was pretty obvious. I feel like that's the third or fourth time I've called a German professor by the opposite gender.

When we got back, we all made a really nice spaghetti dinner. We had gone shopping earlier and Professor Guertler had asked me for my advice on a type of wine during the excursion like I had some expert knowledge. I dont know why he came to this conclusion but I think it was the fact that I'm from california and some of the other students here think I have an expert knowledge of alcohol because I hosted a 'party' last year for all the pre-Innsbruckees in which everyone's favorite bev, Keystone Lite, was served. I only drink the classiest drinks as you can tell. Anyways I immediately saw a type of wine I recognized, Santa Christina, and it was fairly cheap so I told him to get that one (he didnt seem to have any kind of wine knowledge whatsoever). I know its a special wine to my mom and I hoped that it wasnt only because her name is also Christina. Dinner was really fun and good but it seemed that a lot of the students in the group either don't like red wine or they just dont drink so about halfway through the dinner there was still a lot of wine left. I ended up drinking about 5-6 glasses because Guertler kept coming around and refilling the glasses and I was one of the few at the table who needed refilling. Obviously by the end of dinner, I had gotten a fairly decent buzz and I'm sure my face was beet red. The nice thing about it though is that my German had improved tenfold (or at least seemed to me), but it wasnt just my speaking but also my comprehension. I got really confident and then was one of the people most joining in the conversation. Because I was speaking so much, I also was making more mistakes than everybody else as well and Guertler made a jocular comment that people should stop serving me wine. So the combination of that incident, my 'expert' opinion of wine, and the fact that during dinner I asked about a Biergarten in town(essentually an establishment that exclusivel serves beer) I think he has me pinned as the alkie of the group.

Dinner: note my beet-red face and goblet full of cheer

It was game day so we wanted to go to town to see if we could find a place that had sattelite and was willing to play the GA Tech ND game for us, it started at 9:30 our time. We took the bus to town and wandered around looking for a sport bar or irish pub. We hadn't seen the downtown area yet so we ran around playing with the interesting sculptures and such...

We finally found an Irish pub that the Guert had warned us about (very expensive) but they had advertisments about international sporting events so we went in to try to see if they would play the game. Inside the place was hopping, and it was in this really neat basement crypt. We immediately saw an assortment of Irish-american memorbelia including Boston Red Sox and the Celtics banners among which was a "fighting irish" lisence plate so it seemed we had found the proper place. I asked the bar-tender if they had Sattelite (enthusiastic 'ja!') and if they had NBC (another 'ja!') and then I asked if he would put on the game. Immediately his face went to some desprate look and he mumbled some excuse in german about there being patrons wanting to watch the game that was already on TV. I looked up and it was some frighteningly manly Romanian women playing pairs tennis, not exactly the prime irish pub sport... None of the patrons couldve cared less what was on the TV. There were also other TVs that were turned off so I asked if we could turn it on another TV and he said something about his manager and college sports and I pieced together they had some lame rule against playing these sports on TV. Ah well. We ended up sitting in the back of the pub and we ordered our first (and really expensive) drinks in Europe. I couldnt resist so I splurged on a Strongbow cider, they had it on tap. We were there for a couple hours and it was quite an experience. The other Austrians in the room with us would suddenly break up into some hearty drinking song every 15 minutes or so and we were getting a kick out of trying to comprehend what they were saying. After a couple beers we were soon singing our own songs, trying to cheer on the Irish from across the Atlantic. It was a really fun atmosphere.

By the time we figured it was halftime, we decided to take the bus back to the hotel and listen to the rest of the game online. We had fun taking pictures waiting for the bus and on the bus itself, like Hayley here leaning against the random ironing board shaped leaning pad on the bus...

Coming back to the hotel, we discovered that we were losing 27 to 3 and we got really depressed. Nobody else wanted to listen but I listened to the rest of the game. It was not fun. My favorite part was when we fumbled the ball 18 yards from our endzone. We all decided we picked an excellent year to miss Irish football.

My evening culminated when we were in one of the girls' rooms and Madeline told me a rather humorous story about her and her friends having a nickname for me before we had officially met. Apparently there was an instance towards the end of the year last year when she and her friends went to Target. She claimed that they never go and that when they do, they stock up a whole bunch. Well apparently I was there and they walked their cart past me and it was half-full and I looked at the cart full of Target amazingness, but she claims that I gave a disgusted look at the cart and at her like I was judging her for buying so much. Later in their shopping they walked by again with the cart 3/4 full and I apparently did it a second time, and then she claims I gave the strange look at them a third time when their cart was full. I feel like I'm not one to judge people on the fullness of their Target shopping carts if anything I would be happy at the many joys they were about to purchase but she swears it was me. I do recall going to Target some time last year but I think the main purpose for the trip was to purchase some underwear for the summer, so if anything I think it wouldve been more embaressing for me. So a couple days later we had our first Innsbruck meeting and after when she got back to her room, her roommates were like "so do you know anybody going?" and she replied "You wont believe this, but shopping cart guy!" and apparently they all freaked out all screamy and giggly like all girls do. I really have to laugh at this story because I think there have been many times where similar insances have happened to me and my roomates and friends in which the end reaction was always the screaming giggling one.

Time to get ready to go into the city! Classes start tomorrow and I we'll be a lot more busy so I dont think I'll be able to post as often. Until next time.