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.

First night in Österreich

I am currently sitting now in the dark, I’ve been in Austria now for about 12 hours. As I was watching the Princess Diaries in German on local TV, the other students abroad with me haven’t figured out the whole adapter/converter issue yet and between the 14 of us, we’ve probably blown about 3-5 fuses in just the past half hour.

Visiting ND was really fun. I had a great time going around campus and goofing off with people. Even though I’m still extremely bitter about missing the Georgia Tech game, it wasn’t as hard to leave. By the time classes started I just got kind of bored and after doing all of the facebook stalking I could, I was ready to blow that pop stand. Bryce (who generously let me crash at his place) threatened to put on Rudy my last night on campus, and it’s a good thing he didn’t because I would probably be on campus still.
After enduring the world’s longest bus ride to O’Hare in Chicago, I met up with the rest of the group and prepared to board our Austrian Air flight to Vienna. After getting through security and walking 5 miles down to our gate, we all agreed that our stomachs were going to start digesting themselves so we began to look for a place to satiate our hunger. We then discovered we were trapped in the world’s most poorly planned terminal. Not only did we have to walk 5 miles back to the security gate searching for food, with the only edible substances being duty-free sees’ candies and liquor, but they have food court right outside the security gate with windows that border the terminal! It’s just sitting there, taunting you. It finally got to us so we walked the 10 miles to go back and get our boarding passes so we could go out and eat and come back in.

The flight was uneventful except for the fact that I got no sleep because the stupid solitare game on the airplane kept cheating and I wasted 5 hours of good sleep time trying to beat the stupid thing.

Once in Wien (Vienna for all you English speakers), we ran to get a connecting flight to Innsbruck. It was here that we decided we really enjoyed the Austrian Air stewardesses.

Once in Innsbruck we had the pleasure of meeting our program director, Professor Gürtler who speaks nothing to us but German, they weren’t kidding about the full immersion. Its okay except when he’s telling you important information like where to meet him or how not to destroy the electrical system of the hotel you’re staying in. His wife is funny because she talks twice as fast and giggles a lot and most of us just put on our best acting skills to look like you’re really interested, which gets especially hard when you start swaying and lose your balance because you haven’t slept in 30 hours. I usually know the subject they’re talking about but have not idea why they’re talking about it. Here’s the dialogue in my head:

“Okay he’s talking about chickens… what do they have to do with the crusades? Ooooh, chuckle, I think he made a joke, all the better German speakers are laughing. Crap, did that last comment warrant a response from me?

From Innsbruck, we drove east again to Salzburg where I am currently staying. It’s a really nice four star hotel outside downtown and we’ll be here for the next four weeks. Since we got here, we've been doing orientation stuff and we're all super jet-lagged so its been really interesting. I seriously dont remember some of the day, like I remember sitting on my bed, and the next thing I know, I'm in the shower, 30 minutes later. I should seriously get some sleep... Oh and my address is:

Charlie Vogelheim
CO Hefterhof Hotel
Maria-Cebotari-Straße 1-7
A-5020 Salzburg
Austria

So the beds are starting to look pretty inviting now.

Half a Month

So I finally jumped on the blogging bandwagon, look at me all getting hip with the 21st century... As many others have done before me the point of this blog is to keep any and all who are interested in my life updated as I will be living in another country for about 9 months. I hope this doesn't get too boring for anyone and if it does please let me know. I hope to update this at least once a week but who knows if I'll be able to make this a habit.

Please give me feedback, like if I'm being too boring, havent posted in a while, or am using this as an excuse to not physically talk to anyone anymore, that would be really sad.

So I don't have anything exciting to say, other than the fact that I will be leaving in about two weeks and I am very excited and nervous. I wasn't too thrilled about going earlier this summer since everyone around me at UNDERC was talking about their excitment for the upcoming school year at ND. This was one of my biggest hurdles in signing up for the program and it was depressing me that I won't be on campus for my junior year. The band somehow still thinks that I am marching this year and sent me the music for the first game which also just about killed me since it was all my favorite music. But the more I think about going and now that I'm actually packing and getting things together, I'm starting to get pretty thrilled to start the semester. I honestly think its affecting my health.

I'm also very nervous about the whole German thing too. Even though I'm reading Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Azkaban and watching just about every German film I can get my hands on, this will not help me much with the speaking aspect. Rumor has it the first language professor is a tough Austrian who takes no crap. A big difference from Frau Weber who I had the last two semesters who was pretty much our grandma. I guess only time will tell.