Day 241: Pulling a Johann Strauss at the Beautiful Blue Danube

Hello readers! I'm back with many photos and not so much news. Clearly the boom-bust cycle of the Deborah Krieger News is a weekly one.

The main event of the past week was the USTA going-away party, which was held at a pub-restaurant in the 16th district called a Heuriger (hoy-ree-gurr). As a Fulbrighter, I have a little over a month left in the country, but the people who are only teaching assistants leave at the end of May. Still, though, many of the Fulbright combined grantees went if only to spend a little time with the American teaching assistants before they left and to get our very official certificates of completion from the Austrian Educational Ministry. I had not gotten the memo that people would be wearing dirndls (deern-dull), or those traditional Austrian dresses that people wear when singing about lonely goatherds and the like, so I came in a normal dress. I also haven't bought a dirndl and I'm not sure if I will--they seem a little expensive, and I'm fairly certain my Austrian ancestors wouldn't have been permitted to wear them back in the day, so buying one feels a little weird to me. Still, some of them have very pretty patterns, and I figure I can always wear my dirndl back in States...to go grocery shopping, or something? Where does one wear a dirndl in Los Angeles, California?

Very cute restaurant and the grape juice (and wine) was free! 

Here I am, all certified and honored for my incredible teaching.

Last week, my teaching was pretty unremarkable aside from the baseball lesson I prepared and taught several times. Yep, you read that right: I prepared a primer on American baseball for my first-year students (14-15 years old), where I provided them with a basic written and verbal summary of the rules, talked about such classic baseball movies as Moneyball and A League of Their Own, told them about Jackie Robinson, and then showed them a clip of funny baseball bloopers. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not really the sportiest of people, but I realized at Swarthmore that I probably have fairly decent average knowledge through osmosis, since my family loves sports with enthusiasm bordering on mania. I cannot count the number of times my mother screaming at her football team has given me mini heart palpitations, because I thought she was screaming because something was actually wrong, like she'd dropped glass or something. Baseball I am actually pretty familiar with, since I have seen a bunch of games and baseball movies, so I was able to explain the basic rules without having to do a lot of preparation. Below, a photo of the diagrams I drew on the chalkboard for my students, where I explain basic "moneyball," the layout of a baseball diamond, the significance of Jackie's number 42, and why it's called the "pitcher's mound."

I'd like to see my brother teach a lesson on ballet or the Renaissance now. THE GAUNTLET HAS BEEN THROWN, KRIEGER!

On Saturday, I ducked into an arts and crafts fair on Neubaugasse (noy-bow-gah-suh), then headed over to the Burgtheater (bourg-tay-ah-tur) for a lecture by the artist William Kentridge. I was actually really excited for the lecture, because my favorite piece at the new Broad Museum in Los Angeles was actually an animation video by Kentridge, which I've embedded below. I just really liked how he used the sketchy quality of drawing in the transitions, and so more than the Hirst or Koons, this work at the Broad really has stuck with me since I saw it in March 2016. The lecture was pretty entertaining, and was about his process of creating and coming up with concepts, featuring several recent videos he's done.

The Burgtheater is very fancy and ornate and classically Austrian.

A brief shot of the crafts fair, where I did not buy anything (but I did consider getting one of those dirndls).

During the week I also went to visit the Donauinsel (doh-now-in-zul) for the first time. The Donauinsel is basically a little island in the Danube river where people can frolic and play (or jog, or bike, or swim), and it's easily accessible by the U1. A bunch of Fulbrighters and British teaching assistants went to have a picnic, since one of my roommates is actually going home this month to start an internship program back in the states. Being at the Donauinsel on a beautiful sunny day was one of those moments where Vienna didn't feel quite real, and where I almost felt an irrational anger at having to leave it so soon. It's a city that's clean, easy to navigate, well-maintained, and cared-for in terms of infrastructure, and so thinking about the myriad problems of livability when it comes to cities I love in the US makes me wonder why we can't care for our cities on an institutional like the Austrians do for Vienna.

The train lets you off on this bridge, and I went the wrong way the first time to get to the island proper.

On a nerdy note: the Donauinsel is right by the UN building, so I went to check it out because it was used in Captain America: Civil War (for the record, Team Tony even though I love Cap and Falcon).

Lastly, this past weekend I went back to the Brotfabrik to review a photography show for the Humble Arts Foundation's blog, so that should be published fairly soon. I always love going to the Brotfabrik, and having a mission in mind made walking the several miles there all the easier, though I did cheat and take the train back home. 

It was a really great show--about cults and esoteric groups and pseudoscientific rituals!

On the writing front, I've had a lot of pieces in the pipeline for a few days now, so keep an eye on the published section of my main site: I wrote about Sense8's second season premiere and Riverdale's finale for PopMatters and the movie Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging for BitchFlicks (which have been published already), and I have an artist profile, a writeup on gaucho pants (not kidding), and several book reviews also waiting to be published for various outlets. Exciting times!

Miscellany of the week:

• I always love it when the Vienna public housing buildings have mosaics and murals on them--I wish I could document each one!

Spotted in the 16th.

Spotted in the 16th again!

Love me some bas-reliefs...also in the 16th.

I think this one's in the 10th. I took it on the way to the Brotfabrik...

• This one very modern clothes shop near Treu Bleiben, my weekend brunch spot, had this on the floor. I'm not quite sure what it means, but it's probably art.

The people in the store were just going about business as usual...

Day 135: More like UnesWHOA

Hello faithful readers! This week was less eventful than the last, excepting the TU Ball on Thursday and a day trip to Halstatt (hahl-shtat) on Saturday. I finally finished my university course--on Thursday afternoon, I took the final exam, which was quite the hand-workout. I used to be able to write essays for hours at a time in high school, thanks to the AP courses I took, but college, with its term papers and laptops, has made me soft, and so it was actually pretty painful to write the four short answer responses and two essays the exam required. Luckily, I passed the exam and the class with a "1," which translates to the highest grade, so that was a nice bonus to finally being done with that portion of my workload. Now I get to pick a new course for the summer semester, as it's called here, which runs roughly from March until the end of June.

I am officially ready to go out in the bright sun of my native Los Angeles and receive strange looks from people who can't handle a bright pink hat with the word FEMINIST on it in all caps. At least the beliefs about women's equality I've held dearly since I was 17 are fashionable nowadays...

The highlight of my teaching week was playing modified makeshift Apples-to-Apples with a first-year class to help them think quickly on their feet in English and also have a little fun. Since there were roughly twenty students, the usual method of playing in a circle wasn't going to work, so what I did was take some orange and blue construction paper and give each kid seven scraps of the orange paper to simulate the seven red noun cards. Each round, I would write an adjective on the blue paper, and the kids would have a short period of time to come up with a noun to write on an orange paper, which they would then place on the table in front of me face-down. I would then mix up the orange cards and read each of their answers in turn, and pick the noun that best fit my adjective. 

Adjectives included "annoying," "beautiful," and "brave."

The TU Ball was fun, but unfortunately I had teaching at 8 the following morning, so I missed most of the actual festivities, including all that dancing I had learned last week. The best part, though, is getting dressed and looking snazzy, naturally, so I did get to do that, and managed to be in bed by 11pm, because I require sleep to be a functional person, let alone an effective teacher. It is a little sad that I won't get an opportunity to wear my dress for a while--I guess I need to wait for people I know to start having black-tie weddings, or something, or for someone to invite me to an awards show.

You can put me in a ball gown, but I will always make a weird face. Guaranteed.

The ball was at the Hofburg palace complex, and was extremely fancy. So fancy, in fact, that the staff wouldn't let me sit down during the opening dance performance because every chair was apparently accounted for by people fancier than I.

Red light, violet light... it was so cold walking to the subway from the palace. I'm not sure I'll ever feel warmth again.

On Saturday, some Fulbrighters and British Council teaching assistants took a Erasmus bus, run by the international student organization of the same name, about four hours away to Halstatt, a tiny town on a lake that is apparently a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town itself was reminiscent of a ski town, with snow covering the ground and rooftops of the historic houses and small buildings, and it was all very charming (and cold). Halstatt is built into salt-mine mountains, as the tour guide let us know many, many times over the course of our ninety-minute walking tour, during which I was positive I was going to lose my toes to frostbite. The view was certainly beautiful, even if we lost the sun at around one pm behind the mountains--it was like a town in a snowglobe, and another example of a place in Austria that felt too picturesque to be real.

There are only two roads from one side of the town to the other--one for cars at the bottom, and one for pedestrians higher up the hill.

It's a small world after all?

I'm smiling in this picture because I'd just gotten off the bus and could still feel my feet.

Spotted at the rest stop we paused at on the way to Hallstatt. For a brief second I entertained the idea that it would be a regular CD with songs about chocolate, but...

... calorie information instead of a track listing confirmed that, yes, this was a chocolate CD. I should have bought it.

Miscellany of the week:

• In other news, the sun is finally setting around the all-new late time of five pm! Imagine that!!
• I've got a few pieces in the pipeline, as usual: I reviewed the pilot of Riverdale on the CW, which is... interesting... to say the least; I'm working my way through Paul Auster's 4321 on my Kindle app; I'm planning my review of the Dream Theater concert I'm going to see in Prague in a little over a week, and more. You'll probably be able to see those write-ups on my site by the end of February.
• Picture time!

This store sells clothes. I would have thought this store would be selling something a little more PG-13.

Oh man. Wow. I can go see the Superbowl here in Austria. I'm so excited. Wow.

Do I have room in my brain to try and learn Esperanto? Probably not. 

Walking back home at sunset and caught a very pretty view. Hashbrown, no filter.

I like that this pastry is spelled with "blech(hhhhh)" even though it probably tastes better than that.

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, my main site is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here. Also please send me good vibes so I get into graduate school with a good stipend! (Please, please, please--the wait is extremely unpleasant!!!))

Day 128: We gotta fight for our right(s)--no partying involved

Hello readers! Not a super eventful week, again, but this weekend was a bit more exciting (and emotionally taxing, if I'm being honest). 

On Sunday I went to the Kunstforum Wien (koonst-forum ween) to see Georgia O'Keeffe, which is precisely what it sounds like: a show on Georgia O'Keeffe. What was interesting to me, going to a show of this American artist in Austria, was learning that O'Keeffe isn't well-known in Europe, and that this show was actually the first show of hers in Austria at all. I grew up learning about art and artists, which naturally included O'Keeffe, so I was put into this position of being an outsider in Austria suddenly becoming an insider in the context of this exhibition. It was quite interesting for me to see how the European institutions who organized this show decided to present this quintessentially American artist without reducing her to solely her American-ness or her giant flower paintings, and overall I think the curators were quite successful. (You can check out the review here.)

The show was organized both thematically and chronologically depending on the room. It was a pretty substantial number of her works, even if they weren't necessarily all super-famous ones.

The best works had me either practically drooling, giving into Stendhal Syndrome, or a mixture of both. This is one of those works.

This painting made my brain do the equivalent of a keyboard smash but in a good way.

I just really liked this flower painting, and I'm not usually the biggest fan of flower paintings in general.

On Monday afternoon I went to a Fulbright-sponsored ballroom dancing lesson (seriously) so that we hopefully will not embarrass ourselves at the TU Ball later this week. We learned a bit of the English waltz, the Viennese waltz, and a few more basic steps of other forms of ballroom dancing. I felt like I was in Strictly Ballroom or something. Naturally, because I was one of the taller people in the room, I had to lead, but since I'm confident with simple ballroom steps, it was actually nice to be able to boss my partner around in a way approved by the relevant authorities. After the lesson, some Fulbrighters and I went to Tunnel for dinner, where I had fajitas in a slightly sad attempt to stop missing Los Angeles' Mexican food so much. (The fajitas were competent if not great.)

Someday I will learn the kind of swing dance where the boy throws the girl in the air and I will be the girl and it will be fun.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty similar in that not much happened outside of the usual-- I had teaching, naturally, and then in the afternoon I relaxed and/or slept. However, teaching on Wednesday was a pretty eye-opening experience because in half my classes, I was assigned to talk about the "American Dream." The lesson format was as follows: we did some brainstorming as a class about what the American Dream means so I could see what they knew about it, and compared various aspects of the dream to American reality as well as Austrian reality. Then I had the students read an article I had found from the New York Times from 2009 about the American dream, and we discussed it a bit. Then I split the class into groups and gave each group a different article from the Times. Each article discussed the American Dream, but they were all from different time periods: one was from the 1950s, one was from the 1970s, one was from June 2001, and one was from 2005. So the idea was that each time period had its own challenges and specific historical contexts, and I wanted the students to reflect on that while reading the articles in order to see what was emphasized, and why the articles were written the way they were: as a pro-America Cold War missive; a reflection on the Vietnam-era attitudes towards the United States; a story of immigrant success in the world before 9/11; and an article about the obsession with getting rich amidst the housing bubble that eventually would burst a few years later. 

With everything that is going on the United States today, especially in the wake of the election, I have to say talking about the American Dream was a bit sobering. People come to the United States to chase this dream of potential success, but then see themselves as having failed if they don't achieve these goals, because our culture ignores larger social contexts in the name of individualism. So we have people who are massively wealthy and people who are just as good and hardworking but who are in dire poverty. Meanwhile, people move to Austria or to many European countries because the baseline quality of life is better thanks to public funding of healthcare, schools, transportation, et cetera, and there's also a much larger focus on the idea of success as less individualized and more about general welfare and a functioning society. Maybe I'm being a bit essentialist about American versus European attitudes, but when it comes to countries with "socialized" healthcare and stronger welfare systems, I have to say I'm kind of jealous as an American, where you're largely on your own in a lot of ways if you don't succeed at supporting yourself. Unfortunately, this situation is likely going to get worse for many Americans over the next four years, and it makes me feel often like things back home are hopeless and endlessly regressing.

Some cheeky student, no doubt, put a hanging figure on the sign and I like it. It kind of reminded me of the Jonathan Borofsky installation (pictured below) at the Boston MFA but in a much more low-budget way.

(http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/i-dreamed-i-could-fly-314217)

The rest of the week passed pretty uneventfully, and then came Saturday: the day of the Women's Marches all over the world. Vienna was no exception--and apparently over 2,500 people showed up (which is a lot in a country of 8 million)! I hadn't been sure if I was going to go to the March because to be honest, I was worrying a lot about potential violence at the Marches in general (though mainly the ones back home). I was worried that people would try to enter the crowds and attack others to undermine the message and the movement, and to try and intimidate the people fighting against what's coming in the next four years. My mom was planning on going to the Los Angeles March, and I confessed to her how scared I was that something was going to happen to her at the March--even in solidly-blue, liberal, diverse Los Angeles--because one consequence of being so far away from home is that this election has made me question if I even have a home to come back to in July. The country I thought I understood in some way is now a place where 62 million of my fellow Americans voted for a president whose every action and word could harm the people I know and love, and as a result I wasn't sure my mom would be okay even in Los Angeles. I'm very privileged to have been able to feel at home in the United States my whole life, and I cannot imagine the weariness people feel when they've been fighting like this their whole lives. Fortunately, at the Vienna March, the Los Angeles March, and all the other marches around the world (based on what I've read), things seemed to be pretty safe.

So my fellow marchers and I actually missed the actual march part in Vienna because we got a late start on making our signs, so when we caught up with the crowd things had become more of a general rally. There were lots of people taking photos, news crews running around with fuzzy microphones, a guy playing "The Times They Are A'Changing," even a dance number. Since I don't have a ton of experience with marches/protests, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to smile when people wanted to take photos of me with my sign, but I smiled anyway except when one photographer told me to look more serious. 

On a shallow level, I actually liked making my sign for a few reasons. First, it saved me the trouble of trying to think of a pithy/funny/punny slogan that didn't make the mistake of equating "woman" to "has a uterus" or anything exclusionary like that. So when I remembered that I'd seen some cool images on "The Unquotable Trump," namely one of Wonder Woman, I figured I could incorporate the awesome defender of women into my sign. Instead of worrying all about text, I could just focus on the visual impact of my concept.

Secondly, even though I didn't make much art in college, it actually used to be a big part of my life. I took art classes all throughout elementary, middle, and high school, and even passed AP Studio 2-D Design in my senior year. I hadn't really done much drawing since sophomore or junior year of college, though, because I started using my laptop for notes and thus didn't have pencils and paper handy for doodling all the time, so even though drawing in particular had been a big part of my life, it had been quite awhile. Drawing (or dancing, or choreographing) has always been a really great outlet for me to channel negative feelings--if not to resolve them, but to at least confront and reconcile myself with them, and to allow both the negativity and me to exist, rather than the negativity wielding too much influence. So I guess in that way, drawing this sign allowed me to harness the more creative side of myself that hasn't had much time to shine in the last few years.

It doesn't look like many people, but that's more due to the angle I had to take this picture at.

Miscellaneous photos of the week:

Enjoy a photo of my Halloween costume from 2014. I got it from Hot Topic at the Westside Pavilion Mall with my mom, because of course I did.

I'm so (not) excited for this obscenely expensive movie based on the ideas of a four-year-old (who, frankly, could have been a little more creative. When I was four, I could have come up with a better movie idea than trucks that are also monsters.)

My roommates and I are considering taking photos of all the weird statues in Vienna, because some of them are really really odd and disturbing, like this one.

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, my main site is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here. Also please send me good vibes so I get into graduate school with a good stipend! (Please, please, please--the wait is extremely unpleasant!!!))

Day 121: Let's have a ball at Blumenball!

Hello readers! A few days late, but here's the newest edition of I On the Arts: European Edition! 

With this week, playtime's officially over! Back to the usual: school, research, writing, and teaching--but this week had a little formal fun thrown in on Friday evening. Getting back into routine is definitely a good thing for me, but I'm still not a fan of waking up before sunrise to get to school, or a fan of the way the sun is just gone again by four in the afternoon. Though, since it's January, the days are apparently going to start getting longer soon, which means that hopefully my sleep cycle won't feel so bizarre.

Teaching this week was pretty normal--I covered a mix of topics depending on which teacher I worked with for any given class period. I talked a little about my own holiday in Berlin, I presented the art scene in Los Angeles and had the students research works in the major L.A. museums, and I also had the kids debate one another about the benefits of vegetarianism versus being an omnivore. (I was assigned to have the kids talk about an environmental topic by the teacher.) Despite the students' reluctance to get up in front of the class to make their points, I think it was good for them to have to argue for a side they didn't necessarily agree with--I didn't ask who was vegetarian among the students until after the debate had concluded. My own debate experience in a formal setting began and ended in seventh grade, where, flustered and unprepared, I stammered out a defense of capital punishment (which I've never been a fan of), much to the consternation of my history teacher (shout out to Bud Pell). But just for the experience of talking in a second or third language in front of the class and having to think quickly to write responses and rebuttals, I think, is good practice for anyone.

Only at art school would the kids be able to build an awesome bench and cushion fort like this in the hallway without it being taken down. It certainly wouldn't have flown at Windward High School, where I recall being scolded for not wearing shoes outside on a nice day and for walking on the "landscape."

On Wednesday night, I surprised exactly no one by going to see Arrival for the third time in theaters. It was just as excellent as the first two times, and it makes me sad that it's not getting much Oscar buzz compared to Gravity or The Martian, because it's definitely better than La La Land (and I love musicals!), which is getting all the love.

On Friday night, the night I had awaited for several weeks arrived: Blumenball (or "flower ball")! A bunch of other Fulbrighters and teaching assistants got all dressed up and made our way over to the Rathaus (raht-howz), or government building, our legs and arms freezing in the cold. As anyone who's known me since infancy can attest, I literally cannot resist an opportunity to put on fancy dresses, so having balls to go to is the perfect enabling mechanism for this wayward behavior. 

Something seems strangely familiar here....

With my three-inch heels I was the tallest by far, even more than I normally am.

This lighting makes the dress look velvety, but it's actually lace over silk. I love this dress because it makes me feel like the princess I already knew I was when I was four.

This is almost too fancy.

Unfortunately, my low tolerance for high heels meant that by the time people were getting out on the dance floor, my feet were going on strike. But it was actually also a lot of fun to just walk around through the ostentatious halls all covered with fresh flowers and see the other ballrooms--there were rooms for waltzing, for salsa, and for other kinds of dance, which was pretty cool. It was another one of those moments where Vienna felt unreal, like a perfectly arranged simulation or dream or Disney locale--because where else would I go to an honest-to-goodness ball? Luckily I get to wear my dress one more time to the TU Ball, which is a formal Fulbright event. And then it shall go in the back of my closet until someone invites me to an awards show or my friends start getting married at black-tie weddings...

Miscellany of the week:

• Spotted on Viennese sidewalks: tiny rocks and lots of dog poop. The rocks are for traction against snow (but they just get inside my shoes), and the poop is... because the Viennese apparently don't think they need to clean it up. Gotta always look down at the ground to make sure you don't step in it! I've been lucky so far, but who knows?
• The dermatologist's office I visited on Wednesday was only accessible by walking through the elevator, which was just weird as heck and felt unnecessarily secretive.
• Of course I binge-watched A Series of Unfortunate Events in less than two days. Reviews are coming out soon, and I already need season 2 yesterday.
• Much to my surprise and what will undoubtedly shock my family, I actually find cleaning up my side of the room to be soothing and satisfying, especially because there is always so much dust to get rid of. I think choosing to clean up rather than being told to is what makes the difference.

I'm forever holding out for a gyro till the morning light...

I have undertaken a quest to find the best bowl of ramen in Vienna. This one was pretty good, but a little too light on the non-broth elements.

Even in the fancy part of town, there's a vape shop whose mascot appears to be a Bitmoji.

I have to wonder if there's a much better Viennese pizza trattoria around the corner to make this one incredibly jealous!

Sadly, there was no Ewan McGregor here to sweep me off my feet.

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, my main site is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here. Also please send me good vibes so I get into graduate school with a good stipend!)

Day 92: Fulbright! Das Musical

Hello lovely readers! This week was pretty laid-back, but with lots of art thrown in! (Contain your shock.) The weather is turning colder, but not anything Swarthmore winters didn't prepare me for. 

Were you, dear reader, prepared for my sweet bowling attire? I think not.

On Monday, I pulled double art duty: in the afternoon, I interviewed an artist from the anonymous Jewish street art group, the "Yiddish Resistance 3.0," and then made my way to the Austrian Film Museum to catch the first night of its Ruth Beckermann retrospective. The interview was very interesting, but, sadly, I failed to record the conversation properly. It happens to the best of us, apparently, but the artist was very nice about it and is happy to continue to work with me. Ruth Beckermann, a Jewish documentarian based in Vienna, is another artist with whom I'm working on scheduling an interview. The opening film screening was of The Paper Bridge, which was extremely beautiful to watch but lacked subtitles in English or German, so some of the interviews with people speaking in dialects were a bit hard to follow. 

Taken on my way to the Film Museum: this is the opera house, which is very old and fancy (naturally).

On Tuesday, I made my way to the Künstlerhaus at its temporary location in the fifth district, since the main one in the first is undergoing renovations. The Künstlerhaus is a private artists' organization (which reminded me of a lot of the collectives in the 319 building in Philly again). The show I went to see, which I reviewed and should be linked to on my main site within the month, was called romANTIsch? and combined aspects of Romanticism with more contemporary aesthetics and techniques, which was, overall, pretty ingeniously done.

Lots of different artists and choices of medium!

The lighting in the gallery made it a little tricky to take pictures for my review, though...

It is a really great space, and I wish I'd had another hour or so to take it all in.

Wednesday was not quite as exciting as the previous two days. On Thursday, however, I decided to catch an opening night screening of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at the local English-language movie theater, and I'm very glad I did! The movie was messy, rough, and at the opposite end of the spectrum from the much safer The Force Awakens, and it made some really bold choices (which I will not spoil, of course) that ultimately made me enjoy it more than The Force Awakens. I think Rogue One's being a stand-alone story (and ultimately, kind of working in the vein of fanfiction in how it fills in the narrative gaps between episodes III and IV) gave the filmmakers the opportunity to "take chances, get messy, make mistakes!" (in the immortal words of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus). 

The excitement was palpable... as was my annoyance when the guy in front of my took a photo of the opening credits on his phone.

This is the second opening-night screening I attended in 2016, the first being Captain America: Civil War. The key, in my mind, is to not have these premieres take place at midnight, but rather at a more reasonable hour, like 9:30 pm.

On Friday I had the opportunity to show off my (nonexistent) filmmaking skills during my workday at the Graphische: in a double period, the kids were split into two groups and they took turns working with me to write and film a commercial. The first group advertised chocolate, while the second advertised a potato. I am still not sure why anyone in the second group was just carrying around a raw potato, but that's art school for ya! It was pretty fun, and kind of surreal being able to film and edit everything on my phone, because technology is weird and amazing. Later, on Friday afternoon, I conducted an interview with the Roma filmmaker Saša Barbul. Lastly, on Friday night, some Fulbrighters and British Council teaching assistants went bowling, which I had not done since probably eighth or ninth grade. I am not very good at bowling, and I am especially not good at bowling with no guardrails. 

This was probably the most "American" thing I've done while here.

Having classics like "Summer of '69" and "Born to be Wild" playing as I attempted to bowl also added to the Americanity of it all.

Stray thoughts of the week:

• Check out my main site for my favorite things of 2016, because when in Austria, why not compile a list of one's favorite things? (Insert groans here.)
• The dentist? Totally not scary, but scarily expensive because apparently dental insurance is not super common here.
• Vienna apparently loves the jukebox musical. Like, more than I anticipated anyone having the ability to love jukebox musicals. I mean, Movin' Out was great (if not totally within the musical genre) but I didn't know people were clamoring for a musical about Falco or Elvis. While walking along one major street on two separate occasions, I spotted at least four advertisements for musicals about famous musical acts, which I have included below for your viewing pleasure.

O, o, o AMADEUS (the only Falco song I know)

Apparently Mamma Mia was not enough for the ABBA fans...

Ditto with Across the Universe...

Is there already an Elvis musical? Or is this the first?

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, my main site is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here. Also please send me good vibes so I get into graduate school with a good stipend!)