Day 35: "Can we hear you speak German?" "But this is an English class..."

Hi readers! I'm making sure to post on Friday today, but it's a short one because this week was definitely where the signs of me settling in are starting to show. I'm getting into my routine, balancing my teaching, exercising, napping, uni-going, researching, and socializing with my fellow Fulbrighters and teaching assistants, so I'm becoming acclimated, and things are less exciting and strange and more comfortable. 

On Saturday I went to photography show at a venue near my flat called Westlicht. The exhibition on display consisted of a selection of award-winning works of photojournalism from around the world, including the astounding image by Sergey Ponomarev of Russia which depicts a group of refugees on a raft coming to the Greek isle of Lesbos. I'm pretty sure this photo won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016, and it's easy to see why. The work has been compared to Thédore Géricault's Raft of the Medusa before, and the resemblance is striking, so I'm including a side-by-side comparison in this post:

(http://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo/2016/general-news/sergey-ponomarev)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa)

I'm not the biggest expert on photojournalism (or even any kind of expert in the remotest sense), though I've written about it before on my main site. I've also written on sports photography (wow, throwback to my first-ever review in March 2010 for I On the Arts... it's so short! I guess my verbose nature really hadn't started to crop up in my blog posts back then...), but there's something really different in the experiences of looking at environmental photojournalism, like the work J. Henry Fair does, where the disasters he documents are abstracted as as to be almost unrecognizable, versus Ponomarev's haunting photograph of the refugees, where the emphasis is inescapably on the human element. Yet the art historian in me wants to formalize that image in order to make the Géricault comparison, perhaps because it's such an affecting image that I almost don't want to get too close to it emotionally. It's almost like the tendency to do this kind of formal analysis functions as a shield and allows me to keep some sort of distance. I'm not sure, but for now, that answer is satisfying logically even if it means that I need to maybe reconsider how emotionally invested I get in the visual...

On a less-fun note, I was visiting the nearby public library for the second time when I came across a really nasty anti-Semitic flyer tucked into a library poster. I almost didn't want to touch it, but I felt like I had to at least alert the library staff, so I took some photos of the flyer and then brought it to the front desk. Honestly, I was surprised that it took me this long to find anti-Semitic sentiment expressed in this way in Vienna: there's been plenty of anti-fascist graffiti, Communist graffiti, and, unfortunately, Islamophobic graffiti, but this was the first anti-Semitic display I'd run into. It didn't really upset me that much as a result; the swastika graffiti at Swarthmore last month was--and is--much more horrifying to me. Swarthmore still kind of a home to me, since I lived there for four years, and the Vienna public library has much more foot traffic than Swarthmore's, so it's unlikely that I know the individual(s) who left the flyer in the Vienna library, while I shudder to think that I might well know the individual(s) who graffitied the swastika at Swarthmore. 

...yeah.

Earlier this week, I had deer shoulder stew at a great restaurant called Wratschko Gastwirtschaft 
(pronounced Vrat-ch-ko gahst-veertz-shahft) in the 7th district. The menu also included lamb liver, venison, meatballs... so plenty of options for a carnivore like me! A bunch of Fulbrighters and teaching assistants met at the restaurant, which was cozy and informal in a pub-ish way and then went for dessert at a really fancy cafe called Cafe Landtmann, where I ate an amazing slice of Nusstorte (nuhss-tor-tuh), or cake with walnuts and walnut cream. Not only was the interior decoration fancy, but if you sit down to order food, there actually aren't prices on the desserts--that's how you know it's fancy because "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"! I think that's the saying.

Have an artsy shot of this delicious cake that was an exorbitant six Euro...

I think I need to make one weird face per blog post at the bare minimum, so here y'all go.

Anyway, that's the report for this week. Next week I'm speaking with the curators of the Romane Thana exhibition at the Wien Museum, which ran before I got here but which promises to be useful in my project research. I also hope to go to the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) on Wednesday when admission is free, because the only thing better than seeing cool art is seeing cool art for FREE!

Random thoughts of the week:

• Voting overseas is a logistical nightmare even if you do all the proper paperwork before you leave. But as a Californian, I needed to at least get my votes in on the statewide ballot initiatives, including ones to outlaw the death penalty and legalize recreational marijuana for adults over 21, even if my vote in the Presidential election doesn't really matter.
• An apparently fun activity for my students at the Graphische is to ask me to speak German so they can judge my pronunciation and lack of an accent--and not just simple German phrases I learned in school, but idiomatic Viennese/Austrian phrases that I don't even understand... as long as the kids and teacher like me, I guess?
• I've now developed the habit of referring to the US as "the States" when I'm talking about it, even when I'm talking to my American flatmates. I'm already so European!--But it'll be hard to break when I get home...
• Unrelated to anything Fulbright or Vienna, but Lady Gaga's Joanne came out this morning and I'm really enjoying it, at least much more than I enjoyed Artpop or The Fame. Standouts include "A-YO," which is just a fun beat, "Angel Down," which reminds me of a Bruce Springsteen song, and "Just Another Day," which is Lady Gaga basically doing Billy Joel, all jangly piano and thoughtful lyrics about love. 

(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.)

Day 29: Kicking it into gear

Hi all! This post is a little late--last night I was able to relax a bit and spend some time with my fellow Fulbrighters over an evening/night of coffee/tea/desserts, so I'm just now writing this post on Saturday. Since I'm waking up pretty early for my teaching assistant hours most mornings (before the sun, before seven am... it's like being in high school all over again!), I'm finding myself taking more naps and sleeping more on weekends, so after this post I'm going to make myself leave the apartment and go to the gym. 

Me and a Fulbright friend at the evening gathering! The hat is neither hers nor mine, but looked much better on her than it did on me. I think my head is too big...

As far as exciting news this week goes, not much to report on the teaching or studying side. My classes at the Graphische are still in the stage of me introducing myself to the various students, but I did get to meet with some of the kids in groups and discuss the first chapter of Brave New World with them, which they are reading in English (abridged slightly for length and overall clarity). Since I read Brave New World for the first time in ninth grade (shout-out to Rob Latimer's World History Honors Class) and really enjoyed it, I was able to discuss the chapter with the students and try to get them excited about reading the rest of the book, since the first chapter is admittedly kind of boring and full of scientific jargon about how humans are "decanted" in the Society of Brave New World. But it was a bit challenging to put the arguments of Brave New World into perspective, because none of my students knew about 1984, which is my usual point of comparison for dystopian Western worlds, so I had to improvise and have the kids compare the concerns Aldous Huxley might have been addressing in 1932 with Brave New World with Suzanne Collins' themes in The Hunger Games, which almost all of them had read and/or seen: "Why do people write dystopian fiction? Why have people been writing dystopian fiction for a pretty long time? And what do The Hunger Games and Brave New World have in common even though their respective dystopias are so different?" That kind of thing. I hope my enthusiasm for Brave New World came through, and maybe I'll get to meet with them later this year after they've met Bernard and Mustapha and John and all those great characters...

Spotted in Vienna: a sausage cart to promote the Austrian release of Sausage Party, which I did not have any interest in seeing and still don't. I just thought it was funny how literally they are promoting this movie about talking food. Also the German tagline for the movie is "Es geht um die Wurst," which is a German idiomatic expression meaning "it's now or never," which I think I actually learned in one of my intro German classes at Swarthmore.

My class at the University of Vienna this week focused on depictions of the criminal in British popular media (since our guest lecturer was from the University of Belfast) and mainly addressed how male versus female criminals are portrayed with regards to violent crime, and how programs like Crimewatch manage to titillate, fear, and soothe viewers by re-creating real crimes and then showing how they get solved. What I found kind of missing in the discussion was maybe an America-centric theme: namely, we didn't really talk about the racial divide in how criminality is portrayed in the media even when you take the gender divide into account. In the United States there's absolutely a gap between people of color accused of crimes versus white people accused of crimes and how they are talked about in the media, but maybe it's less of an issue in the UK? I'm not entirely sure that is a satisfying answer.

It's not easy taking a selfie on a bridge...

On the more exciting side, I finally began my research project in earnest: yesterday I visited the home and studio of Eduard Freudmann, an artist of Jewish descent who makes works in a variety of media about anti-Semitism and anti-Romaism in a post-Shoah context. It was a really great conversation: we talked for over ninety minutes and it was very informative, and promises to be extremely fruitful with regards to being able to meet more artists Freudmann has worked with who pertain to my project. He also gave me a free copy of a two-sided poster he made for his work 1st general assembly of the committee for the commemoration of the word that designates the genocide of Roma and Sinti. We also talked a bit about our experiences with anti-Semitism in American versus European contexts, which have some similarities but are also pretty different, owing to Austria's history with the Holocaust. Of course now I have over ninety minutes of audio to transcribe, but it was a pretty great meeting nonetheless.

One side of the poster... but how can I hang a two-sided poster on my wall? I might have to rig it from the ceiling...

(http://www.eduardfreudmann.com/?btx_portfolio=1st-general-assembly-committee)

Random musings/other events of the week:

• I found the perfect dress for the TU Ball, which the Fulbrighters all apparently go to in January. I'm not posting a photo of it now because spoilers!! But it made me feel like Cinderella at the ball and it's very shiny and blue and again, perfect.
• Students at the Graphische have way more leeway than even the most hippie schools I've seen in LA. They can swear in class with no repercussions, they get smoke breaks, they are allowed to draw on the walls, and some of them just show up late. They all seemed to balk when I described the idea of detention in American schools, as well as the idea that swearing can get you sent to the principal's office. I didn't even try to get into the disciplinary measures favored by many charter schools... just a very different kind of learning environment overall, and the Graphische kids are treated like adults.
• I have to get re-used to layering up to leave the house and then de-layering as soon as I've walked anywhere because you tend to heat up if you're walking quickly... it seemed less of an issue at Swarthmore, but it's definitely not an issue in LA...

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods (or digital books, as the case may be), my Amazon wishlist is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here.)

Day 21: Time to stand on the desks and recite poetry

Hi all! This past week has been really incredibly jam-packed with lots of activities and information, and it seems like that this life of hustle and bustle will be the new normal, so I think I'll probably be only to update this blog once per week at the most. Of course, each blog post will have plenty of commentary, random information about my life in Vienna, and photos, just like I've been doing in my earlier posts, but it's looking like Fridays will be good days in general to update everyone on my copious adventures across the Atlantic. 

Getting ready for that freeze-frame jump...

On Saturday a bunch of Fulbrighters, British Council TAs and USTAs went on a wine hike through beautiful hills and vineyards just above the city of Vienna, so the view was fantastic. There were little stands placed every so often along the path where you could buy different kinds of wine or "Sturm" (shturm), which is a beverage made from partially-fermented grapes that is apparently really popular in Vienna. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I partook of a glass of a sweet-ish white wine (whether it was a Riesling or Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio or some other kind of white wine is beyond me--it was "winey" and "grapey", though, so there's my sommelier skill coming back!) and spent the afternoon mostly walking uphill and enjoying great conversation with some of my fellow Fulbrighters and TAs. This experience was just another in a growing list of things about Vienna that are so picturesque and charming that they don't seem real--I feel like I'm going to find a Disney logo sticking out somewhere and find out it's all a perfectly-calibrated theme park, because the architecture, the views, the eclectic little coffee shops, even the old-timey font on some of the street signs--it's kind of overwhelming at times, but in a good way.

There were still lots of grapes on the vines, but I decided against eating them since I think it would technically have been stealing.

The hills are alive... with the sound of me breathing heavily as I walk uphill for what seems like hours, trying to remember that climbing Masada was worse.

I had planned on going home after the wine hike, but since it was the "Lange Nacht der Museen" (lang-uh nakht der moo-seyen), I decided to meet up with another Fulbright friend and go to the Kunsthistoriches Museum later that night. The Lange Nacht der Museen is a special event in Vienna where many of the city's numerous museums are open until 1am, so it was a fun way to experience a little Vienna nightlife, but also remain pretty firmly in my comfort zone. The Kunsthistoriches Museum is where you'll find the Old Master works--Raphael, Rembrandt, and even Vermeer are all represented in the amazing collection. For the longest time, I thought I would specialize in the Italian Renaissance as an art historian, so I was able to give my friend what I hope was an informative tour through the early and high Renaissance, along with Mannerism and the Baroque for good measure.

I wish I'd brought my real camera because the museum's interior architecture and decoration is ostentatious in the best possible way, and this photo doesn't really capture it well.

This past work week was where my duties in Vienna really became real for the first time--namely, I began my work as an English teaching assistant at the Graphische, which is a vocational arts school located pretty near to where I live in Vienna. I'm going to be rotating as an assistant for thirteen hours per week, teaching five different levels of English proficiency about various elements of American culture and politics. This week, though, was the introductory week, so I delivered the same basic spiel to a bunch of different classes--I talked briefly about myself, had everyone write their name down on a piece of paper on their desks, and then had them ask me questions about the United States, California, Los Angeles, or about me specifically. What I thought was pretty funny is that every class but one asked me if I'd seen any celebrities growing up in Los Angeles, so I was able to talk about a few of my random sightings, much to my students' delight. I was also asked quite a few times about the upcoming Presidential election, obesity and fast food, whether American high schools are like the movies, and was able to learn a lot about what Austrians, in turn, think about Americans and to what extent their preconceived notions are accurate. I also liked my students' reactions when I told them about how most Americans associate Austria with The Sound of Music, which, of course, none of them had actually seen--when I told them how The Sound of Music, which involves a family escaping the Nazis, is played on TV during Christmas on repeat back in the States, their reactions were hilarious. The kids themselves are really smart and good-natured, and dress way cooler than I ever did in high school--a bunch of them had dyed hair, piercings, tattoos, so basically every art student cliché brought to life.

Pictured: not me, inspiring students. (RIP Robin Williams.)

On Thursday evening I had my first University of Vienna class--an English-language lecture about "Outlaws, Rebels, and Misfits" in popular culture, media, history, and society. The first lecture was pretty interesting--a lot of time was spent talking about Western (specifically American) conceptions of outlaws, so when I raised my hand and asked/answered questions, I'm pretty sure the other students were looking at me funny because I very clearly sound American, not Austrian (or English or Scottish). I'm super excited for the next class meeting--the professor seems very interested in making sure our subject matter is intersectional in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality--we won't only be covering the classic cowboy image and Robin Hood, but also figures like Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haiti Revolution against the French), Calamity Jane, and pirates as both anti-colonial heroes and threats to order and safety, depending on the political scenario at the time. We will also be reading Fight Club, so I have an excuse to do that as well as watch the film, which is supposed to be a classic, even if I don't look forward to watching a lot of violent fight sequences.

Next week promises to be just as busy as the last--and I'll actually be starting my meetings with artists for my research project! So my next post will talk a little about that experience.

Random observations of the week:

• If you tell your high school students your favorite Viennese food is the "Käsekrainer," which I mentioned in an earlier post, they will laugh at you. I figure it's probably the equivalent of a tourist visiting New York City and saying their favorite food is a hot dog from a street cart, but still. WHY DO WE NOT HAVE CHEESE INSIDE SAUSAGES IN THE USA??
• People from Austria will just jump over to Hungary for their dental work, because that's apparently something Hungary excels at. I can't imagine leaving Los Angeles county to go to the dentist, let alone another state or country.
• Once October hit, it got colder and grayer and rainier like clock work. My pathetic Los Angeles umbrella lasted for about a minute before it shriveled up and died, so I had to run to a grocery store to buy another one.
• Same-sex couples on crossing lights!!!!!!!!!! 'Nuff said.

Love is love is love. They also have lesbian and heterosexual couples on the crossing lights, as well as humans and their bikes.

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here.)

Day 14: I like it when my ice cream looks like spaghetti

Hi readers! I'm writing this blog post from back in my room in my apartment in Wien. I've just returned via ÖBB regional rail from the USTA orientation in the adorable town of St. Pölten, and I begin teaching this coming week. About 140-ish American teaching assistants and British Council teaching assistants spent the week in a youth hostel in St. Pölten, eating meals together, living in double and single rooms with one another, and getting a pretty intense crash course in developing and implementing lesson plans as well as navigating the Austrian school system. But first: after a brief introductory lecture in the main meeting room, we teaching assistants took part in a ninety-minute workshop on traditional Austrian dance, complete with teachers in the appropriately traditional Austrian garb. It was definitely an... interesting bonding experience to have with people we hardly knew, especially because a lot of Austrian dancing requires partnering, so we all held hands with lots of strangers and laughed at ourselves the whole time.

(http://image.slidesharecdn.com/austria-120515013847-phpapp01/95/austria-map-ppt-slides-2-638.jpg?cb=1393458832)

The USTA orientation itself was definitely more intense in a variety of ways than the Fulbright Austria orientation: it required a lot more input from us and less simple listening to lectures. Based on the kinds of schools we are working in, we were all placed into various groups that met for much of the day on Tuesday and Wednesday. I am working in what is called a "Höhere Technische Lehranstalt," (hu-ruh teck-nish-uh lair-ahn-shtalt) which is essentially what Austrians call vocational training institutions; other teaching assistants are working in a "Gymnasium" (gim-nah-si-um), which is basically a college preparatory high school, or a "Pädagogische Hochschule" (peh-da-go-gish-uh hokh-shu-luh) which trains future teachers. The different kinds of schools are important to know, as the students in them are expected to have different levels of English, depending on what kind of careers they intend to pursue. 

There was a really peaceful park near the hostel. If I'd been diligent (and not required to wake up before seven in the morning) I might have actually exercised here.

The culmination of the training involved us breaking up into smaller groups of between two and five and creating a specific sample lesson plan on Wednesday, which we would then deliver in a local school on Thursday. I worked with two USTAs, and together we came up with a lesson on the American higher education model, since each of us had gone to a different type of American college: I went to a small liberal arts college; another one of us had gone to a medium-size university; and the last member of our trio went to a military academy, so we would all have vastly different experiences to relate to the students. However, when we ended up in front of the students come Thursday morning, we mainly ended up fielding questions from them about the United States, serving as their personal founts of American culture (meaning a good bit of time was spent discussing Donald Trump, of course). So while we were a bit over-prepared for our practice lesson, ultimately it was useful in that I really had to check myself as a speaker--to make sure I was speaking clearly, not too quickly, and not introducing too many foreign concepts so that the students could understand what I was trying to say.

In the afternoons, we were led on tours: first of the town of St. Pölten itself on Tuesday, then around the government buildings on Thursday. While the town itself is charmingly old-fashioned architecturally, I was surprised to find that most of the shops were actually chain stores I'd seen earlier in Vienna: Drei cell phone retailers, dm convenience stores, Thalia bookstores, et cetera. The government buildings are much more sleek and modern, and have a rather spectacular view of the Traisen river.

Amazing chocolate shop in the town. Yes, that is a chocolate drill, and a chocolate trophy, and a chocolate tool set...

If I had a view this nice, I probably wouldn't get much work done.

Evenings and meals were spent with various other teaching assistants--fellow Fulbright combined grantees, USTAs, and those from British Council. Even though I've been to parts of the United Kingdom before, it's always fun to talk about the differences in American and British cultures with Scots and Brits over breakfast, because there really are so many different ways we use words or conceive of different concepts. While roaming the cobblestone streets of St. Pölten in the evenings with fellow Fulbrighters and TAs after training sessions, I tasted my first "Hugo" (oo-goh) cocktail for the first time. It was light and sweet and fruity and utterly delicious, even though it was carbonated. I also tried a strangely wonderful German dessert called "Spaghetti Eis" (shpa-getti ice) which is basically what it sounds like: ice cream made to look like spaghetti, complete with strawberry sauce subbing for tomato and coconut flakes subbing for Parmesan cheese. I'd seen pictures of Spaghetti Eis in Vienna, but hadn't actually gotten around to trying it yet, since there was just too much hazelnut gelato to eat. But since there was a place in St. Pölten that served this treat, I figured "why not?"

Honestly, it was actually a bit too sweet for me. I'm not the biggest fan of strawberry syrup, but it was more for the novelty of eating ice cream that looked like spaghetti. Worth it!

My teaching schedule begins on Wednesday, and so does my university course. I'm more nervous for the teaching than the studying, of course, but since it seems like I will have a good bit of freedom to pick what kinds of American culture I talk to my students about, I'm not actually that stressed--if I had to remember my high school grammar lessons (shout out to Charlie Holmes, my ninth grade English teacher!), that'd be quite another story, however. It's a lot of power to have--to be able to be both source and filter of information about the United States for Austrian high schoolers, which is honestly kind of intimidating... but I'm also excited to be able to talk about where I come from, so I am confident it'll be an overall positive experience.

Stray observations/thoughts:

• Trains here run on time, all the time, and it's amazing.
• Vienna has a lot of different kinds of coffee, so when you order one in a cafe here, you need to be specific. I personally recommend the "Melange" (meh-lonj-uh), which is like a cappuccino but better, somehow?
• I need to learn how to wake up early again because Austrian high schools can start as early as 7:50 in some cases. College ruined me in that regard...
• So far, both Vienna and St. Pölten have been pretty great about having city-wide, public wi-fi. I wonder if that's specific to Austria, or if Europe on the whole is better about providing wi-fi than the U.S. is? Only traveling will solve this puzzle...

(As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here.)

Day 8: Feeling oriented-ish, perhaps, maybe

Hello, readers! Our third roommate finally arrived, and so the three of us have been settling into the swing of things. This week was the first of my two orientations: the official Fulbright Austria and Vienna Orientation, which took place in the Fulbright Austria offices in the MuseumsQuartier, which is located in the second district. The MuseumsQuartier is basically a complex of buildings that includes a great selection of art institutions, such as the Leopold Museum (which displays Egon Schiele works), mumok (which stands for Museum Moderner Kunst, and shows contemporary art), and the Kunsthalle Wien (which shows contemporary rotating exhibitions). 

I know it's punny, but I definitely love the Fulbright Austria slogan.

The orientation itself in the first few days consisted of lectures about Austrian and Viennese history and culture, interspersed with various panels with journalists from Austrian and German magazines and newspapers to provide more political context. Especially interesting was learning about the upcoming rescheduled Austrian presidential election, which bears a lot of similarities to the upcoming election back home in terms of demographic support for each candidates and some of the pressing issues, though the way liberalism and conservatism diverge in American and European contexts means that some Austrian voter demographics don't dovetail so neatly with their American counterparts. This part of orientation was also full of getting important residency documents filed and stamped, et cetera, which just makes everything feel so official at last!

The end of orientation was a bit more on the "wow" side, as the Fulbrighters were invited to a reception at the US Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Eugene Young's residence Thursday night, and visited the Wien Museum and the little town of Klosterneuberg (pronounced kloh-ster-noy-burg) with its nine-hundred year-old monastery on Friday! It was kind of hard to believe that the reception was real--there were people from the Fulbright Commission there as well as Eugene Young, all drinking wine, champagne, and bubbly water and eating tiny foods on sticks. (The waiter kindly got me un-carbonated water, or "stilles Wasser," upon my request.) It was a great opportunity to relax and get to chatting with some of the other grantees, who are all incredibly smart and thoughtful and uniformly awesome. 

On a way more superficial level, pretty much everyone told me how much they liked my dress, which my grandmother made for me around my freshman year from an older vintage dress she picked up!

Friday was similarly a lot of fun, since the morning featured a brief tour of the Wien Museum, which is the official municipal museum of the city of Vienna, followed by a bus ride to Klosterneuberg Monastery. The tour of the museum focused more on the historical aspects of the city, skipping the paintings in the rooms in favor of the maps and dioramas of the city and its various sieges, so I will definitely be visiting the museum in future for a more in-depth look at all it has to offer. The Wien Museum is also of particular interest to me since an important exhibition called Romane Thana: Places of the Roma and Sinti was displayed in the Wien Museum in spring 2015. Based on what I've been able to read about this show, it seems like a good resource for my research project--now I just need to get my hands on the catalogue!

Predictably, pretty much everyone wanted to go to this show, but it wasn't included on the tour... definitely coming back another day for it!

(http://www.wienmuseum.at/de/aktuelle-ausstellungen/ansicht/sex-in-wienlust-kontrolle-ungehorsam.html)

A brief interlude on the way to Klosterneuberg was this breathtaking view of Vienna from waaaay on high!

The afternoon at Klosterneuberg Monastery was also wonderful in an entirely different way. The monastery is architecturally pretty unique since it was built over the course of centuries and was transformed in sections from a Romanesque/Medieval-style building to a much more Baroque aesthetic due to the Counter-Reformation movement that was quite strong in Catholic Austria. Essentially what this means is that while the outside of some of the monastery is plain and austere-looking, the inside looks like St. Peter's in Rome--just chock-full of ornamentation and colors that were meant to dazzle the worshipers and inspire faith. 

However, my favorite part of the tour of Klosterneuberg was the show of contemporary art that was on the first floor of the church, which is a yearlong tradition held by the monastery museum culminating in the "St. Leopold Peace Prize" (Saint Leopold founded the monastery). The theme of the contemporary works on display was "The Power of Greed," which, in the context of the Catholic history of indulgences leading to the Protestant Reformation, was an inspired choice, and got me thinking about what it would be like if some of the older monuments in the United States hosted more contemporary works--imagine a video installation on the side of the Washington Monument, perhaps? (Though the US doesn't really have any monuments quite as old as the ones in Europe...)

Finding what looked like a menorah... at the monastery! All those monks celebrating Hanukkah....

After the tour was the very classy wine tasting, during which I sipped from two whites and a red, all from the monastery's winery, and pretended I knew anything about wine at all. (This wine "is brusque," "doesn't overstay its welcome," "has hints of currant", et cetera. I should probably not become a sommelier because I don't think I could take it seriously.)

Today was spent mainly walking around the city itself--while the public transit here is wonderful, nothing beats just being able to go at your own pace and duck into whichever little shop or cafe (or art exhibition in the Kunsthalle Wien, just as a total hypothetical that definitely didn't happen to me today, nope) catches your fancy. Tomorrow will also be filled with art, as I plan to visit the Vienna Contemporary Art Fair in the afternoon. Moral of the story: put me in a new city, and I'll immediately find the flea market and where the art is. It's just how it is with me...

Random observations:

• The Käsekrainer (kay-suh-kray-ner) is a sausage filled with cheese and it's amazing. So far, it's my favorite food I've had here.
• Austrians really like their bubbly water--in fact, when you order water in a restaurant or bar, you have to ask for "ohne" (oh-nuh), which means "without"--meaning, without bubbles, or they'll bring you the bubbly!
• When you order an omelette, sometimes they will bring it to you in the pan. Or maybe this was just because mine broke and looked more like scrambled eggs...
• Vienna is really student-friendly so far--there are tons of discounts on museums, movie theaters, and transit for students!
• At the restaurant near the monastery, I had an amazing bread-pudding-y dessert filled with apricot in a bath of vanilla sauce-y liquid. Delicious, but I can't remember what it's called...

Day 3: Someone please tell me how to cure my jet-lag...

Hi all! I've now been in Vienna for over two full days and have settled into the lovely little apartment I'm sharing with two fellow Fulbrighters! We're living in Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, also known as District 15. It's located pretty close to the center of the city, but also has lots of public transit and isn't too expensive or fancy--perfect for students! There's plenty of restaurants and supermarkets as well, and the buildings are all old and lovely. This excellent-looking list of things to do in 15 has me really looking forward to spending time here in "Vienna's most exciting, dirty little secret"!

The districts are organized in a kind of circular rotational way.

(http://www.elkhazen.org/vienna/uploaded_images/vienna-districts-763925.png)

So far we've been getting our bearings and settling in--we got SIM cards for our phones, did grocery shopping, and walked around quite a bit. On Saturday Vienna was bustling, especially on the Mariahilferstraße, which is just a few blocks away and is one of the largest shopping blocks in the city. It's kind of like the Santa Monica promenade in that you can't drive on the street there--in German, it's called a "Fußgängerzone" (pronounced foos-gayng-er-tzohn-uh). We found a flea market (because I seem to always find flea markets wherever I go) and we walked through it, stopping to look at knickknacks and tchotchkes along the way. Then we dropped into the Kunsthalle Wien, a small contemporary art space with a great show called "Beggars and iPhones" by an artist named Andrea Büttner. It didn't address the topic of the necessity of possessing technology, including for the homeless, in the manner I would have expected, but instead connected "beggars" and "iPhones" in a more gestural way, linking the body language of begging with the swiping motions performed on a touchscreen.

The Kunsthalle Wien is such a cool contemporary space... I'd love to curate a show in this room one day!

On Sunday pretty much everything is closed, except for the public parks and museums, but we're waiting to get our student ID cards before we do a lot of the tourist and arts attractions because it saves quite a bit of cash. There is an incredible number of museums in Vienna--not just art, but also plenty of historical and cultural museums as well, and I can't wait to visit them all.

Some of the things that are different from home that are standing out in my mind include the following:

• the apparent nonexistence of skim/nonfat milk in grocery stores (so I'm switching to 0.5 percent)
• paying to use a public bathroom (which is how they are kept so clean, I guess)
• having to stand on the right side of the escalator so that people on the left can move along (which I need to remember to do)
• the ubiquitousness of Muesli (German granola, basically)
• having to dial the plus sign to call someone on the phone (and the dial tone here, which sounds disconcertingly like the "call dropped" noise from the United States)
• the difficulty of finding iced tea not from a bottle (I miss you, Peet's and Coffee Bean!)

Standing outside the Vienna Secession building. Just realized that the angle I'm shot at is similar to a famous Vienna Secession work by Gustav Klimt:

(http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustav-klimt/university-of-vienna-ceiling-paintings-medicine-detail-showing-hygieia-1907-1?utm_source=returned&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=referral)

Tomorrow I have the first day of the first of two orientations: the Vienna orientation! (The other one, located in the nearby town of St. Pölten, is the teaching assistant orientation, which has me both nervous and excited!)

As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here.

Day -1: We have liftoff!

Today is the day! Time to mosey on down to good ol' LAX (short for relax) and take off!

I'm still a bit jet-lagged from flying to Chicago and back to drop off the lil' bro at college (which was so unsettling because I'm half-certain when I wake up from this extended dream that is my life he'll be a five-year-old again), but then again, I'm pretty sure flying within the same time zone gives me jet lag.  Impressive, huh? It's my superpower. Hopefully I can sleep on the first leg of my trip--thank goodness I got the window seat. Sleeping on planes is turning out to be another superpower I managed to cultivate last year. I think I might be secretly a Snorlax instead of a superhero...

Me and my beloved car Hyphen "Dash" Ated. It's been swell, even when you ran out of gas yesterday.

As I (read: my mom) was packing up my giant suitcases for this trip, I couldn't help but think that it hasn't really sunken in yet: despite the reams of paperwork and emails from the Fulbright Commission, it still doesn't feel real that I get to have this opportunity. I've never been away from home for this extended period of time, so I don't really have an emotional or temporal reference for what living on my own like this is going to be like. Especially in another country, where German isn't my native language! I wonder if it will finally seem like it's happening before it actually does start happening. I have a feeling that getting my teaching and studying workload will ground me, like starting classes did when I started college. Or maybe once I go grocery shopping and unpack my bags...

I have always traveled with books. But this time around, I just don't have a ton of room for print books, so I'm taking two: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Methods and Theories of Art History by Anne d'Alleva. I've read both of them before, but Middlesex is really engrossing and not too weighty in paperback, and Methods and Theories is stalwart and also a nice, slim volume. I might try to buy a copy of The Girl on the Train at the airport, since that movie's coming out soon and it's supposed to be good. I'll also continue to buy every memoir in audiobook form--right now I'm loving Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson.

Two giant bags that were thankfully within the weight limit!

It's weird to think about all the little things I'll miss about LA. Of course I will miss the people--my friends and family in Los Angeles and all over the country. But on this last day, it's the little things I'm thinking about missing. Like my car, which I've had since senior year of high school, which has amazing mileage and fits into all the compact sports. Or Mexican food being available in massive, excellent qualities (and I'm not counting Chipotle). I didn't have those in undergrad, but this is quite a bit longer. I'll probably also miss Coffee Bean--I don't know if people take their tea iced in Europe, so I'll have to readjust to iced coffee. I'll miss the amazingly inexpensive and high-quality sushi from Ugly Roll. I'll miss being able to just drive with the air conditioning blowing in my face, singing along to some playlist of music my parents think is bizarre (even though LA is correctly known for being congested with traffic at all times). It's always the weird little things you miss.

The Californians is pretty accurate about how much Angelenos talk about driving...

As always, if you want to express your love for me with material goods, my Amazon wishlist is here, and if you want to see many, many photographs of me and of Vienna, my Instagram is here. I'm so excited for this adventure!