Monday, July 4, 2011

First Day

3. Juli – Sonntag

Today I played Civilization IV from 7am, when I was awoken by the noisy Sunday morning traffic, until mid-afternoon. Apparently everything is closed on Sundays in Austria. Even McDonalds. I had a Coke from the machine downstairs and a fiber bar for breakfast and gushers for lunch.

Our director, Kris Riggs, took us to the IKI Vienna office to do placement tests, offering a welcome diversion. But he said this was the worst weather he’s ever received a group in. So in 55 degree rain and 60 mph gusts, we toured the center city. Needless to say, I have no decent pictures.
I met the rest of our group. Meredith from Indiana. That’s it. The five of us from Juniata and Meredith. And I still don’t have a roommate.

After enjoying instant black coffee (yeah, jet lag sucks that bad), we had a quick orientation consisting of “how to not be that ripped off American tourist” and “basic Austrian for the ‘trying not to be a tourist’ student.” So rather than saying, “Das Wetter ist schlimm,” I should say, “De Wette is schiach.”

For dinner we went to the Donauturm Wein, which translates roughly to: the spinning restaurant on top of the really tall tower that sways in this kind of wind. I do have half-decent pictures of us falling over in the 80+ mph gusts on the observation deck. There, we all had weinerschnitzel and Riesling, followed by more Riesling and a cranberry-raspberry-strawberry-blueberry sundae (note to self: don’t do that again).





1 comment:

  1. Aww poor sweety hope today/tomorrow which ever it is better. Be safe, I love you.
    Sloan

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