Hunden.

Today was a very nice day, in which I finally walked through the Prater park.  It is huge and full of trees and meadows, things I have missed going from a small town in a valley to a big city.  There were dogs everywhere, but we couldn't touch any of them, which was just extremely upsetting.  However, there were a couple which bounded over to where we were lying and jumped all over us for awhile.  Tomorrow or sometime soon might bring an exploration into the Wienerwald.

Today also began the quest of Find Every Aida Cafe/Konditorei in Vienna...there are 26, according the website.  I've been to three now.

Last Monday a bunch of us got together at another Wohnheim to have a Passover feast.  Sometimes I am pretty sure I should be Jewish just for the food.  Matzahball Soup is delicious, as were all the other dishes.  It was also complete with the traditional four glasses of wine.

Last night, my friends and I went to the Zwölf Apostel-Keller again, one of my favorite cafes here.  It´s in an old Baroque cellar, and features various delicious deserts.  There are also the old men that roam around with a violin and accordion and play The Third Man theme every night.  As I was enjoying mz Glühwein and Topfenstrudel, I noticed a loose brick on the wall.  We pulled it out and found a package, full of notes from lots of countries in lots of languages.  We left one there as well, congratulating anyone on finding the hideout.  I was hoping that it would perhaps lead to a secret passageway.

Also, went to Prague recently.  Despite the fact that it rained the whole time and I have possibly not ever been wetter and colder for a whole day, it is a beautiful city and I want to go back.  We went on a very rainy tour, where we all probably looked a bit miserable and therefore got our tour guide to let us stop for a long lunch.  But the tour ended up in Prague Castle, which was pretty amazing.  The second day we found the Mucha/Dali exhibit, and I bought some Mucha prints because I loved pretty much everything he did.  We also went to a very old bar featuring old Czech men playing jazzy stuff and pretended to be writers.  Where was the absinthe?

And I now have my Innsbruck trip planned for the Pentecost holidays.  Innsbruck for two days and possibly a day trip into Salzburg on the last.  So excited ALPS!

I never knew Vienna before the war...

This was a good weekend, I believe.  It was, perhaps, a bit full of Der Dritte Man, but that is never a problem.  

Yesterday, two friends and I went on the tour, hosted by a strange little Austrian man whose entire family was so embedded within the movie and Graham Green's and Carol Reed's lives, that he may actually be a fictional character.  He walked with us to a lot of the main sites the movie was filmed at, and disillusioned us about some others (it is not actually possible to splash around in Viennese sewer waterfalls).  I enjoyed descending into an old bomb shelter to the tunes of Anton Caras' theme, to find someone strumming a zither at the bottom.  Can I please learn to play that?  Right after I learn the banjo.   Anyway, I took some cheesy skewed-angle black and white photos.

The most interesting part of the tour by far was a quirky old British woman who sounded a bit like Angela Lansbury crossed with someone who has sat inside with her cats for too long.  She was very defensive of everything about the film, saying of the entrance to the canals, "In Britain we would have made this a national monument!" and of the statues that could have been destroyed in the war, "In Britain we dismantled our statues and hid them in caves...in Wales!"  Another personal favorite was when she learned of some of the tricks of movie-making: "How deceitful, these film-makers."  I'm not sure the tour guide knew quite what to do with her.

It was interesting to watch the film again and finally recognize most of the places - beginning with the tackiest statue in the world at the very start, ending with the Zentralfriedhof.  

This weekend I also ventured to the Natural History Museum, which is also the Museum of Very Old Things.  Some of the preserved animals in there are from the 1800s.  I'm also almost positive they made some of them up.  Some of those cannot be real animals.  And I was apparently unaware of the number of bird species in the world.  And again, someone needs to remind me not to go in the insect exhibits.  But, a really cool museum.  And it even smelled like every other natural history museum!

We also had a couple of nights at bars this weekend, and a nice American dinner at TGI Friday's just for a little taste of gigantic, fried American portions, something which I have surprisingly been missing.  

I spent a couple of hours on a couple of days recently sitting in the Burg Park, which has magically sprung into a garten while I was apparently not looking.  I also wandered through the Steiernmarkt, an open-air market outside the Rathaus complete with plenty of people in Lederhosen, accordions, and lots of beer.  Actually, it was really fun, if not a bit intimidating.  

On Thursday night my grammar class met with a group of Austrian students who will be abroad in America next year (I am not sure what this has to do with learning grammar, but the Professorin is crazy, should be hosting an NPR show, and obviously doesn't care about actually teaching us).  Talking to them was interesting though.  In one of the groups, discussing cultural differences and perceptions of each other etc, we inevitably got into their views on America.  They, like most people, were able to separate the government from the people.  But I have realized that being abroad has at times made me slightly defensive of America, not of the actions of a stupid, careless government, but just of a country and its' people.  When I first left, I thought I would be embarrassed and quiet about where I was from.  But it's not necessary, and maybe self-defamatory to be so.  I'm not ashamed of being an American, and intelligent people can figure out why.

Now back to trying not to stress out about next year's classes, next year's housing, and life after college.

When your mind's made up, when your mind's made up...

I've been singing Once songs melodramatically down the streets of Vienna.

The rest of spring break went well. The best part of Paris was still climbing Notre Dame and pretending to be in Victor Hugo's book.  Paris is beautiful but not my favorite city, perhaps just because everywhere else I went and Vienna feel much, much safer.  But I did manage to successfully navigate the ridiculously confusing Paris metro system (really, are 14 lines necessary?), to the Paris regional trains, to Charles de Gaulle Airport, then into Vienna VIE, onto another train, and onto the U-Bahn by myself starting at 6:30 AM.  

Classes suddenly became a bit more real.  It looks like I might actually have to do work sometime in the near future, rather than just continue the extended vacation this has been so far.  I went to Greenpeace once, and then slept the next day because I was sick, so I really still need to get started on that.  But my work will be fairly easy, I just have to work on better comprehension of German so I can understand everything they are saying to me very quickly.  I am just going to grocery stores, buying products, and then entering lots of information about them into a computer database.  They are keeping track of products that have genetically altered ingredients or ingredients that are in other ways not organic, or were tested on animals.  They are also tracking who uses recyclable packaging.  In other words, way to go Greenpeace.  My project is here: marktcheck.greenpeace.at

Yesterday was a good day.  We went to the Prater, a very old, famous amusement park.  A nice, 20-minute trip on the Riesenrad (the giant ferris wheel) gave us a view of most of Vienna.  You cannot actually threaten to push anyone out of it Third Man style, because the door won't open.  We then also decided it would be a good idea to go on the Dizzy Mouse, which is usually not a good idea, but I always forget.  It spun the whole time and was expert at the look-like-you're-falling-off thing.  I also tried out an absolutely insane ride called Extasy, which I imagine might be what it feels like to actually be on ecstasy.  It just turned me in every direction and kept me upside down for awhile, all the time spraying smoke and strobe lights and other colors into my face with a strange German soundtrack going on loudly.  And it was in front of a creepy 80s superhero type mural.  The Prater is full of some of the scarier thrill rides I've ever seen, most of which I'm too afraid to touch, but would stand there and wonder why people ever thought that would be fun.  

Before the Prater, we went to the Third Man museum.  It basically just made me want to watch the movie repeatedly.  The museum is comprised of a few rooms, all full of pictures and memorabilia from the movie, the makers of the movie, and Vienna immediately following WWII.  They start out by showing you a short clip from the film, on a projector from 1936 which is huge and loud and amazing.  People are more obsessed with this movie than I imagined.  There are also an appropriate number of pictures of Orson Welles looking ridiculous and Joseph Cotton looking suave.   And now I just want to play the zither.  I'm hoping to go on the tour next Friday, or some soon Friday.  

Last night we found a bar under a train station that was pretty, and sat there till somewhat late talking.  About space and science fiction and such...my friends all like the same things.  Then Rachel and I actually managed to make it home by employing some night buses, since the transportation mostly stops running at midnight.

Prague is coming up soon.  As is possibly a four day break, but I'm not sure about that yet.  I'm over halfway through abroad.