Funkenfest

Tara does Vienna.

This past weekend my friend Tara, who is from Halifax but doing a SWAP term in Berlin, came and stayed with me and Hannah. She brought a friend of hers from Berlin, and someone that I met while I visited her, Martin, who is originally from Sweden. It was a bit of an international house for the weekend. They arrived at different times on Friday evening, so Hannah and I planned on making dinner for them (I helped plan and buy food while Hannah cooked…). Tara is a vegan, so we racked our brains to come up with a meal that would be edible for everyone. We ended up having fried vegetables with curry and rice, and it was fantastic, kudos to Hannah for having frozen homemade curry in our freezer. We had bought some wine for dinner, and that influenced our decisions for the evening. We had originally planned a big night for Saturday, as the Europeans have no clue what Jager bombs are, I thought I would give them a good introduction. Needless to say, after Friday there were hardly and ingredients left for Saturday. It was a fun night out on the town, and some felt the effects more than others on Saturday morning.

We didn’t have the opportunity to lounge around on Saturday morning because we had tickets to the Spanish Riding School performance at 11 a.m. Being an avid horse lover (sarcasm) I was actually blown away by the performance. The horses literally dances around the ring, and were perfectly in tune with the music. To think that Jodi was actually able to do that in Portugal was pretty cool. However, I will now always have the satisfaction of knowing that I went to the see the real show, and she didn’t… The riders looked old school with their hats and long coats on, and I am pretty sure that the saddles were lined with diamonds, they sparkled profusely. I don’t think Tara quite appreciated the experience, as she was feeling the Jager bombs from the previous night. (German Lesson: Jagermeister means 'hunt master' in English.) After the riding school we headed back to the apartment on request of some of the members in our group, and enjoyed a quiet afternoon watching skiing on t.v.

That night, Saturday, some of Hannah’s friends had planned on going to the Vorarlberg Funkenfest. Vorarlberg is the most western region of Austria where they practice this annual tradition. Every year a different town is invited to Vienna to host the tradition. Basically, they build a huge tower of wood surrounding a pine tree and tie a witch doll, with flashing red eyes, to the top of it and light it on fire. The tradition is to burn the witch, which will in turn scare away winter, not that Vienna had much of one this year. A group of us headed to the 19th district to Am Himmel for the festivities, which is an area on the top of a hill, that you can look out and see all of Vienna. Tara, Steph and I took a picture of ourselves in front of the fire to send to SWAP. They have a lot of contests for participants, so we are hoping that the fact we have all become friends and attended a traditional Austrian event, we will win something! We stayed for a few hours and then all headed back to our apartment for a flip cup tournament (I introduced them all to flip cup too) and a little sing star session.

On Sunday I took Tara and Martin out for a little sightseeing. We went to the Lower Belvedere museum and saw an exhibit by Alfons Mucha. The plan was to go to see an Opera at the Staatsoper, but I had messed up the times, so we opted out of that. We did some sightseeing and then met up with my new Canadian friend Steph and 2 of her floormates in the dorms she lives in. There is a jazz festival going on right now in Vienna so we went and checked out some live performances. The bands were amateur musicians, who were showcasing their work, but they were all very talented musicians and it was a really cool thing to visit on a Sunday night.

Life right now

My weekend schedule is absolutely full with adventures from now on until I leave to come home. It is absolutely insane, but I only have 7 weeks of work left. When I started in January there were 16, it has gone by so fast. I am heading to Klagenfurt and Graz this weekend in my attempt to maximize the amount of Austria that I see.

I had my mid-evaluation yesterday for work. I was able to speak to my career advisor, and he seems pleased with how everything is going. My bosses were very generous with my review and it instils confidence in myself to know that they think I am doing a good job.

Our internet is supposed to be fixed today, which means the return of Skype… Over the past 3 weeks Hannah and I have done a lot of bonding at night, which has been great. I would go as far to say that we have become good little buddies! I spoke to my dad last night; I have figured out that it costs nothing for me to receive calls, so it is a good way to talk to people. Should anyone feel inclined to speak to me, my phone number is 011 43 680 219 7223.

My second Deutschkurs, or German lesson, started last night. Montag und Mittwoch habe ich Deutschkurs von sechs bis Viertel von neun Uhr. We are learning the fundamentals of sentence structure, so I can actually say things now. It is a rather rewarding feeling. We are 9 girls all from different countries, with the exception of 2 who are from Thailand. There is occasional passing around of my translator so we can communicate. This is suppose to be a more intensive version of the course, with only 3 ½ weeks of class oppose to 5. There is one lady from Thailand who wants to buy the translator from me so bad. Every class she eyes it and I feel that I need to have it with me at all times to avoid the potential of it being stolen. She has offered me €200; I think she wants it mostly because it can translate Thai. I will not sell it to her; she just needs to get over it.

I have slowly passed through the homesickness faze. I was spoiled with Skype as it allowed me to speak to my family and Conor whenever I wanted to. It was hard when it was just taken away, but now that some time has passed I realize that I am still alive and that everyone at home is doing just fine. I send e-mails to the parents and communicate with my siblings and friends on facebook, so it is not like I have been cut off completely. It was weird, I could actually feel a certain kind of pain, not that it hurt, it was just a nagging feeling of missing contact from home. However, that is starting to pass. Hannah told me that a study proved that it is around the 2/3 point of being away that the missing feeling kicks in, so I was right on schedule! I do miss you all, but I am glad to be on this adventure and being able to share the experience through this blog has been great.