Winter Times

Though Vienna is still lacking in snow, it has finally turned cold, making it feel like it's actually winter. In the spirit of this bone chilling cold, I will now treat you to a myriad of photos detailing the lovely winter adventures I have been embarking upon.
Once a week, all the Boku exchange students gather at a local pub to have fun times and catch up after half a week of hectic schooling (I have no idea what's going on with this underline, I can't stop it!!!). The past week, we decided to skip out on the warmth provided by Tunnel (the pub) to venture to a skating rink, where the majority of us could fall on our asses. Surprisingly, it was pretty cheap, unlike everything else in Vienna, and we spent about 3 hours there. I do feel as though I shamed my heritage because honestly, I suck at skating and by the end of the evening my ankles were killing me. Still, I did have the advantage over the Spaniards, but, oddly enough, one of the Australians was freaking amazing! Apparently she plays tons of street hockey so was a wiz on wheels.

The penguins were to help beginning skaters

Or, you know, battle

Next up, CHRISTMAS MARKETS!!!!
Unless the name didn't give it away, the main things sold during these markets are Christmas-y things, such as ornaments, candles, and toys. There's also nifty glass work or winter apparel (like mittens and hats). Really the contents of the stands can be pretty random, depending on which Christmas market one goes to. However, there is one thing in common. All the markets have at least one stand where punch or, the more popular, gluhwein (mulled wine) is sold. And of course, there's also food, which is also quite varied. But I think my personal favorite is this wondrous creation. What we have here, is a waffle with chocolate, nuts, and powdered sugar. Austrians are kind of against plastic utensils, so I didn't get a fork, which resulted in me getting chocolate all over my hands, a fate that I was quite resigned to.

Christmas market in Schönbrunn (the old palace)

These things start around the middle of November and are friggin' everywhere, especially in the 1st district. There's even a small one in the park near my university which has a stand where the guy does his glassblowing work where it can be viewed by all. Super awesome.

Today, Rebecca and I went to check out the market at Schönbrunn, mostly because I wanted to pick up a gift for my host family since they're letting me crash with them when I come visit. Like I said, the stands can vary as to what they contain, but there were a few selling candles so I bought a beeswax candle (Austrians love their beeswax :-P) and a nice picture frame.

I didn't buy anything from here, but the figurines looked neat.

Wandering through the market with Rebecca (she's the one with the black jacket)

What also exists during the wintertime are maroni stands, which serve chestnuts (maroni), kartofelpuffers (like hash browns), slices of potatoes, and langos. I had no idea what a langos was since there's no real translation into English, but I was wandering about the city and decided to grab one since I hungered like no other. To begin with, a langos is a huuuuge piece of fried bread with one glorious addition. As I was ordering the woman asked me something but I didn't quite grab the meaning so I just nodded and smiled (my go to move when I don't understand what the person is saying). Turns out she was asking if I wanted garlic butter, which increased the deliciousness of this food tenfold.

Behold! I wasn't able to resist a nibble before I too the pic.

And to everyone who celebrates, Happy Hanukkah!!! So far I've made latkes twice, but the first time I didn't use enough oil so they didn't cook all the way. The second time was much better though, and I also bought falafals and fried them in oil as anything fried in oil is the true Hanukkah fashion.

Failure, delicious failure

And in the spirit of Hanukkah, I went on a journey the past week to an area that's supposed to have a few Jewish stores. The object of my hunt was matzo meal but.....I may have bought...more things. The first store I went to, had matzo meal so I just bought it and got out but, there was another store, a store of magic and happiness known as Kosherland!! Here I discovered kishke mix, gelt (chocolate for Hanukkah), a dreidle, and.....dill pickles!!! For those who haven't heard me complain, proper pickles are a rare commodity in Europe and every time I would try one would be a sweet sweet lie. The jar is currently sitting on my shelf and I plan to open it upon my return to Vienna. However, this may lead to a sodium overdose but even if that happens, I go out happy. :-DOnce I have more free time, the hunt for a Jewish bakery will commence and I will feast upon tasty challah.

Cabin

Upon arriving in Austria I realized that a) lacking a host family and b) taking classes in English meant that if I wanted to get better at German I would need to actually take the initiative and work on it outside of school. Luckily, the universities in Vienna have a tandem learning buddy system, where you get a list of people and what languages they offer/want to learn. Then you just e-mail them and work out when to meet and what to learn. I signed up for this before realizing that actual schoolwork would be occupying most of my time, but regardless, it allowed me to meet Gernot, an Austrian. We only met a few times and both those times I helped him with his English since he had to take a huge insane English test to go on exchange to Australia.
Anyways, since Gernot is a native he suggested going to a cabin sometime and we finally worked out the details so on December 5th a group of about 10 of us piled into three cars and drove for a few hours to St. Anna's. Before getting there though, we stopped off at Gernot's place and met his dad. Although I've only really met two Austrians on their home turf (i.e Gernot's parents) I have determined this. If you're hungry or thirsty, you will be given food and drink. If you're not hungry or thirsty, you will be given food and drink. I was almost stifling my laughter as we all sat down and Gernot's dad put out some apple juice and water, despite us all saying we weren't thirsty. Oh well, it was delicious and natural and tasted a bit like cider.
Once we got to the cabin area we first went into this kind of house/restaurant (I think it's called a Gasthaus) where hikers/skiers will stop by after conquering the mountain.

Inside the Haus
It was very....rusticAnd they had a mop with legs, I mean a dog!!!

I suppose I should have mentioned before that this post is yet again going to be super photo heavy, but that's the price to be paid when I go to places that have views like this.And there was snow, glorious, glorious snow.

We stayed in the building on the left.
Now, before the next pictures, allow me to spin you a tale. In Austria there is this tradition that on the 5th of December a curious pair of figures goes house to house to scare/reward the children residing there. The first "person" that comes is the Krampus, which looks like a sort of furry human with horns and pointed teeth, the Austrian version of a devil. The Krampus asks what the children did that were naughty and threaten to beat them with bunches of twigs but normally the parents intervene by offering the Krampus something to eat or drink. At the end of it the child promises to be good and then the second person arrives, or he arrives earlier to chase off the Krampus (I didn't really get a full understanding of what goes down). This second person is St. Nickolas, not to be confused with Kris Kringle, the gent that brings gifts on Christmas Day. St. Nick brings small gifts like chocolates or bags of peanuts. This normally happens in smaller cities but in the bigger cities it's apparently possible to rent a Krampus and St. Nick to come terrify your child. So, in the family that lived in the gasthaus has a young daughter (maybe more children, she's the only one I saw) so when the Krampus and St. Nick went there, the owner told them that there were some people occupying the cabin that had probably been very bad. :-P

The two Krampuses de-masked (sorry for the bad quality, didn't use flash)

Ana decides to Krampus it up a bitSt. Nick to save the day!!

After St. Nick and one of the Krampuses departed (the other one stayed with us for the rest of the weekend, strange, but fun) it was decided that the time for consuming food should commence. So we banished a few people to the kitchen to make dinner.

Sam chopping up the onions for pastaThe rest of the evening consisted of: Puzzle timeMidnight romps in the snowRocking mandolin and guitar duosFine ArtInjuries (Rose lost her balance and grabbed the stove)Onion juggling (this was actually the next morning)

The next morning, I surprised myself and I think the world in general by being the first one up, at 11:00. Sitting in the main room just drinking some tea and looking out the window was one of the nicest things I've done here. All the snow just looked right and the mountains were amazing. In case I haven't mentioned yet, there is no snow in Vienna (it rained today) and rumor has it that snow in the city proper is a rare thing, so I took the opportunity to get in all my snow cravings. Once everyone else woke up and had coffee at the gasthaus a few of us decided to hike up the mountain. Unfortunately the rest of the people woke up too late so we couldn't make it to the top before it got dark. We did get above the timberline though, and between the really steep slope, high altitude, and a bit of a cough, I was kinda glad that we ended when we did.
By the time we all re-assembled back at the cabin quite a few people were really regretting leaving so, they didn't. And by a few people I mean everyone but Gernot and I (he had to work and I had a class I couldn't miss). But, Gernot wasn't going back to Vienna so I had to take the train, which I feel would have been nicer if I could have seen the scenery, but it all worked out ok.
Despite having tons more pictures I'm not gonna post them here because it's kind of an annoying process. I might be doing something wrong, but when I add a picture it shows up at the top of the post so I have to draaaaaaag it all the way to the bottom, meh. But I will be putting up all the rest of the mountain majesty on my photobucket account. Here's one picture to whet your appetite for the rest of the awesome awesome scenery.

Pseudo-Thanksgiving

I return from being sick/having to study, so lo, there will be a post! Also, something has actually happened which merits a post as life of yet has been rather routine. Go to school, go home, go to friend's place for coffee, make some damn tasty food (ATTENTION FUTURE ROOMIE(S)!! I have discovered I like to cook to be prepared for eating delicious concoctions and other such things).
Anywho,
Since it is genetically impossible to spend a year without ingesting pie in a way that is associated with Thanksgiving, me and a few other people hatched a plan to have a Thanksgiving dinner. However, due to late classes and other factors, it couldn't actually be on Thanksgiving, which works for me because then I could chat with my family in all their house-filling-ruckus-causing-iron dragon-playing entirety.
So on Friday, after swinging by the store for some last minute ingredients, I journeyed over to Rebecca's apartment to begin the cooking. Now, the thing about Austrian housing (at at least what I've decided based on my kitchen and Rebeccas's) is that a normal oven is very rare. Instead, there are tiny convection ovens, which are ok for some things, but annoying when it comes to baking anything large (so a turkey was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out). But, there was still pie, though we had to cook them one at a time. Rebecca decided to make pumpkin pie while I opted for chocolate. Since the pumpkin was still defrosting the preparation for chocolate tastiness began and it all went quite smoothly. One minor problem was that corn syrup (a needed ingredient) doesn't exist in any store that I explored so instead I made just a simple sugar syrup which worked wonderfully. The problem came when I was testing to see if the sugar had dissolved in the water or not. Let it be known, eating hot sugar syrup is extremely painful as it sticks to the roof of the mouth like an octopus of fire (not that it has 8 legs, just that it clings). About half of the roof of my mouth was all smooth and tender after that. Also, if anyone is concerned, if making a pie crust is an impossibility, just use dough for sugar cookies, it works really well.
As the chocolate pie was baking and potatoes were boiling I began work on the gravy, mushroom gravy to be precise. I was sooooooooooooooooooo happy that it worked and I felt ultra fancy because I even added some wine.
Once the pie was out of the oven we took a quick side trip to a store and picked up some sweet potatoes and cranberry jelly (since it was the only thing we could find). And then returned to the apartment where Rebecca continued to diligently peel potatoes.
The pumpkin pie turned out equally good, although the filling was a bit, spongy I guess, because we added too much flour. But I'd say since we used actual pumpkin (not from a can) we are afforded our screw-ups.
More cooking went down, looking up recipes, listening to music and a whoooole lot of kitchen tool improvisation before we were finally ready at around 6:30. Now, granted we went to the store, and we only had one tiny oven and two stove tops to cook with, but still, we started cooking at like 12:00. I had NO IDEA it takes so long, and this is after spending my whole life watching other people spend all day cooking for Thanksgiving. Mom, Dad, Aaron, I now appreciate your efforts. Although, despite having spent our whole day cooking, Rebecca and I both agreed that it was worth skipping class for. :-P
One other small cooking snafu arose when it was time for the stuffing to go into the oven. The instructions called for tin foil, but there was none to be found so Yuri (from Russia) suggested using waxed paper that had been buttered (with the butter side down). This was working pretty well, until I lifted up the paper a bit to check on the stuffing and.....WOOOOSHHH!!!!! The paper caught on fire (yeah, the oven is THAT small). I stared at the fire and did a little panicky dance and Rebecca merely glanced over and said "make sure it doesn't burn the carpet," leaving fire putting out duties to Yuri, who took them like a champ. The stuffing even survived with only a light singeing of the top most layer.
The actual dinner itself was fantastic. It was a potluck so not only was there Thanksgiving food, but Spanish Omelet, fruit salad, some kind of spicy pasta salad, twice-baked potatoes, pita and hummus, and some chocolates (homemade by Jess, awesome I know). I can proudly say that all the non-Thanksgiving-celebrating people (i.e not America or Canadian) left the apartment with a solid urge to simply nap and not eat for a day or so, and really, isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about?
Oh, and mashed potatoes without butter and mixed with one of those electric slicer things? Yeah, that turns into potato glue.
Pictures will be up eventually, I gotta steal them from some one's camera.
P.S Sarah I'll send you a postcard if you send me your address!

Photos photos photos

it just me or is this year going by really fast? Although the weather here seems more like early October than November. Today I walked around in just a t-shirt which made going to the Christmas market feel very odd. As it is, I haven't done anything super wild or crazy that I feel would merit it's own write up. Instead I shall treat you to a cornucopia of random photos from recent events. Enjoy!

My Halloween Costume, and incomplete mummy. The vampire fangs were just a necessary addition.
You had to pay money to go in, but man did these look swanky. Even had opera music playing.
At a Spainards birthday party. He couldn't be contained by just one party hat.
Coolest little kid ever, made even awesomer by the fact that his parents wore matching leather jackets.
Thomas showing off his mad paper airplane skills
Outside a swim hall. Oh the humanity!!
Sergio putting up a doohickey to measure the tree's height during our Inventory field trip.
Brad demonstrating the many uses of a caliber.
Something's cooking!!
Everyone got a turn at making sushi which led to some unsuccessful put together rolls, but still belly pleasing results.

These stickers are everywhere and I don't know what they're for, but some day I shall find out.

Day of Awesome Fantasticness

Allow me to describe for you all the events of last Thursday (29.10.09) which shall from now on be known as the day of all things awesome and good (DoaTAaG for short).
It began in quite an annoying matter, since I had to go to Mariahilfstrasse (known for lots of swanky stores) and return a camera charger since I thought I could use it as an adapter since mine died. Upon arriving home yesterday I realized I was gravely mistaken and resigned myself to enduring the Returning of Electronics. If any of you think I'm over exaggerating, realize that all my experience with electronics and their returns are based off the less than simplistic return policy at Best Buy (i.e "haha sucker now we got your money"). Imagine my gleeful surprise when I was treated courteously (despite my lack of German) and left the store in less than 10 minutes minus a camera adapter but plus 10 wonderful euros.
Walking back to an U-bahn station I noticed a sign for alternative clothing and piercings. Since I time to kill I figured it was worth checking out, just so I could know where a store was when I inevitably lost my eyebrow ring (it happens, a lot).
Walking and walking and walking, but still no store, what did my eyes find but a comic book store. Inside, tucked away in the corner was the staple of every poor comic book reader's diet, the bargain bin. Figuring they might have something of interest (even if it was in German, I'm learning) I was skimming through when something caught my eye. Not one, two, but three issues of a 4 part run from the 90s featuring none other than.....Deadpool. For those of you who don't know, and really I think all of you are aware of this fact, Deadpool is one of my favorite comic book characters. However, due to recent events his character has gotten so popular that all oldish (from the 90s) issues of his cost many many moneys. Since the three issues weren't priced I worked up the nerve to go to the cashier and ask "Was kostet diese?" (How much do these cost). When he answered I heard angels sing, each issues was 50 cents! Really, I'm not exaggerating here, those issues are normally 5 or 6 dollars each. I think I might have scared him a little at the maniac smile that lit up my face but we traded money for comics, in the most glorious of all consumer transactions, and I left a very happy Hannah.
But then, what's this? Right next door was a......vegetarian restaurant. It ever had a small store for fake jerky and the like. Not only that, it was pretty cheap. I feasted upon a delicious mock chicken burger with a mango lassi. Full of tasty food I was paying when another customer's dog came up and started sniffing me, giving me the excuse to pet it (Austrians are pretty protective about their dogs). Then, for a most excellent dessert I went to a street vendor and bought what is best described as an ice cream cone dipped in chocolate. Only, instead of ice cream, it's some sort of heavy cream, like marshmallow fluff, kinda.
So from the details so far I must seem pretty materialistic. My day was made awesome by money, comics, and delicious fake animal muscle. However, the day still improved.
In the evening I met with people from field camp to exchange all our blackmail...I mean photos for the week we spent hiking through the freezing woods. The place we went to was an all-you-can-eat Pakistan restaurant that also had an intriguing payment method. That being that you can pay what you want. After we were all stuffed a few of us continued hanging out by walking over to the Welt (world) cafe. A very nice and mellow cafe, though my first choice was the Rock pub. A wonderful bar that had heavy metal music blaring and a bartender who looked like an old Morticia Adams. I feel that Paddy would have loved this place.
Around eleven the siren call of classes the next day drew most people home, but not I. So I met up with an American Rebecca, (who is half Austrian) and her boyfriend (Fabio, I kid you not, how awesome is that?). It may have just been the music (80s rock. Kids in America came on and all I could do was laugh and imagine when Arizona, Kate, and Sarah were gleefully singing that at the top of their lungs) or the conversing was amazingly awesome people, but the hours flew by and eventually we had to go our separate ways.
So in summary, a darn enjoyable day. Now all I have to worry about is making too many excuses to go to the corner of joy (where the comic book store and the vegetarian cafe are) or all my money will go bye bye.

Nationalfeiertag

"Where is she?" You may all be wondering. Have I fallen victim to some horrifying space monkeys, or perhaps a rare Austrian land-shark? Truth is I've just been pretty busy with trying to work out little errands, as well as school and socializing. This past Monday (26.10.09) however, I got a small break from everything as it was Austrian's National Day.

In front of the town hall Because it was a day of specialness, the Parliament building was opened to the public so me and some other international students went to go marvel at the awesome architecture. Think I'm over exaggeration? Behold:

Man fighting a horse, a statue necessary for all government buildings

The line to get in was pretty long, and mostly involved us standing outside in a huge crowd and attempting to push toward the entrance with the rest of the people. I felt like I was attending some kind of grand opening or a concert of sorts.

I told Habib to look pensive, instead I think he went for terrifying :-P Saddly once inside the building my camera died quite rapidly, so I only managed a few photos.

Me forgetting flash doesn't alway make for good photos.
The inside of the building was pretty cool, in that there was all this fancy scrollwork, statues, paintings, and more importantly, doorknobs shaped like snakes.

Mom if you're paying attention, I want these for my birthday!

On the other hand there were parts of the building that were so very current looking it made for a fantastic contrast. After touring around we went to Volksgarten (which is a large park) that was packed with people, stands, and...military vehicles. I don't know if it's because La Crosse isn't big enough to have a huge thing on the 4th, but I found it really odd that the military played such a large part in their national day. Don't get me wrong, I know there's some military involvment, but here there were tanks and planes people could check out, and many many booths that had info about the military (I think, it was all in German). Around 3:45 I maddly dashed off to try and find the Opera Ring, which was hindered in part by the fact that I went in the wrong direction. However, I did eventually find the building, which only led me to the next task of trying to find where to buy standing tickets (3 euros). I was actually tempted to just stand outside, since there's a huge tv screen showing the performance, but Claudia and Tita were waiting inside for me so I perserveared. Which leads me to my next point, Austrians are so un-shy it's a little frightening. I'm so used to the Finnish tactic of only talking to strangers when necessary that when I finally asked a woman if she knew where the tickets are sold, that her willingness to help was a nice suprise. While taking me to the booth we even chatted and bit and she helped me buy a ticket before leaving with a smile and a wave.
Standing tickets are just what they sounds like, you stand, for 3 hours. I didn't think it would be possible for me to actually do that, but time went by pretty fast. Also, has anyone here seen Swan Lake? Because I left that performance very very confused. I had thought there was only one main man and woman character, but it turns out there were three of each. However, even with the lack of plot, I really enjoyed it. The dancing was increadable.
What I feel should be noted is, there was one part where I had to supress much laughter. Towards the end the prince (I think) was trying to get the swan lady back, but the bad guy (he was wearing black, obvious bad guy) jumps between them and starts swishing his looooong sleeve arms in a sort of figure eight pattern. It might be the infused wildlife lectures, but all I could imagine was a big old swan rearing, flapping its wings, hissing and saying "mine! My female! Mine! Mine!" The image was....interesting

But most importantly, Halloween has a slight influence here. Some bakeries sell tasty Halloween treats, such as a square of white sponge cake with a layer of chocolate creme topped with apricot jam and covered in marzipan. Including a small sugar black cat.

It. Was. Delicious.

THIS JUST IN!!

I made some mittens!! Holy crap!! Exclamation points everywhere!!!!!!!!! You may all now worship me as your woolen lord and master.So as you can see I still need to clean them up, but for that I need a bigger needle which I shall hunt down. Also, the mitten on the right has a hole at the thumb and is way too small. As for the mitten on the left, I somehow knitted the thumb inside out. But I figure it's a good start to dominating the wooly world.

Mitten Madness

I Live!!!

Ok so this is going to be super quick because my levels of tiredness have reached staggering proportions. I just got back from field camp, it was wonderfully amazing which accounts for said tiredness. Tomorrow there will be many postings of what I have been doing as well as some photos. In the meantime, please be content with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdxqIBfEAw


Also, it starts out in German, but just wait, it gets better.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Today I had my first class, which was 3 hours long. I feel like I would enjoy the class more if not for the ridiculous length. It was about forest sampling which, as my teacher philosophically described as "seeing how much forest is in the forest." There were six of us but apparently there's supposed to be more, around 9 or so. It's gonna be crazy odd how small the classes are here, but I think I'll like it. After class and a tasty lunch (I decided to go grocery shopping after realizing yesterday that I had no food, like at all, soooooo hungry) I wandered deep into my district to search for a.....library!! And I totally found one, though the section with English books is a little sparse. The library is really cool, it's on top of a tram station so getting to it is really easy.
One the way back I...may have gotten a little lost.

Right near the tram station

But fear not, because my erratic wanderings simple led me to find a thing of great awesomness, a marketplace. I know I shouldn't be that thrilled by a simple market, but it was really neat to see all the vendors. The theme was fruits and vegtables, cheese, fish, and chicken. There was also a few clothing/knick-knack stalls and some food vendors. One food stall even had a little patio area on top of it, very nifty. After walking up and down the stalls I finally worked up the courage to buy something (i.e talk to a native). The wasabi peanuts were ok, not as spicy as I thought they'd be, but tasty nevertheless. What really blew my mind, was this Turkish candy bar (most of the vendors were Turkish, I guess there's a high population in Vienna). Allow me to describe the glory. Take a typical candy bar, Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, and keep the chocolate covering, but replace the inside with a kind of coco creme littered with bits of hazelnuts, like tiny tasty land mines. Now my only question is how it is possible to live where this candy bar is readily accessable and not die of diabetes or explode from eating too many candy bars.

Behold the Glory!

On my way back I got off at a few stations too early so I figured, meh, keep walking. I found a natural foods store (but everything was super expensive) and quite a few asian resturants. That's right, all resturants I have seen advertise only as asian, not chinese or anything like that, very odd.

Outside a store. The sign says "Dogs must wait here"