Monday, October 19, 2009

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

Saturday, October 17, 2009

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.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

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.
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.

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"

Lange Nacht Der Museem

Just a quick post on this. On Saturday there was an event called the Long Night of Museums where one could buy a ticket and then go to any and every museum that person desired from 10:00 PM-1:00 AM. None of us really had a plan for what museums to hit up though, so we kinda dropped the ball on going to interesting places. We went to an modern art museum that seemed to rank it's art from best to worst, the worst being on the bottom floor and improving a bit each level. Although, this might just be my impression, but keep in mind the bottom floor did include of a piece of video art that could only properly be described, as Sam put it, as "chicken orgy." We also went to a chocolate exhibit, which was fun but not as chocolate-y as I thought it would be. Mostly it was vendors with very few free samples :-(. To wind up the evening we went to a planetarium which was really code for half the group taking a nap because the presentation was in German.

Welcome Days Part Two

So did you know that BOKU has two campuses, because I sure didn't. The other campus (home of food science, microbiology, and water management) is about 20 minutes away as opposed to 5 like the main campus. Since neither of those three things are really what I'm studying I decided to go to the food science because hey, food is always tasty. What I was not prepared for was the soul crushing realization that some of the tastiest foods arn't exactly what one would call real. Chocolate powder for example, does not smell delicious all on its own, they inject aroma. I was also reminded just how bad things like instant potatoes or even Nutella are for me as they require complicated robots to actually make them, and not love as I had thought previously. However, there is a bright side. As a class, yes an actual class, kids would try and distill whatever they could. The result, carrot schnapps.
Apparently the nose is a better drinking tool than the mouthAfter the campus tour we were all herded up and sent to the main part of the city for a tour. So now, I give you, a whole bunch of pictures that I can't really remember what they are.

Greek area (or at least it used to be)
My camera wasn't big enough to get the whole building, but the tower is pretty awesomeA pretty fountain complete with net to keep out bird nestsA famous clock This church was huuuuuuuuuuuuuugeThe McDonald's was so fancyI feel like the coffee and sunglasses offset the vibe
This is the town hall, I kid you not.
After our tour we dispersed and met again in the evening at an Austrian wine tavern. The food there was buffet style and mostly meat so I pretty much had some pasta and about 4 different kinds of potatoes (one might have been a radish, I'm not sure). The wine was actually pretty good, although I think a little stronger than normal.
Claudia (Bolivia), Gaetan (France), Jess, and Caro (Germany)
We weren't actually crazy booze fiends, half of those glasses had water
Using our clever map skills to figure out where everyone livesOrigami Fun
We stayed there, just talking and hanging out till about eleven. At this point Claudia and I scraped the wax off our arms (we got in a wax fight with each other, that poor candle, it never knew what was coming) and a group of us went to a party at the student union at BOKU. This wasn't as fun as it sounded like though, although there was Austrian ska music and the band had many many instruments (2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 tuba, 2 back-up singers, flute, electric violin, guitar, bass, keyboard) so then we went home for sleepy-time.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Welcome Days Part One

So despite not falling asleep till 3:30 this morning ( don't ask me, I have no idea why) I still managed to drag my butt out of bed at 7:45 and go to the International Welcome Day program. There was lots of talking, and I sort of listened, but my main mission was to make some new friends. However, this started off very discouragingly. I was following around two other Americans who live in my building (both from Iowa) who have been here for about 3 weeks, since they came for an intensive German course. This plan failed a bit because they talked mostly to other people and exchanged phone numbers, leaving me to watch while sad music played in the background. Then, the glory of lunchtime arrived and a random group of about 5 people (including myself) went to get some tasty pizza that was the size of a small cat.
Jess (Canada), I have no idea (Poland), Van (Vietnam), Veronica (Poland)In my defense, the boy has a very confusing name with like a p and an s together and a pretty strong accent, but I'll get it eventually and then come back to change this title.
After tasty tasty mushroom pizza we wandered a bit around the park that's on campus as well as explored the buildings.
Us coming down from the roof and despite the many stairs was well worth it because....
By the way, that ridiculously fantastic structure, that's a power plant. The world's largest six pack suddenly seems much less impressive.
Us in the park, self timer baby
After the program ended the two Polish kids left to go back home and Jess, Van and I wandered around campus hunting down the ERASMUS office. This ERASMUS thingy is essentially an international student card for European students but at BOKU they let anybody get one. It seems like a pretty sweet deal as the card also lets us get into a club for free and in said club there are very steep discounts for card holders. To top it all off, there's a kareoke night which just screams adventure. While we were searching for an ATM so Jess could buy her student pass, we came upon this, travesty against all logic.
Soooooooooo Tiny
Why illogical you my ask? I think that if a person is going to get a car that tiny they may as well just get a motorcycle and look super cool. Although I suppose that if, say, this car got good gas mileage or the person wanted a trunk, than fine it makes sense. But still, just look at it, it's like those toy cars little children get. Mesmerizing really.
Tomorrow is part 2 of the Welcome Days program and we're gonna wander around Vienna for part of it which should be fun.