I've been in Vienna for thirteen days now but haven't had regular access to the Internet until last night. I'll try to condense those thirteen days down as much as possible. For the first week and a half I was able to get online occasionally by testing out a list of free wi-fi hotspots I downloaded. Some worked, some didn't. One was in an English pub called
Pickwick's. Though they had a wireless network, I couldn't connect to it because, apparently... they lost the password. They were very helpful, however, in giving me tips on how to steal wireless from the cafe across the street.
Pickwick's, incidentally, was the place where I saw my first musical performance in this, the home of Mozart, Schönberg, Strauß, etc. They were called
DeWieners and they described themselves as a rap/funk/jazz hybrid. There were three guys (StePh, ScOOp, and Sweat-on) who rapped in German on top of beats provided by a live drummer, keyboard player, and a guy playing some wicked slap bass. Oh, and there was also this guy playing saxophone who must have been at least 70 years old. They even played some Wu-Tang covers translated auf Deutsch.
DeWieners, including old guyWe spent the first week in a hotel in the city center. Vienna is divided into 23 districts called Bezirke. The hotel was in the first Bezirk, which is the most tourist-y. We were led during our orientation week by a bald guy named
Kent. He's had a pretty crazy life. We only know about it from the occasional snippet he drops in conversation. He's 56 years old and loves surfing. He was born on the west side of Chicago, went to SIU-Carbondale. He was in the army at some point. He's been living in Austria since 1978, except for brief periods of time when he's taught in schools in Hawaii, Florida, and Indonesia. Kent's married to an Austrian woman who grew up on a farm. He has a degree in psychology and works now at this institute in Vienna for American students. On the first night, he took us out to eat and told us the food and the first round of drinks were on him, but after that we were on our own. He ended up buying us five 1.5-liter pitchers of wine. Kent got pretty schnockered that night.
KentLater that night, some of us went to an area of town known as the
Bermuda Triangle. It's really just three bars, but I guess the idea is that people go in, get "lost," and never make it out. We went to the bar Kent said was his favorite,
Krah Krah, and, feeling very European, sent him a text message telling him to join us. He responded, calling us a bunch of
"rouges" [sic] and ended up showing up for another round. Some of my schnockered classmates used this opportunity to repeatedly yell out the only German words they knew -
fünf (five) and
das Leitungswasser (tap water).
Kent taught us a lot of Austrian slang, though we have our doubts about exactly how contemporary and useful the words are. For example, he explained that the word for "to bum a cigarette" was
"schnorren." When Erik, another Chicago student here, asked an Austrian girl for a "schnorillo," she got very offended and said that was a word only bums use. He's also taught us how to call someone a
"bullshit salesman." According to Kent, no means yes for Austrians, so if a girl is being hit on and wants to get rid of the guy, she should make sure he gets the picture by calling him
"eine Troddel." I looked this up in my dictionary, and it means...
a tassel.
eine TroddelThe next day, Kent took us to a restaurant called
Centimeter. The gimmick of the place I guess is that you order things by the centimeter. On the menu, they had a platter called
The Sword that's supposed to be enough to feed six people. There were eleven of us, and we opted to order two
Wheelbarrows, which are supposed to feed 3-4 each. We weren't able to finish half of either of them. Kent also ordered us a
meter of bread with all sorts of different toppings on it. We of course weren't able to finish that either, so Kent offered the leftovers to some Austrian dudes at the table next of us, who were already in the midst of enjoying a
meter of beer. They pretty much just brought the tap to their table. As a thank-you for the bread, they gave Kent a giant stein of the beer and repeatedly told him,
"Bottoms up!" Kent got pretty schnockered that night.
The WheelbarrowSpeaking of Austrian food, I never want to eat another piece of breaded pork again in my life. Al, my roommate now, used to be a Jew, but he's had to eat so much pork out of necessity he's had to convert.
This is probably plenty for the first post, but I'll have more soon.
Die Wiener Kompilation
