First Day in Vienna

I awoke this morning to the sound of an old-fashioned alarm, the kind that has metal bells for ringers. Someone who lived in the apartment before me kindly left it behind, so I set it to test it out. Yep, it works ... and it's LOUD. There will be no sleeping through that alarm!

My main task of the day was to meet with three professors at the university at which I'll be studying and researching -- the University of Natural Resources and Applied Sciences (Universität für Bodenkultur = BOKU). The name makes it sound like a technical or trade school, but actually it's an environmentally-based university and belongs to the network of undergraduate and graduate universities in Vienna. The meeting with the professors went really well. I'll post more tomorrow about my potential research options once I have a chance to read the various project reports and decide which project(s) I want to work on this year.

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I thought I'd introduce a new feature to this blog: Word of the Day.
Today's word: die Wochenkarte [dee Vo'-ken-car'-teh] = seven-day public transportation ticket
I bought a ticket today, thinking that I could use it for next seven days until our orientation begins. Apparently the tickets are only good from Monday to Monday, so I lost two days. Oops. I'll be able to buy a semester ticket October 1 and then I can ride wherever I want on whatever mode of transportation I want without having to worry about having a valid ticket.