It's good to be back.

I arrived back in Philadelphia Wednesday night. The flights—Vienna to Frankfurt, Germany and Frankfurt to Philadelphia—were fairly uneventful. The fun occurred at the actual airports. In Vienna, the airline charged me 100 Euros for checking an extra piece of luggage and for exceeding the recommended weight limit. I explained that I had been in Vienna for the past ten months, so naturally I would have more luggage than a person on summer vacation or a business trip would have, but the airline did not care how long I was in the country. “Rules are rules,’ the airline agent told me. So after reluctantly paying the fee, I proceeded to the gate, boarded the plane, and two hours later, landed in Frankfurt.

In Frankfurt, I had 20 minutes to transfer flights. I used five of the twenty minutes waiting in line at customs and spent the next ten minutes talking to the customs official, who was apparently having a bad day. His first question to me was: “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” “Ja,” I answered. He continued to examine every single page of my passport and then asked: “When did you come to Austria?” I could have pointed him to the page with this information, but instead said, “In September.” He continued: “If you’ve been in Austria since September and it’s now July, surely you must have other documentation: a visa, a residency permit?” I handed him my residency permit, knowing that it had expired the week before but also knowing that as a U.S. citizen I could legally stay in Austria another three months after the expiration because I had traveled outside the country and re-entered on a tourist visa before the residency permit actually expired. The customs official, however, was not accepting this explanation, even after I handed him the corresponding train tickets, showing that I had exited and re-entered the country shortly before the expiration date. He said: “You are in Germany now. I don’t care about train tickets. You either need to produce official documentation of a visa extension or you need to report to the German authorities.” Okay, time for Plan C. I luckily had thought ahead and brought with me an excerpted copy of the law, which I had obtained directly from the Austrian government. I handed him the document, which explained the automatic visa extension for U.S. citizens. He took a minute to read it over and, perhaps realizing he could not argue with the law, finally let me go. “Next time,” he said, “adhere to the dates of your residency permit.” Fair enough. Lesson learned.

At this point, I had five minutes until boarding time, but fortunately the gate was located directly across from the customs area, so I didn’t have far to walk. As I sat down for a few minutes, I realized that the waiting area was full of mainly East Coast high school students and other tourists who had been in Germany for summer vacation. It was unsettling to be in Germany and yet hear so little German spoken. All around me, people were speaking English and usually with a Philadelphia, New York, or New Jersey accent. There were a few Germans and Austrians here and there, but they were mostly traveling alone and were otherwise quiet.

Soon after I sat down, it was time to board the plane. Once I got settled in my window seat on the plane, I started to read a book, but eventually fell asleep. After having to deal with customs, airline check-in officials, and not really getting any sleep the night before, I was understandably tired. I woke up briefly for an early dinner of airline pasta and salad, read for a couple hours, and eventually drifted back to sleep. The rest of the flight continued similarly: read, sleep, read, sleep some more.

When the plane finally arrived in Philadelphia, I went through customs again, this time without any problem. I went to pick up my luggage and waited there for over an hour until I could collect two of my three pieces of luggage. After I watched the last piece of luggage from our flight circulate on the carousel, I realized that mine was not coming. Instead, I had to go to baggage services and file a claim with an airline agent, who told me the piece of luggage was found without a flight ID tag at the Frankfurt airport shortly after the plane departed. (Great, my luggage wasn’t even on the same continent!) After filing the claim, I finally made my way out to the international arrivals area to my parents and grandmom, all of whom were completely confused as to what I had been doing for the last hour and a half! I explained the situation with my luggage and that someone from the airline should deliver it the following day. If not, I had the airline’s phone number to find out when the luggage would be delivered. At least I had enough clothing and such with me for the next day that I didn’t have to worry too much about waiting for the suitcase.

Once I got home, I had Chinese food for dinner—one thing the Austrians just can’t get right! This actually means that I had my soup, saved my main dish for lunch the next day, and got ready for bed. I was asleep by 9:30.

I woke up the next day just before 7:00. I didn’t set an alarm; it was the sun that woke me up. I had a pretty lazy day of unpacking and doing a couple little errands. Around 7:30 that evening, someone from the airline called, saying that he would be delivering my bag in the next two hours. Armed with GPS and a cell phone, the guy actually found his way to the house from the airport. When he arrived, my dad took my suitcase off the truck and carried it inside, since I had already fallen asleep by this time. (Thank you, Dad!) I still don’t know how my suitcase became so heavy. I barely even had any books in it!

The next morning (this morning), I began to unpack the suitcase. Although everything shifted in transit, I think it’s all still there. Once I go through my bags, I’ll be able to figure out what, if anything, is missing. Hopefully, I didn’t leave anything crucial in my apartment in Vienna.

As I unpack, I’m also figuring out where to start with the storytelling. How do you summarize ten months of living in another country? According to the taxi driver who drove me to the airport in Vienna, I should start with his story. A former tool-manufacturer born in Vienna and turned taxi driver 31 years ago at the time when the Bulgarians and Turks began to take over much of Vienna’s taxi business, he now not only transports people within the city of Vienna, but also transports donated organs from Vienna’s main hospital to another major hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. Part person-transporter, part organ-transporter: I’m sure there’s a story hidden in there somewhere.

All taxi-driver stories aside, this blog and the photos I’ve posted are a good introduction to my time in Vienna. There are still, of course, so many more stories to tell. I’m sure I’ll still be telling stories months from now. If I feel so inclined, I may post a little bit more here in the next few days—as post-Vienna thoughts, if you will—but otherwise, I wish you all “Auf Wiedersehen!” Until next time.

Yours,
Briana

The train ends here.

All good things must come to an end and that includes traveling. I had really wanted to visit Prague before I leave Vienna, but it's just not going to happen. I have too many things to do in the next ELEVEN days before I can leave this country. Prague will remain one of my many reasons to return to Europe.

So what do the next weeks hold? Tonight I'm going to an informal farewell gathering, as opposed to the formal farewell two weeks ago. Tomorrow I'll be working all day on interview transcriptions for a friend of mine who's writing her Master's thesis on performance literature. Next week includes a picnic with friends outside of the city, a Celtic folk festival (yay!), hiking, a furniture museum, an art museum, outside film screenings if the weather cooperates, closing my bank account, de-registering from the city, more farewells, photographing everything in sight ... oh yeah, and packing and moving out of the apartment.

So, while I may not be able to fit in Prague at this point, I will at least be able to say that I have really been able to get to know Vienna. And that's just as important as constantly visiting new places.

School's out!

Today is the first official day of summer vacation for Austrian students. Yesterday, I went to the end-of-the-year gathering for all the teachers and staff at the school where I taught this year.

Wow.

It was probably to my benefit that the teaching assistant program ended in May and I didn't have to teach during June. Apparently, in the last few weeks, there have been intense disagreements between the teachers and the administration about everything imaginable. Austrian schools don't even have teachers' unions to communicate between the two parties, so people have been taking many of the criticisms very personally.

The entire end-of-year ceremony for the teachers and staff was about how not everyone always sees eye-to-eye, but they all must present unified views to the parents and public in order for the school to remain strong.

Apparently, the school has had serious trouble recruiting students for next year. (A little bit of background: Students must apply to this academic / college-prep school, as opposed to trade school, as soon as they finish elementary school. This leads to another criticism of the Austrian school system: Twelve-year-old students are forced to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives because they can't switch schools after elementary!) Whereas my school normally accepts enough students to fill five or six full classes, this year they only had enough for four classes. However, someone (presumably a former parent, who had something against the school or its administration) told the city council that the school only had enough new students for two new classes and now the school is battling a tarnished image. The other academic school in the district is now transferring some of its newly accepted students to the other school, which is an embarrassment for everyone involved.

I'm sure the saga will continue over the summer. I'm just glad I don't have to be involved in the politics of it all!

Kaydence and Ben in Vienna!

Two of my college friends, Ben and Kaydence, came to visit Vienna today. They took the train from Italy, where Ben has been teaching for the past year. I took them on a tour of the city and I think we actually saw most of the important attractions. We started out at Stephansplatz with St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the financial district, stopped for lunch near the university, toured the “ring boulevard”, where City Hall, the Parliament, the Hofburg Imperial Palace, the opera, and the theater all are. We walked through the Museum Quarter before taking the train to the Schönbrunn palace and imperial gardens. After Schönbrunn, we were all drained from the sun and the heat (89 degrees is hot for Vienna!), so we took a break before meeting up again at night to watch the soccer game, Germany vs. Turkey. We were originally going to watch the game in the WUK, which has big-screen televisions set up outside in its courtyard, but five minutes after we arrived, it began raining, so we found a nearby café instead. The café, “Café Liberty”, was tucked away in a backstreet that I had never even seen before. It was small, cozy, and had entertaining staff. The owner was born in Vienna to Slovenian parents and Czech grandparents. He had flags of all of the European Championship teams hanging throughout the café, including the Czech flag and the Russian Communist flag on the inside of the front entrance. Russia is his favorite team and he thinks Russia and Germany will end up playing in the final. He could be right since Germany did win tonight, but time will tell. In any case, it was an interesting night watching the game. Thunderstorms kept disrupting the satellite signal of the game, which was being broadcast—out of all places—from Basel, Switzerland! (The game was in Vienna, so why Basel was broadcasting the game, I’m not quite sure.) Whenever the game was interrupted, everyone turned their attention to the storm outside. The café was situated at the top of a hill, so we could watch the rain rush down the inclined street. Eventually the satellite signal returned, but he interruptions made the game seem quite short. Germany won: 3 to 2. I haven’t heard much celebration, like I did when Turkey won. That said, I also haven’t heard of any riots or other fan-trouble, which is certainly a good thing. The rain probably robbed everyone of the energy to do much of anything. After the game, we all said goodbye to our fellow-café-gamewatchers and headed home. Kaydence and Ben will continue on to Graz in the morning. All in all, we had a nice, full day. Hopefully, we’ll see each other again soon, perhaps back on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Daytrip to the "rope garden"

On Monday, I went on a day trip with my engineering department to a “high ropes course”, or literally "high ropes garden", about an hour outside of Vienna. You can see some of the pictures below.

Here is our fearless leader, Head of the Environmental Engineering Department, preparing mentally for the day:



Some of the on-site action:







As you can see, we had a fun day of swinging from trees and climbing everything in sight, all in full harnesses of course! To top things off, our background scenery wasn’t too shabby either.



We finished the day out at a Heurigen, an Austrian winery/restaurant. I doubt I was the only person to wake up sore Tuesday morning!

Prater

This weekend I went to Prater with some friends. Prater is part amusement park, part old- style carnival, and even has its own forest and meadow nearby. We started out with the swings, continued onto the Mexican teacups, stopped for ice cream, and eventually finished on a crazy ride that surely spun more than any regulations should allow!

Farewells & the Viennese Eiskaffee

The first of the Fulbrighters, Amelia, leaves tomorrow morning. A few of us went out to brunch with her today. Everyone's a bit sad as the reality of our situation begins to sink in. Within the next three weeks, we will all be back in the US and heading in completely different directions.

For brunch, we went to Weltcafe (meaning "World Cafe"), which now that I think about it, is one of the first cafes I went to when I came to Vienna. It's funny how things have come full circle ... and how time in Vienna can be measured in cafe-hours. Vienna is the city of cafes, after all.

Amelia and I had arrived at the cafe first, and then were waiting for two other friends, Don and Vikki, to arrive. In the meantime, we both ordered drinks. I ordered a mango lassi (mango, yogurt, and spices) and Amelia ordered an Eiskaffee. Interestingly, "Eiskaffee" does not translate into "iced coffee", but rather into "ice cream coffee". Therefore, the drink is made of coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, freshly whipped cream, and usually sprinkled with espresso beans or cinnamon.

When Don came along, he couldn't decide between the Eiskaffee and the Eisschokolade. Similar to Eiskaffee, Eisschokolade is iced hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream and freshly whipped cream, topped with cinnamon. Don, however, wanted to mix the Eiskaffee with the Eisschokolade, so he asked the waitress if he could substitute vanilla ice cream for chocolate ice cream. Unfortunately, the cafe didn't have chocolate ice cream, so he had to think of another plan. He told the waitress what he was trying to make. She looked at him quizzically and said, "Wait a minute. I'll go ask the kitchen." Poor waitress! This was her first day and we were really making her work! She came back a minute later and said that the kitchen would make something for him. The "something" turned out to be an Eiskaffee with mocha, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and topped with chocolate sauce. It was apparently delicious.



After we all had our drinks and food, we left the Weltcafe a happy bunch. The next few weeks will be filled with farewells, packing, administrative tasks, and of course, fun times in cafes!