And so the catch-up entries begin, one week at a time. Seeing as I've already been here four weeks, this could take some time but here goes nothing...
I arrived in Vienna on February 3rd, and successfully navigated my way to my pre-booked taxi, where I discovered that yes, most of my German vocabulary had been replaced by Russian. Luckily, this was only a temporary problem, and by the time I arrived in my flat I was firing on all German-speaking cylinders, just in time to get to know my flatmate, Charlotte. She is lovely, and although we have been mostly speaking English (Because I am a bad person who is determined not to benefit from her Year Abroad? Maybe. Because I am lazy? Definitely.) that first night I spoke a LOT of German. This was mostly because Charlotte took me straight out to meet a load of her friends at a Stammtisch, a German/Austrian tradition whereby a table is booked at the same bar for the same people either once a week or once a month - so basically a social! After that we drank the best part of a bottle of wine each (and when I say the best part of a bottle of wine, I really just mean a bottle of wine) and went to bed very merry at some ridiculously late hour.
The next day, thankfully hangover-free, I went to meet Betty, my Betreuungslehrerin (caretaker teacher), at one of the two schools I'm teaching at here, the Bundesgymnasium Fichtnergasse. I also met Helen, the teaching assistant who I'm replacing, who told me that Fichtnergasse was the nicer of the two schools - experience has taught me that this is definitely the case. I got my timetable and received a very warm welcome from the teaching staff as a whole, including the headteacher. Meeting the headteacher was a slightly awkward moment though, as I had to fight not to laugh when she started talking to Betty in German about the upcoming spring holidays and they both went into raptures about how beautiful the edelweiss would be at this time of year. Oh yes, I am definitely in Austria...
For the rest of my first week, I was free as a bird, due to the aforementioned spring holidays, so I spent a little time sightseeing, a little time studying (I was doing a German evening class for my first month here, which I've just finished) and a lot of time sitting in my new flat, either watching lots and lots of TV in my (massive) room or drinking wine with Charlotte in the kitchen. And that was the week that was.
(Please don't lose faith in me, I promise I have done some more exciting things than this, but I have an obsessive compulsive need for chronology, and so the boring stuff has to be talked about first).
I arrived in Vienna on February 3rd, and successfully navigated my way to my pre-booked taxi, where I discovered that yes, most of my German vocabulary had been replaced by Russian. Luckily, this was only a temporary problem, and by the time I arrived in my flat I was firing on all German-speaking cylinders, just in time to get to know my flatmate, Charlotte. She is lovely, and although we have been mostly speaking English (Because I am a bad person who is determined not to benefit from her Year Abroad? Maybe. Because I am lazy? Definitely.) that first night I spoke a LOT of German. This was mostly because Charlotte took me straight out to meet a load of her friends at a Stammtisch, a German/Austrian tradition whereby a table is booked at the same bar for the same people either once a week or once a month - so basically a social! After that we drank the best part of a bottle of wine each (and when I say the best part of a bottle of wine, I really just mean a bottle of wine) and went to bed very merry at some ridiculously late hour.
The next day, thankfully hangover-free, I went to meet Betty, my Betreuungslehrerin (caretaker teacher), at one of the two schools I'm teaching at here, the Bundesgymnasium Fichtnergasse. I also met Helen, the teaching assistant who I'm replacing, who told me that Fichtnergasse was the nicer of the two schools - experience has taught me that this is definitely the case. I got my timetable and received a very warm welcome from the teaching staff as a whole, including the headteacher. Meeting the headteacher was a slightly awkward moment though, as I had to fight not to laugh when she started talking to Betty in German about the upcoming spring holidays and they both went into raptures about how beautiful the edelweiss would be at this time of year. Oh yes, I am definitely in Austria...
For the rest of my first week, I was free as a bird, due to the aforementioned spring holidays, so I spent a little time sightseeing, a little time studying (I was doing a German evening class for my first month here, which I've just finished) and a lot of time sitting in my new flat, either watching lots and lots of TV in my (massive) room or drinking wine with Charlotte in the kitchen. And that was the week that was.
(Please don't lose faith in me, I promise I have done some more exciting things than this, but I have an obsessive compulsive need for chronology, and so the boring stuff has to be talked about first).
