Dirndls, Drinking and (un-)Domestic Bliss - Pancake Day and Other Stories (6/3/11-13/3/11)

A brief break from travelling followed, as I began to settle in Vienna. This settling was aided by meeting tandem partners, discovering (and laughing at) some Austrian traditions, and, not to forget our roots, celebrating a British one.

To be fair, the "British" tradition was Pancake Day, which is actually celebrated across Europe, but it was still something familiar, and yet nothing like any other Pancake Day that I've ever experienced. I celebrated it last year in my student house, but the difference then was that my housemates actually knew how to cook. In contrast, this year I was the only one out of the three of us who knew how to make pancakes, and that was only thanks to a frantic Skype call to my mother. Still we managed to create batter (with normal eggs rather than the coloured hard-boiled ones which Christina had opted for), and get it into two frying pans, which Christina and I were put in charge of. So far so good.

Or perhaps not. My first pancake was successful, but while making my second I got distracted, and the next thing I knew the hob was covered in batter. Trying to save her kitchen, Hannah tried to mop up the mess, but unfortunately just ended up setting fire to the kitchen towel she was using to wipe away the batter. Pancake Fail #1. I was then relegated to photo duty (and cutting up phallic banana duty), but was quickly invited back to the stove when Hannah's efforts to create a pancake resulted in Fail Pancake. She swears it was delicious, Christina and I were doubtful.

Once we were done pretending to be domestic, we settled down to watch Eurotrip. And just in case the ridiculous European stereotypes weren't enough, we decided to drink every time one appeared. Thus it was that the next morning I lay in bed for ten minutes thinking "hmmmmm, loud noise," before realising that it was in fact my alarm clock, and I was meant to be at work.

This didn't faze me, and the next night I was out again to celebrate my flatmate passing her university Master exams. In Austria, most degrees finish with a thirty minute oral exam (regardless of the subject), which can be arranged for any time that suits you and the professor examining you, hence the fact that she was finishing at the beginning of the semester. The celebrations began in a bar on the university campus, and later moved on to a 'Wunderbar' (apparently one of many across Vienna) - by the end of the night I was wishing I'd had more that 4 hours' sleep in the past 48 hours, but it was a good night.

I also spent the next three nights socialising: meeting my flatmate's boyfriend (whose room I'm renting, so I probably should have tidied it before he arrived) and celebrating the beginning of my flatmate's birthday at midnight with Sekt (the Austrian answer to champagne) and a 'birthday crown', meeting a fat blonde man in short and a Von Trapp hat at a CouchSurfing meeting who introduced himself as Hans (Oh GOD the stereotypes!), and swapping coats with Christina on the way home from a night out because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Good job I didn't give up alcohol for Lent!

And, finally, there was the Austrian culture. For this was the one week of the year in which Lederhosen and Dirndls were sold in Hofer (the supermarket which we in the UK know as Aldi). For those who don't know, these are the national costume of Austria (and also of Bavaria) and they look like this:

Innocently trying to buy energy drink, the sight of a rack of these outfits was nearly the death of Christina and I. It didn't help that the woman queuing in front of us was buying a dirndl apron. Or that when I told my flatmate about our 'experience', her boyfriend interjected to inform me that his sisters had two dirndls each - one for Sundays and one for weddings. Apparently I'm in the minority in finding them hilarious...

Couchettes, Costumes, and Carnevale - A Weekend in Venice (from 6/3/11)

I needed almost a week to recover from my day trip to Bratislava (or rather, from the night of drinking on either side of it), because I was ill and alternated between working and sleeping for a few days. Then I went to the cinema to see the King's Speech (for the third time) and was forced to spend an entire day talking about it with my classes - you can only imagine how difficult I found that. (Anyone who didn't notice the sarcasm there should refer to the part where I said that it was the third time I saw the film). And then it was time to leave the country again!

This time, the destination was Venice, a city I will have to resist the temptation to wax lyrical about because it is one of my favourite cities in thes world. So first, I will talk about the train ride. I was already prepared for the joys of overnight trains by my experiences in Russia, and scanned my compartment (full of strangers, as I was still a sad lonely girl with virtually no friends at this point) for my future companions Man Who Snores Like A Trucker and Drunk Guy Who Just Wants To Share His Cigarettes. (And if you don't recognise this characters, then you should have been paying closer attention to my Vologda entry. Or you could just go on an overnight train journey yourself. Trust me, you'll meet them.) However, before these characters could put in an appearance, I had to sample the delights of the party wagon. Yes, that's right, a party wagon. The ESN (Erasmus Student Network) had obviously been feeling guilty for charging us 120 euros for our tickets, because they decided to have a disco car with free drinks for everybody all night. The result was essentially Klute on wheels, and the one thing I can say for it was that at least the stickiness of the floor kept us from falling over as the train jolted from side to side. The alcohol also helped everyone sleep on the uncomfortable train beds, everyone who wasn't still up at 6am singing 'Duck Sauce', that is.

Venice, where we arrived at 8am the next morning, was carnage. For Carnevale (which, if you haven't already made the connection, is Italian for 'carnival') thousands of tourists descend on the city and wander through the already maze-like streets, making it all the more easy to get lost (which I did, on the way back to the station at the end of the day, thanks to some crazy Argentinian students who I decided to take directions from). And then there was the actual carnival part. Masked figures, lots and lots of masked figures. They appeared at random out of the crowds, mingled, posed for photos, climbed lampposts (and no, none of this is a lie). By the evening they were joined by drunken tourists, some of whom had their own costumes, among them a frighteningly realistic Jigsaw lookalike and a troupe of Mexicans in giant sombreros. These aforementioned drunks gave St. Mark's Square a slightly different atmosphere as they capered around madly, serenaded by a buxom opera singer of dubious sexuality and/or gender. Had I been drinking I might have been sorry to leave the scene, but as it was I was only too happy to return to the station, and collapse exhausted on my couchette. And ten hours later I was back in Vienna, significantly more alive than those who had gone to bed only an hour before arriving, but still more than ready to take a power nap in my lovely double bed. Couchettes are all very well, but when your legs are as impossibly long as mine, you'll find it hard to get a decent night's sleep on one.

Supermarkets, Statues, and See-saws - A Day Trip to Bratislava

What to do when you've just recently made new friends on your Year Abroad? Take a day trip to a foreign country, of course! And what better foreign country, than one that apparently has absolutely nothing to recommend it whatsoever?

In the three weeks I'd spent in Vienna, I'd heard a lot about Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, and none of it had been good. Words like "hell-hole" were bandied around, and the only positive comment came from my flatmate, who told me that "it's nothing like a capital city, but they do have a Tesco there".

They did indeed have a Tesco there, in fact they had several. Tesco was the first thing we saw as we entered the city, and the last place we visited before we left. And before you start thinking that this makes us incredibly sad ex-pats abroad, I would like to point out that the supermarkets in Austria are terrible. They're tiny, they have no range of products, they sell out of things by mid-afternoon, and they close on Sundays. After three weeks of that, anyone would be excited to see a real supermarket (or at least that's what I keep telling myself - in my defence my flatmate also gets excited about real supermarkets).

However, we were pleasantly surprised, because Tesco wasn't the only thing to see in Bratislava. Admittedly it was small (which was a blessing, as it meant that there was no need for Hannah to embarrass us with the giant map which she'd decided to bring along), but there were things to see. For one, there were lots of interesting statues for us to take photos with (and nothing makes a day trip better than doing stupid poses next to a statue). Our proudest moment was finding the statue we'd seen on the internet, a man crawling out of a drain, and coercing a random passer-by into taking a photo of us with it. We also climbed up the hill to the castle, where we got a great view over the river and, perhaps more importantly, found a playground in which to relive our childhood.

At the top of the hill, we also sampled traditional Slovakian cuisine in a restaurant. Traditional Slovakian cuisine is very similar to traditional Russian cuisine, filling and not much else. The menu featured an assortment of dumplings and cabbage, but not unpleasant dumplings and cabbage, and the restaurant had a certain charm - if charm equals a slightly creepy cellar and a very creepy bird in the corner, that is! Not something that I'll necessarily be trying again, but certainly a cultural experience!

So all in all, I wouldn't say that Bratislava is deserving of it's terrible reputation. However, I'm not sure that I could have entertained myself for more than a day there, so don't all rush at once to book your tickets!