Schönbrunn, Steiermark, and the Sound of Music - Staying in Vienna (4/4/11-13/4/11)

Seeing as most of my posts seem to be about the time which I spent outside of Vienna, I thought I'd write about some of the things which I did within the city itself.

Of course, there was the teaching, also known as the reason I was there in the first place. With the Royal Wedding drawing ever closer, it became the main topic of conversation in many of my classes. I then caught upon a foolproof time-filler - making the students plan their own wedding. This kept classes amused for entire lessons, and also provided some very interesting vocabulary requests, from 'chocolate fountain' to 'wasted life'. In return for these thoroughly English lessons, they taught me a little about Austrian culture, specifically things which you aren't meant to do in Austria. One of these is making the Hitler salute, another is drawing the swastika, and the teacher demonstrated this by making the salute and drawing a swastika on the board. Now why were we discussing this again?

My students also proved to be talented actors, and one day I had the pleasure of having students ask for me in the staffroom (most of the teachers hate it because it means extra work, but it just made me feel important). They were in Klasse 4 (about the equivalent of Year 9) and they wanted my help in rehearsing a play which they'd written themselves. My first job was to check the script. Expecting a few lines of dialogue of the kind that I'd have been able to produce in German at their age, I was shocked when they handed me a hefty notebook: they'd rewritten and modernised Twelfth Night!

In the same week, I went to see some of the older students from the English Drama Club performing Blythe Spirit. This was an opportunity to show off my school to Hannah, who had agreed to come too, and also to show her that the trams were not as confusing as she thought (the tram network in Vienna is rather extensive and not particularly well documented). Unfortunately, the trams let me down, as the number 58 (which I took to work every morning without the slightest hint of a problem) decided that today it wanted to be a number 52, necessitating a long walk, a metro ride, and a change onto a tram which wasn't having an identity crisis. Luckily the English Drama Club didn't let me down like the trams, and gave an excellent performance, leaving us amazed as always at the quality of English.

At the weekend we let our hair down after all that terribly hard work by visiting Schönbrunn Zoo like the children we are, then walking to the Rathaus (which was slightly further than Christina had predicted) to go to the Steiermark Festival. Steiermark (or Styria) is a Land in the south of Austria, and its festival was about as stereotypically Austrian  as it is possible to be. People were drinking beer, wearing Lederhosen, eating sausages, and listening to an oompah band. Christina's boyfriend, who had been brought along to see everything that is wonderful about Austria, went to the toilet and emerged in hysterics. "There was a man in there," he explained, "playing two trumpets! At the same time! In the men's toilets!"

As if we hadn't had enough Austrian stereotypes, that night Hannah and I decided to watch the Sound of Music. With beer. And singing. The next morning my flatmate was positively gleeful as she poured us coffee, rightly assuming that we needed it. Oh the shame...

Lakes, Lift-Shares, and Last Minute Plans - Yet Another Weekend Away (3/4/11)

In an attempt to spend three weekends in a row out of the country, Christina and I started planning a trip to Munich for the weekend after Prague. For this trip we decided not to go with any traditional methods of transport, and instead opted for Mitfahrgelegenheit, a German lift-sharing website on which people making long distance journeys can advertise free spaces in their cars. So on Friday afternoon at 5pm we were waiting in a car park, prepared to drive all the way to Munich with a man who we'd never met before in our lives (in order to stay with another total stranger once we arrived - God bless CouchSurfing).

An hour later, and after a very embarrassing misunderstanding with a man who was definitely not our lift-share, we were still waiting. Apparently this was one risk too many, and we were not to be going to Munich this weekend. Unfazed (or perhaps not entirely unfazed, but re-christening our failed lift-share 'Mitfahrgelegenheit Wanker' helped), we set about making new plans for the weekend. And, like all the best plans, it started with gin.

It also started with CouchSurfing, a CouchSurfing games night to be precise. Latvian Guy (he has another name, Pyotr, but Christina named him Latvian Guy in our first week here, and so Latvian Guy he will forever be) had invited us to the event a long time ago, and he didn't seem to mind us RSVPing at the last minute, so we went. We played games, we drank gin, we spoke several different languages, we made friends, we shared our gin with our new friends (whether or not they wanted to share it is another matter entirely). All in all it was a good evening, the highlight of which was Christina giving the last of the gin to Latvian Guy as a parting gift (again, how welcome this gift was is a matter of debate).

The next day, in the midst of a delightful gin hangover which made us feel slightly like we were floating, we went shopping. I decided to blow a good portion of my recently received paycheck on a new coat - apparently coat-buying has become a Year Abroad tradition for me - and some sunglasses which I broke three days later, and then we decided to go at sit on the Danube Island and watch the sunset. Imagine our delight when we later discovered that one of Christina's work colleagues had been robbed at knife point there only a few weeks before.

To end our weekend, and to enjoy the incredibly hot weather, we went on a day trip to the Neusiedler See. And a very pleasant day trip it was too, aside from the fact that the train station was actually a good couple of miles from the lake itself. And getting there involved walking along a very long road in the very hot sun. Still, the lake was delightful (if very cold), and we had a lovely afternoon lazing in the sun, spotting nudists, and eating ice-cream. So a lovely weekend, no thanks to Mitfahgelegenheit Wanker!

Pronunciation, Puppets and Peppermint Liqueur - A Weekend in Prague (25-27 March)

Our second attempt to go to Prague for the weekend was almost another non-starter, as we arrived at the Prater metro station to find no bus in sight. Luckily we were just too early (incredible though it may seem) and a few minutes and some seat-shuffling later we were safely on the bus. While Hannah and I had managed to switch seats so that we were together (and to show his gratitude for being able to sit with his wife, the man who I'd switched with took it upon himself to tell me about the Napoleonic battlefield we were driving through), Christina made friends with the man sitting behind, a Czech man who taught her about the Czech tradition of eating carp for Christmas dinner and in return refused to be taught the correct way to say the word 'cathedral'. The resulting sound of "ca-theeee-dral" "cat-tay-dral" kept Hannah and I amused for the best part of ten minutes, for the rest of the four hour journey we entertained ourselves with Beatles music and beer, giving ourselves sufficient Dutch courage to meet our first ever CouchSurfing host.

Apparently our luck was still in, because Milan was not only not a rapist/murderer/general crazy person, but he also took us all over Prague, gave up his huge bedroom to us while he slept on the sofa, kept us constantly supplied with bread, cheese, coffee and cherry tomatoes, and let us watch videos from his impressive collection at the expense of any of us getting a good night's sleep. All in all, the recipe for a good CouchSurfing experience!

On the Saturday we did a whistle-stop tour of the sights of Prague, but as usual we didn't exactly focus on mainstream sights. Although we saw everything the guidebook wanted us to see: the castle, Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square, and the Old and New Towns, the highlights were, as in Budapest, the slightly wacky things which we sought out. The top three are listed below:

Rozhledna
This was Hannah's choice from the guidebook, mostly because "it looks like the Eiffel Tower". And it did indeed look like the Eiffel Tower, albeit being smaller and slightly more shabby-looking (being built on a hill, it didn't need to be anywhere near as high as the Eiffel Tower itself). Climbing the steps to the top felt a little like a death-defying experience, although not nearly as death-defying as getting back down the hill. Milan (trying to disprove his earlier reputation as a non-crazy person) decided that paths were for wusses and led us down the hillside instead, although he did offer assistance and there was a park on the way down, so I can't fault his shortcut too much!

John Lennon Wall

My choice also came from the guidebook, but it was obscure enough that the guidebook wasn't exactly sure where it was. But once again our luck held, and with minimal amounts of getting lost we managed to find the wall, which is painted with hundreds of tributes to the dead musician, and put our own mark on it. They may not have been quite as impressive as the giant painting of the Yellow Submarine, but it was the best us non-creative types could come up with!

Absintherie

Another thing that we couldn't leave Prague without trying was the absinthe - unlike the cheap imitation in the Undie, this stuff was 70% alcohol and came with a risk of actual blindness (disclaimer - risks possibly exaggerated and/or falsified). It also had an incredibly bitter aftertaste that ensured we would hesitate before drininkg it again, a disappointment that was worse than the potential(ly fake) blindness.

Other wacky highlights included the creepy puppet shop which Milan dragged us into halfway up Castle Hill (I'm amazed I'm not still having nightmares about Charlie Chaplin, I swear the puppet's eyes followed me around the room!), the Kafka Café in which we drank Kafka coffee (ingredients: coffee, peppermint liqueur, whipped cream, and not the slightest hint of a cliché), and the crazy steam punk bar which we unfortunately couldn't afford drinks in, but which was awesome all the same. Although we left Prague too exhausted to even concentrate on Music and Lyrics (and that film does not require many brain cells to concentrate on it), we took that as one more sign of a successful weekend!