A Lot Has Happened: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday

On Sunday night We all went out for Mexican, which was good, not very Mexican, but still good. Then some of us went to the Irish pub to toast Sunny finishing her Graduate dissertation. On Monday we had class again and after, some of us went back to the public beach, however we did not encounter anything untoward. On Tuesday Ellie, Sunny, and I went to the private beach and enjoyed the chilly water. Then we went and had dinner at Ellie's where we ate a bean salad as well as a fruit salad and some gnocchi with a red veggie sauce. It was very yummy. After that we went and hung out with some of the exchange students living in Concordiaheim. We have discovered a beautiful Austrian version of Baileys. It can be bought as white, milk, or dark chocolate and it is so incredibly delicious. Today after course Gemma, Darren, Sunny, and I went into the city center to go shopping. On the way to the shopping center we passed a kiosk by the road where a man had chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It got me singing Christmas songs the rest of the day.   

A Lot Has Happened: Saturday

One of the many mountains we could see from the dock.

 On Saturday we went to the public beach and were quite scandalized. Not all of us had brought money, so we decided to try to find a public bock in which to hang out, and we did. However there were some problems. None of us but Sunny, from London, were confident enough to actually people watch and see exactly what kind of trouble we were floating on. Originally, it was just us sitting on the grass by the dock, talking and eating chips/crisps/tatos, depending on which native speaker you ask. An older man passed us and went onto the dock where he proceeded to strip into his birthday suit and get into the water. For a couple seconds we were frozen in place. Some of us stopped in mid sentence, some mid bite, but all of us were staring at each other with our eyes and mouths wide. Then we had a major suppressed giggle attack then tried to act natural. When he was done with his swim, he got out, put on his boxers, and layed on the bock, in the sun, reading his periodical. Then an older woman came along and swam in her swim suit, however she changed on the grass by where we had been sitting eating out chips before we vacated to the edge of the dock. when she was done swimming, she dried off naked. Sometimes turning to the bush to be modest, but also turning towards the man on the dock who was enjoying the view. Then another older man came along on his bike with a bushel of grapes and a tree branch in one hand and a lunch box with a uncooked, unhusked, ear of corn in the space where a water bottle was supposed to go. He sat down on the park bench overlooking the public dock and stripped down to his tighty whiteys and began to jerk off. After this, he gave his tree branch to the couple sitting on the bench next to him and the grapes to the man laying in the sun on the dock. It was all very obscure. When we returned on Monday we did not encounter the same problem though, so maybe it was just the day and the time in which we decided to visit the dock. 

This is the Lindwurm at night. We went down to the pub Saturday night to watch and listen to a cover band. They played well, the cider was wonderful, and the company was amazing, so I had a good time.

A Lot Has Happened: Friday

Nothing much happened on Friday besides a party on one of the Hostel roofs that wasn't much of a party, more like three tables spread 50 feet apart littered with all kinds of alcohol. No one really mingled or moved away from their table besides Ellie, Gemma, Darren, and I. After a while everyone decided to move the party to the city center and caught the last bus into town. Our first stop was Havana, a bar with interesting people, great rock-n-roll, and overpriced drinks. At one point Darren ordered Vodka, thinking that he would get a mixer with it, but instead they charged him 5 Euro for a glass of straight up vodka. He turned to me and said, "What am I supposed to do with this?" He ended up buying a coke to mix it with. The Turkish girls and Italian girl did not enjoy the music and talked with worried faces about how they did not like the music or the place or the crowd. Everywhere our group went they complained about the crowd, however what do they expect when twenty international students go into a bar. It gets crowded. After Havana, I took a taxi home. Somehow I ended up in a very nice taxi... hmm I wonder how that happened. It was a Mercedes town car and exceedingly comfy. One thing that surprised me was that the taxi driver waited to make sure I got into the building before driving off, not something I am used to from Chicago or New York.   

A Lot Has Happend: Thursday

Thursday was quiz night at the local Irish pub and ten of us went. Two from Ireland, two from America, two from Spain, one from Austria, one from the Czech Republic, one from France, and one from Latvia. We were sooo sure that we would have some sort of an advantage given our diversity and numbers, however we still lost. I had my first Guinness and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, given, generally, I do not like beer. The cider, of course, was amazing. Some of the quiz question answers were wrong, but whenever someone would try to correct the mc, he would accuse them of cheating. It was fun. We all met up at the Lindwurm before we headed off to the bar because not everyone knew where the pub was. I was the only one to take the bus and was waiting around for them to show up. There were some people setting up tents for a organic festival and I sat down on a bench to watch them work. After a couple minutes on my park bench a guy came up and asked if he could sit down on my bench as well, unable to think of a good reason why not a said, "yeah, of course" and proceeded to fiddle with my phone. He asked me something in German and, unable to understand him, informed him that I spoke only a little bit of German. To which he informed me that he spoke only a bit of English. Nodding politely, I went back to perusing my new, crappy, phone. After a couple long moments he asked me where I was from, to which I replied, "die USA." Looking impressed, he nodded his head slowly and said, "Wow!" I asked if he was from Kärnten, the region  of Austria in which Klagenfurt is the capitol, and he informed me that he was. Then lagged a silence, with him on his phone translator and me fiddling with the conversion app on my phone figuring out gallons to liters. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he said slowly, phonetically reading the words on his translation app. "No." "Why?" "Ich brauche ein nicht." "Nicht?" "Nicht." I had informed him that I did not have one because I did not need one. Furiously, he began to type words into his touch screen and I looked about for my friends that where growing increasingly late by the millisecond. Then he said confidently, having preread his translation, "Do you want a boyfriend?" with his eye brow cocked suggestively. Right as he said this to me I saw Jed, the guy from Wyoming ride up on his bike across the square. Turning to my bench partner, I looked him in the eye and gave him a very definitive "No." After which I stood up, said "Caio", and walked towards the growing gang of international students on their bikes making their way to the Lindwurm and Hercules' claw cock.     

Carinthia/Kärnten

Today we took went on a long tour of Carinthia, the region in which Klagenfurt is. The German word for Carinthia is Kärnten. It all was so incredibly gorgeous. The castle that we visited we really cool and had a great view, however it had never housed an actual family and was created to ward off the Turks trying to invade the region. It housed a multitude of soldiers, so I had trouble romanticizing a giant castle from the middle ages full of secluded soldiers at the top of an unusually tall hill. I did have fun looking at all the portraits that lined the museum walls and figuring out what time period they were painted by scrutinizing the subjects' clothing. The picture above is a of a small city that we visited that still has it's mote as well as wall that surrounds the city. We climbed to the top of the hill that overlooks the city. It was a long day with a lot of hiking. When we got back to our rooms, the guy from Kansas stopped by to see if we would have liked to join him in the city center for a drink, however I declined, citing tiredness.

Es ist Frietag! Oi, Oi, Oi!

(the title of this is a cheer that my high school German teacher had us cheer before we left class many fridays) Today, I went to the lake with Ellie after class and we swam for two or three hours. We have a lot of the same musical preferences and were swapping band names. At one point Ellie though she saw Sunny on another pier, however I did not have my glasses on, so I could not see. Later that night I found out that it was Sunny. We went back to Ellie's room and had veggie patties and steamed vegetables for dinner before we went to have a drink with Gemma and Darren upstairs. Sol A was supposed to join us, however she had fallen asleep at seven. A guy from Belgium recently moved in across from Darren, so he joined us as well. Around 10 we all walked down to the end of the canal and joined some other students for more drinks. At one point me and Gemma had to go to the bathroom so we went to the one on the street that costs 50 cents to use. When we got out, Ellie was outside and needed to use the bathroom. Because the doors where still open from Gemma and I coming out, Ellie decided no to pay the 50 cents and hop in while the doors were still open. I warned her against this, stating that the bathroom cleans and sprays itself down in between uses. To which Ellie replyed, "I'll be fine". I reiterated the fact that she would be soaked while at the same time encouraging her to see what would happen. Me and Gemma released the door to close, yelling at Ellie to go fast, just in case and that we would wait for her outside. However, we saw Ellie a bit earlier than we expected. A few seconds after the door closed the bathroom dinged and stated that it was still occupied, then the door slid open revealing Ellie on the pot with a very surprised look on her face. Thinking quickly, I jumped in front of the door, trying to block as much of it as possible while keeping watch for passers by. The door slid shut again, and me and Gemma erupted into giggles over Ellie's fate, however the doors dinged, stated that the bathroom was still occupied, and slid open. Again I jumped in front of the door. This happened multiple times until, finally Ellie was done. Amongst our giggling and as the doors slid shut behind her, we heard the self cleaning mechanism start up and Ellie turned to us and stated that we would not have thought it was all that funny if she had come out soaking wet and wanting to go home. We all should be going down to the Irish pub ob Thursday for a cider and a pub quiz. It should be fun.

Bikes

Today was a long day for classes and everyone was tired by the end. The joint study students, the students not from the EU, got to go get their id's today, so we got to skip some of our class. Ellie was excited by this prospect but regretted it later when she came back and she had no idea what was going on. I was also very relieved to have an extra break, however when I returned to class we were talking about clothing, a subject that I have already studied. When the teacher passed out our books today I realized that I have taken this particular German course level twice already, but I am okay with that. Maybe if I pay attention during this one, I can go up a level later. Ellie and Sol A went to go get bikes this afternoon and I joined them. I have decided not to get a bike because it is just a 10 minute walk to the University, however it takes a good thirty minutes to get to the school from Ellie and Sol A's dorm. Diego, a rugby playing, Chilean, exchange student in my intensive course, sent out a post on Facebook about a small bike shop near Concordiaheim (Ellie and Sol A's dorm). While there, we encountered the two Irish students who go to school in Cork, Ireland, Gemma and Daren. They also live in Concordiaheim and were buying bikes. The couple who owned the bike shop where extremely nice and the wife kept offering us free chocolate that we kept turning down after our first. I had my first Mars Bar today and was woefully disappointed.