New apartment!!!!

You guys. I told you I was bad at keeping up with blogs. I'd had a sort of culture shock/depression dip for the last week or so, adjusting to the realities of not working and being in a place where everything, including mundane things like going to the post office, is a challenge that I have to work up to. Not to say that good things haven't been happening-- we carved pumpkins for Halloween with friends, have eaten some delicious things, I've made a couple of new friends in my German class, etc. But I definitely had some days when I could barely bring myself to get off the couch, and some when I've sort of collapsed tearfully after running what one might expect to be normal errands. As with any culture shock, things are challenging in ways that I don't expect. But then, some things are amazing in ways I don't expect, either, and the last few days have left me feeling-- I don't know a way to articulate this feeling except to say "blessed." Things are just arranging themselves in ways that make me feel content and cared for and generally like I'm where I should be.


To start with, this apartment. I had started to get kind of bummed about leaving the nice, bigger, dishwasher-having temporary apartment we've been living in since I arrived. It was so well-located, with a nice little grocery store a block away, the Naschmarkt across the street, its spare bedroom for office space and visitors, its dishwasher, etc. We discovered last Friday, though, that it would be impossible to install an internet connection in it (long story, perhaps deserving of its own blog post), and spent our last weekend there relying on our phones for internet access. So I spent the last weekend there not being sad about leaving, but being anxious to get to the place that at least had internet access. But y'all. This apartment-- our new, real apartment-- is so good. The furniture is absurd, and looks like what someone in the 50s would have imagined a trendy 2015 apartment to look like (or at least like someone has been decorating it by going to IKEA every five years and picking one or two of the most trendy, funky things to put in it, regardless of whether they go with each other, which...is probably what has been happening). But even this funky, weird furniture that I would never in a million years buy for myself can't take away from how beautiful the actual apartment is. The building was built in 1911, and it has these beautiful wood floors, and tilework in the hallway, and lots of windows, including a crazy window that opens into the hallway, and these tall, amazing french doors everywhere. It's right across the street from an U-Bahn stop, which will become even more wonderful the colder it gets (it's already dropping below freezing some nights). Early on, I'd come to the neighborhood to see what kind of stuff was nearby, but somehow missed a big chunk of the main street, and so only discovered today that not only is there a lovely grocery store one block away, but that it's even lovelier than the one nearest the old place. The main shopping street, Mariahilfer Straße, is only a very quick ride down the U-Bahn, and it's not so hard to get to the Naschmarkt. On the whole, so far a great place to live.

The building we live in (the white one), and the U-Bahn stop across the street. Unfortunately the trains do make the apartment rattle, but I am sure we will get used to the noise in time.

The view of the street from in front of our front door. Most of the city leaves have fallen by now, though there are still some clinging on! I'm going to go in search of more fall foliage this week if I can.

Going up the stairs! We are on the European second floor/US third floor of the building. There are lots of plants in the hallway and stairwell windows, which I guess belong to various tenants.

This is our front door inside the building!! "2. Stock" means 2nd Floor. I LOVE the double french doors. 

Our door!

As you come inside, this is the foyer. The kitchen is immediately to the right, the bathroom next on the right, living room straight ahead, and toilet and bedroom off to the left.

A view looking back at the front door from the foyer. 

 The kitchen! It will take a big of getting used to, as there is actually only one drawer,  and many of the cabinets are less usefully arranged than you'd think. That window opens onto the hallway, somewhat inexplicably! but you can put plants out on the windowsill, which is kind of cool.

The refrigerator and freezer are disguised to look just like all of the other cabinets. That big one just to the left of the sink is the fridge. Not so big, but quite reasonable! The freezer is the one just underneath.

The bathroom! Which does not, oddly enough (well, not odd for Europe, but certainly odd for America), contain the toilet.

 It does, however, contain the washing machine, hidden in a little corner cupboard behind the bathtub!

And there's the toilet, across the hall. I don't mind the separation of toilet and bathroom, but I would really rather there be a sink in the same room as the toilet. 

The living room! This is by far the weirdest furniture in the house, but not the worst. The couch and chair look like they were stolen from Liberace's beach house, and the chairs look like they belong on the set of a live-action Jetson's remake. The owners of the house are also extremely fond of glass furniture, especially tables. I do love the twinkle lights on the basket of sticks, though.

The bedroom! Inexplicably, it seems standard here for beds for two people  to come with two individual duvets, rather than one large one to share. 

There's a work desk in the bedroom which Travis has commandeered, partially because it's the best math-doing space in the house, and partially because it is one of the points in the apartment from which you do not have to look at the horrible zebra-striped chair. I tried my best to cover it with a scarf, but it is hard to obscure entirely. There are big, lovely, bright windows though!

The view from the bed looking into the living room. 

The lovely grocery store! I braved a German-language interaction there to buy two giant soft pretzels from the bakery counter (you can see them on the windowsill in the kitchen picture above). 

Naschmarkt! and other explorations

Yesterday was a lovely, busy day. I had German class in the morning-- I was slightly late because the U-Bahn train I was on broke down mid-commute and they kicked us off and I had to wait (like 5 minutes) for the next one, which was a very mild inconvenience. I need to keep in mind that such things are possible and not cut my travel times so close. Language-wise, I'm getting better for sure, but still trip all over myself when I have to speak in class, and my pronunciation is all over the place. It's definitely getting easier, so I think it's just a matter of getting accustomed to a new phonology.

After class I got coffee with a classmate, which was nice and relaxing (and REALLY good coffee), then headed off to try to sort out a problem with my cell phone. Travis had bought me a monthly SIM, the same one he and Dennis and Janice all have, but mine had stopped letting me access the internet and sent me three texts (in German) every five minutes about needing to recharge. As it turns out, apparently MMS messages were not included in the SMS/Call/Data plan, so I had to pay their "minimum" of €10 to offset the negative 60 cents I'd accumulated. But at least now I have a functional phone again, and if I get lost in the city can use Google Maps or this cool transit app called Qando Wien to find my way back where I want to be.

From there I rode the U-Bahn out to the 14th district to check out the neighborhood surrounding our permanent-apartment-to-be. It was easy to find, right across the street from the U-Bahn stop, and it seems like a nice, quiet neighborhood. There wasn't a grocery store *right* nearby, unfortunately, but there were some produce stands, a store with some basic food stuff, a pharmacy, and (inexplicably) several florists. And since it's so close to the U-Bahn it won't be hard to get to a "real" grocery store within a few minutes, certainly no further than the average commute to the grocery in a car. I need to get one of those rolling grocery carts so I can commute with my groceries like an old lady.

After stopping back at home to regroup, drop some unnecessary things off, etc, I headed out (in the rain) across the street to the Naschmarkt, with vague plans of buying lunch for myself and dinner supplies. It was much less crowded than when we'd walked through on Saturday, but it was also pouring rain and freezing. There are about 20 identical falafel/hummus/grape leaf/stuffed pepper/etc stands that try to entice you with free samples, and the first one I went to completely won me over by giving me a still-warm bit of falafel dipped in an eggplant hummus. The falafel was really interesting, almost sweet, and vaguely reminiscent of carrot cake in flavor. And it was 8 pieces for €1, so I got some, along with a scoop of the hummus, some stuffed grape leaves, and a hot pepper filled with a mild cheese. I wandered the rest of the length of the market comparing spice stands, trying to decide on things, and ended up with a little roll of goat cheese wrapped in prosciutto. By then, I was damp and cold (I'd underestimated how cold it was, and so had gone out without my raincoat) and bought a cup of Glühwein (mulled wine) from a stand, which was perfect for the circumstances and warmed me up considerably.

The goat cheese with prosciutto turned out to be inedibly gross, but the falafel and hummus and grape leaves and pepper and Glühwein get firm thumbs up.

The hills are alive with the sound of new attempts at blogging

So, despite my history with blogs (ie, not keeping them up for more than a few posts), I am going to try to keep one related to my time here in Austria. Because this will doubtless be an interesting couple of years full of adventures and craziness, between being newlyweds, living in Europe, starting my 30s, being unemployed, etc (like Julia Child! I just have to tell myself that Julia Child was a woman with her own career who became Julia Child because she moved to Europe for her husband's job! Thank you for reminding me of this, Emily).

Maybe I will master the art of Austrian cooking? I think Travis might have an infinite capacity for trying my attempts at preparing schnitzel and würstel, but I'm not so sure about things like tafelspitz. But Apfelstrudel should be right up my alley. There are also plenty of international spice stands at the Naschmarkt, an enormous sort of semi-permanent farmer's market/flea market right across the street from our current (temporary) apartment, so maybe I can master the art of Indian or Moroccan cooking too, while I'm at it. I will definitely-- and I feel reasonably confident about this one-- master the art of Austrian eating.

Or maybe I'll find a job teaching English, or maybe I'll learn to code and write SLP apps-- right now my mind is pretty full with just trying to learn German and navigate the city.

I have a good introductory German class with people from around the world, all of whom seem pretty interesting. And I'm not the oldest person in the class, which I wondered about. There are people ranging from a French lady who seems about 70 to a handful of 30-to-40-somethings and then a lot of 18-25-year-olds. They're from all over-- Spain, France, Sweden, Turkey, Iran, the Czech Republic, Syria, and the US. The teacher is nice, and generally good at making us understand, and fortunately the "language of clarification" is English for nearly everyone. It's definitely intense, but when it comes to languages I generally want to learn everything *immediately* so I'm feeling sort of insatiably hungry for instruction. Duolinguo is a nice supplement, too-- they just re-vamped the German instruction, too, and many of the new words/activities they added match exactly with things we're doing in my class, or vocabulary I've needed to look up or ask Travis about in the last couple of days. It makes it seem like they have been spying specifically on me, but hey, if our robot overlords and the NSA are teaming up to help me get better at German, I'm not going to complain.

My first sign that being in Vienna will be fun: Hamburgerstraße (Hamburger Street)! (the ß symbol is a double-S)

 My sweet husband's "welcome package" for me, including a delicious local pastry, coffee maker and supplies, German class text/workbook, SIM for my phone, chocolate, umbrella, and a pretty scarf (in the bag).

 The math department at the university! I asked, "Wirtschaftswissenschaften" means "Engineering."

 The view from our temporary apartment.

 Troubling snack names, but they are indistinguishable from Triscuits in both texture and flavor. I plan to try the pepper/olive oil flavor next.

 Mayonnaise comes, oddly enough, in squeeze tubes.

Stephansdom! This is the main cathedral in the city. It dates from the 12th century.