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.