Folklore Museum (25/06/2013)

Sorry for the delay. On top of experiencing everything, I also have papers to write for each of the museums that we go to each day, and German homework. As a result, this gets put on the back burner, though I do take notes of funny things that happen throughout the day so I  don’t forget.

Anyway,

My day pretty much started with my Pass being checked—AGAIN. I was on the subway heading to the institute, and was on maybe the second out of four stops. Train just leaves the station and all of a sudden this normal looking guy jumps up and asks to see our passes. He has his little tag around his neck, and a scanner-type thing (I’m assuming to issue tickets or to pay via debit card?) in his hand. I was nearer to the door, and one of the last people checked, but this woman in front of me handed him her pass, and he shook his head. Was it expired? I don’t know. But he looked at it again, and flipped it over to see the dates I guess, and it was fine. When the woman turned around to make room for him to get to me, she looked obviously frustrated by the whole thing.  Not a job to make friends, I guess.

For Culture class,  we went to the Volkskunde Museum. It was really cool, and not nearly as flashy as a lot of the other ones, since it depicted “low culture”.  In all honesty, I was pretty surprised at how intricate and how nice everything was, despite being owned by normal people. When you think of the normal people in a time of princesses and nobility, you usually just assume that they were dirt poor with no decorated items.

The Museum was founded in 1895, and used to be a manor. Walking around, you'll see that it's really really big for a house, but not a super large museum. They do have everything really well laid out though. It's main logo is the picture below, with the guy having his nose bit by his bird-hat. It's called "The Bird of Self Reflection", and used to be a sled-head. (Kind of like on the bow of a ship, but for a sled. It has a neat saying that goes with it, that's like, "Take your own nose", meaning, "look at yourself, and not at others". I haven't been able to find it outline anywhere, but the tour guide told us it was an Austrian saying, haha.

The "Logo" of the museum. 

In the same room, they had masks that are apparently still used today sometimes. I'm still finding it crazy the amount of detail put into these things.

This was my favorite mask.

It might be hard to see, but there's a mirror in the middle of all those flowers.

The second room is had more cooking stuff. We learned about how the people cooked on the floor for the longest time, and got to see the various pots. The little spiky cart that you see in both of the pictures was used to cook songbirds. All of us were pretty surprised at that. 

You sort of get to see the size of the rooms
from this picture.

Tweet tweet. 

The wardrobes were probably the most surprising to me. Mind you, these are everyday people! This wardrobe is a wedding gift  that was commonly given. It has the initials on top and is just really really big and really really pretty. This one isn't anything extra extravagant, either. They all were like this. 

Talk about practical wedding gifts. 

Wood. Everywhere. Everything was made from wood. It made sense that St. Florentine was a popular Saint in the day. I'd stay on the good side of the fire guy, too if everything I had that wasn't alive was wooden. 

I take that back, after the oven was build, that wasn't wooden.

Wooden walls, wooden floor, not wooden girl or oven.

Not shown in the picture above is the wooden table, wooden chairs, wooden benches, wooden bed, wooden bowls (that went in a hidden compartment in the table), and wooden silverware.

A more modern room from last time. See all the wood? 

The stick at the top swivels around, and you can hang your lantern on it. We all ooh'd at that, lol.

Just don't mistake her for your dance partner--ouch!

Tired of wood? Here's another oven. She warmed a dance area in a restaurant a long time ago. You would put wood in from another room, which I thought was neat. Our guide also told us that she was a good representation on how the people viewed fire. Her tummy is about where the fire would be, and so "fire as life bringing", it also cooked food, and was just overall really useful.

Super Cool sleigh. The head from the beginning would have gone on one of these. 

Closer view of the girl

Closer view of the Hunter

I think the thing that most people found hilarious was the "racism table". Okay, really the name is "Table of Nations" but hear me out. What this pretty chart below shows is a stereotypical picture of a giver race at the top. The far left is Spanish or French, and on the far right you have the Turks. The way the top is set up, is from "best" to worst in the eyes of whoever made this table. For instance, under 'intelligence', it says that the Spanish and French are super smart, and the Russians and Turkish people are really dumb. It goes on like that all the way down. 

Proving Stereotypes existed since

Another pretty awesome piece that shows countries poking fun at one another is the one down there. This one is pretty neat because there is an American in the group. Can you guess which one it is? Hint: It's not the monkey (as some in our class answered)

I didn't look like any of them. 

No, it's not the old lady

This is the German, with the Italian in the back left

 The German one was kindof funny. You can open his mouth and put a coin in, and if you go to the back side, you'll see where he's actually sitting on like a potty with his pants pulled down. The coin ends up in the toilet. bowl. Our tour guide said there was a saying parents would tell their kids.S he didn't say it loud, because she wasn't sure if she should say it out loud. It was along the lines of "Ich glaube nicht, Scheiße Geld", which would mean something like, " I don't believe I shit gold", haha.

 

French man

The one playing the flute is the French man. Courtney, Morgan, and I got a kick out of his use of the middle finger, but we decided that it probably doesn't mean the same thing. Oh well, we still have that as our inside joke, now.

You found him!

The American was kind of surprising for us. There you go, though. The American.


























And the puppy. Because it's cute

Woof.

City Walk Day

Sorry I missed a day. I was pretty tired, and I took a lot of pictures. Hopefully you can forgive me, haha.

   We started at 9:15 that morning, because we had take a short walk and turn in our forms to register with the city. It pretty much just said that we were living here for a while, and this is where. No big. On the walk, we passed some of the locations that “The Third Reich” was filmed, but I had not seen it so it was rather lost on me.

 After turning in our forms, some of us went to get some food at happy noodles. It’s this stand near the Institute, and it looks fantastic. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told that the noodles aren’t sold until an hour later, and we were pretty hungry. Fortunately, it also doubled as a hot dog stand, so we all purchased these cheese hot dogs. Käsekuche or something to that effect. I keep forgetting.

It was in a baguette! Tell me that's not cool, I dare you.

We got back and had our German class, which was more grammar review and learning about Kaiser Franz Joseph I. It was pretty interesting, learning the Austrian history and how this end of the world was pre WWI. It’s still crazy to think that that wasn’t thousands of years ago. Hell, not even 100 years. 

I laughed. I know you did, too. 

Our second class is the Culture class. It’s taught in English, and is mostly tours that we go on, and write a paper about it later. Today’s required no report, but we did go on a city walk. (Mass of pictures below!) It was a really nice thing for the first event of the class, since it gave us many hints at things we could do. For instance, Saint Michael’s Church with the preserved bodies inside sounds really cool. 

St. Michael's Church

The entrance to St. Michael's. 

 I'm not sure how much detail I should go into. We took notes as we went, so there are some pretty awesome facts about each of these places. For instance, in the picture below, Joseph  (Marie Antionette's Brother!) is dressed in Roman garb because that was a symbol of power during his time period. He also was too modern for his people and wanted to be more of an enlighten-er to them than anything. As a result, he gave Jews, non-Christians more rights, and did a whole bunch of medical reforms. They...weren't entirely too fond of him. 

Joseph on horseback in Josephs Platz. Part of the imperial palace. Behind the statue is the Riding Hall!  

The Hapsburg Palace

Closer view of left side's statues. 

Closer view of...okay, I really wanted a picture of the horses. 

Pidgin. They're really cute....

The Wedding Fountain

Die Ankle Uhr

A neat story that goes with the pictures below. Augustine, the bagpipe player, was really depressed. All his friends were dead because of the Black Death, and he drank a whole lot. One night, he was too tired to even bother going home, so he laid in the street and slept there. Well, during this time, it wasn't uncommon for people to just drop dead in the streets from the Black Death, and Augustine was thought dead when they came to clean the streets and taken outside the city. When he woke up among the corpses, he realized what had happened and shouted for help. Luckily someone heard him and came to his rescue. This gave the people hope that you can persist and even survive the Black Death. 

The gold letters say "Die Liebe Augustine", in remembrance of the story. 

The Greek Orthodox, "Holy Trinity Church". 

Closer view of the Holy Trinity Church

Memorial of the people form the hotel-turned-torture-building.

San Ruprecht is argued to be the oldest church in Vienna. It dates back to the 8th century. It's named after the patron saint of sailors.

San Ruprecht in the distance. 

The Saint himself. Holding salt.

 One thing that they did mention to us was a section called ‘the Bermuda Triangle’. It’s a bunch of bars where these roads connect, and people end up missing there all the time. They even have police stationed very close by. Scary.

A view of one of the streets in the Triangle. 

  To end out city walk, we were taken to the mind blowing-ly good ice cream shop. Before I go on, I should inform those that don’t know that Erdbeere is “Strawberry” auf Deutsch. Also, I learned yesterday that many places shorten ‘Erdbeere’ to ‘Erdbeer’. Now, I know that “Beer” here is spelled B-i-e-r; however, that was not going through my mind. What was, was that I had been in Vienna almost a week and still haven’t had anything alcoholic yet (crazy, I know). So why not try it with ice cream? So, I got a double scoop of “Vanilla und Erdbeer” and pay for my cone. Not able to contain my excitement, I go outside to wait for my friends and take a lick of this pinkish ice cream scoop. It wasn’t even then that I realized my mistake. Instead, I thought, “oh! This tastes just like Strawberries”. It wasn’t until another girl in the group asked that it hit me-this is strawberry ice cream! If that wasn’t a strong enough give away, then the bits of strawberries in there should have been. Oh well, live and learn, yeah?

Also at the ice cream, shop was another lesson. This girl comes up to us—maybe 13 or so—and gives me, Bashan, and Morgan a rose. Like, puts it in our hands gives it to us, and we think, “Oh she’s so nice”, and tell her thank you. WELL, after we all said our thanks, she goes, and “that’ll be 2 Euro, please”. I happened to have a coin in my pocket, so I got it. It smelled good, and why not, I was happy off ice cream. I did learn, though, that nothing here is free.

At this point, I was pretty tired, so I made my way back to the UBahn to head home. All went well until I saw police lined up along one section. Of course, I had to get through there, and I knew exactly what it was. I pulled out my Pass, and showed it, and went on my way.

To explain:

               We are allowed to ride the subway (UBahn), SBahn, and Buses as much as we want because we have a pass. You can get one-day passes, week passes, and so forth. Ours are given to use by the institute, and were paid for with the program. Right now, I have a week pass that will end next Monday. Vienna runs on an honor system. That is, they won’t demand to see your pass every time you get on. Many people will go weeks or even months without being asked to check it. HOWEVER, if they do a check, much like this one, and you’re caught without a pass (even if you have one at home or wherever) you have to pay something close to an 100 Euro fine. I’m sure many people ride the public transportation without them, too.  It’s just so much faster and easier this way.

My final stop was a grocery store, Billa , right next door to where I live. I feel like everyone back home will get the wrong idea when I say right next door. The grocery store is in the same building as the place where I live. Right next door is literally walked out of the front door area, and (staying in the same building), walk into the door over. There’s not a way over to the store from the inside of the apartment part. It’s crazy, though. I like it.

In there I bought two packs of cherries (they were on sale), some cheese, juice, grapes, conditioner, and candy-vitamin things.

My haul.

Story time: When I was at ASMS, our teacher gave us some super awesome sugar candy thing before our final. It was amazing and I have wanted more ever since. Of course, I don’t remember it well enough to find it by name, and it’s not sold in American stores, but now that I’m here, there’s a chance I can find it. In Billa, I went to the candy/medicine aisle (yes, right next to each other), and found this sort of in the middle. It said that it was made of sugar, and was cheep so I tried it. In addition, it had pictures of animals on it—super cute. After the hectic ‘hurry and shove my backpack full of the groceries I got while the people behind me are getting checked out’, I go upstairs and settle in. After a few of the candies, I start to wonder if maybe they were vitamins or something. I look at the packaging and see where it gives a pretty long list of vitamins—Vitamin E, C, B6, Calcium, Phosphorus, Niacin, etc.—and start second-guessing myself. The next day, I asked and it turns out that it’s sort of candy. It’s tablets that you can use for quick energy that goes straight to the blood (since they’re made with grape sugar), and helps people whose blood sugar gets too low. It spikes it up. My host-mother also said to be careful taking too many, because it can be bad. Now I know.

BONUS: Picture of a super cute doggie holding an umbrella. I love how many dogs are over here!

I tried not to look creepy walking by and taking pictures of this person's dog. 

Concert Night

I believe my first thought waking up this morning was ‘who turned on winter?’ Seriously, it was 55 degrees out. I was glad I brought my hoodie.  

We started classes today, which was really cool. My first class is 12:30-2:30, and the culture class is 3:00-5:00. After classes we went to a store to grab some school supplies, and headed back to the institute for our temp phones. It actually reminds me a lot of the ‘pre-flip’ phones. Kind of like going back in time.

It's TINY

Morgan, Courtney, two other guys from out group, and I went to a restaurant that Dr. O’Brian said was great. I can tell you that it really was. Initially, I was going to try the ‘breaded calf head meat’ but they quit serving that, so I had the chicken and rice.

My ticket for the concert.

My exciting part comes in when I went to the theater that I got the ticket for last night. It was actually a concert in a theater where Mozart had played years ago. Talk about beautiful! It was really cool watching/hearing the piano songs that I learned how to play put with the stringed instruments. (and ballet dancers!)

A painting that was on my row (5th row), I came early so I had my pick of the seats.

This is when they were dressed for the Mozart half of the show

During the second half of the show, the ballet dancers 

She had a crazy nice voice. This picture was taken during the encore

Orientation Day!

Today was very fun. I had breakfast with Frau Thierry that was super yummy bread with even better cheese. Seriously, if I could just have that directly mailed to my door every day I’d be a pretty happy girl. After that I headed down to meet with our group at 10:00. I was a little late because I made the wrong turn out of the subway—oops!

After orientation, we had lunch in this really cool restaurant. I tried the Wurstplatter, which was really good, though I couldn’t finish all of it! After that Morgan, Courtney, and I chilled out and bounced around Vienna on the metro. Most of the things were really expensive (9€ for a ride on the Farris wheel?!), and we found ourself in the supermarket. 

We had a good view of the kitchen from our seats. 

Morgan and Courtney in the super awesome resturaunt

One thing that realized that I love is mineral water. I ended up buying a big bottle of some for ,75€. I think my favorite version is the “prickelnd” (sparkling). I also got this really yummy energy drink, "Wild Dragon". It's on sale, and I'm wondering about how much I can bring back with me...

I was determined to get Muffi in the picture as well, since she looked so cute. 

Because Courtney picked up some refrigerated items, and we all wanted to rest our feet/wash the sweat off of ourselves, we split ways for a while and agreed to meet at 7:30 for dinner.

Due to a slight delay on their side, I ended up waiting for a bit at the meet up place. I also ended up getting tickets to the opera tomorrow, and with a discounted price. It was great. They show up, and we went to a place called “Mama’s Kitchen-Authentic Vienna” (or something close to that). At the end we weren’t entirely sure how to get our checks. We knew what to say, but we were not able to get eye contact with our waiter like in the US. I finally had to wave him over to us, since they were closing down.

When I got back to the house, my Host-mother left me a present of cherries and a peach. I can now say that I'm a HUGE fan of cherries (and peaches, but I already knew I liked them). I would post a picture, but I ate them too quickly, haha. 

Here, have a picture of a museum I want to visit instead. 

Overall, I’d say today was a great success. Tomorrow is the Opera/Ballet, and hopefully I’ll look into getting tickets to a concert that’s playing in July. By the way, I’m blown away at how many concerts are here every night. 

Vienna!

   Frankfurt to Vienna wasn't anything too exciting. I kept fighting sleep on the plane for a little over an hour. It was strange, I would never "fall asleep", just would always wake up. Weird feeling.

   We were given maps to help us navigate about, which should be reworded to 'we were given a huge piece of paper with lines and colors and some sort of secret code and told that it holds the secrets to navigation around here, promise. I'm currently in the process of trying to learn these secrets. I'm feeling pretty successful, too, especially since I now know how to work a subway (Thank you David and Hunter!)

Notice my hand in the top left as a reference. It's huge. 

    My host-mother is pretty fantastic. She's the sweetest lady, and I can't wait to get to know her better. In her house, I get my own room, which I have been sharing it feels with her two kitties. One, Luke, is pretty shy and cat-like, so I haven't seen him around. The other, Muffi, is the best. Friendliest kitty I've ever met ever. She spends a lot of time in my room, and hasn't stopped purring yet. She also seems to know that she is absolutely adorable, and makes sure to show it at every given chance. 

"I'm a kitty and I'm adorable. Pet me!" -Muffi

This morning when my alarm went off, she jumped up and rubbed my arm. It was soooooo cuuuuute!

Bonus: Pic of the room