Day 29

This morning I woke up as usual around 7:30 and laid in bed while Christoph was taking a shower. I decided to get ready. Stephen, Andy, and I had planned on meeting at the Central office at 9:30 so that we could go register with the city of Vienna.

I grabbed my lunch supplies and headed out the door and walked to the Westbahnhof. I took the U2 to Alserstrasse and took the SB43 to the office. When I got there I went to the piano and played for a while. Stephen was the first to arrive and Andy came a little bit later. I was playing All Of Me on the piano and Stephen joined in singing while I played. There's also a guitar in the office so a little bit later Andy picked it up and started playing Puff the Magic Dragon. It was great!

We ended up leaving the office at around 11:00 to go to the registration office which was about a 10 minute walk away. Once we got there we took numbers and waited to be called. When I was called in, I went to the office and handed the man there my paperwork and my passport. He entered my information into the system and then printed off my confirmation of residency. Andy and Stephen were after me and got through within 10 minutes. Afterwards we left and hopped on the SB5 to head back to the office.

We got off two stops later and went to a restaurant called Asia World that Ruth and Michaela had recommended yesterday. You can buy a 500ml to go container and fill it up with stuff from the buffet and it's only €4! So that's exactly what we did. I filled my container with some fish, rice, fried chicken, curry chicken, sweet and sour sauce, and a beef dish! We took our containers back to the office and ate our meals. With that as a meal option once a week I can say that I will be getting better at using chopsticks soon!

After lunch I walked over to the University Library to get my student library card. I handed the worker my student ID along with the verification of residency and he put a barcode sticker on my student ID. I walked around looking for my classrooms. I'll have my history class there starting next week. I couldn't find the classroom, but it wasn't that big of a deal so I walked back to the Central office.

Back at the office I made peppermint tea and got ready for the Grammar, Stylistics, and Idiomatics class with Michaela. The class lasted two and a half hours, but I didn't want it to end. We discussed the differences between written and spoken German, the difference between dialects and where they originally came from as well as fun phrases. At the end I told Michaela that I had an English joke for her. It went as follows:
Knock, knock
Who's there?
To
To who?
No... To whom!
Right as she said "to who" she got the joke! I didn't even have to deliver the punch line. I was so impressed and happy that she had understood the joke. She assigned a lot of homework, but I decided that really that was more than okay because I want to learn as much as possible here and this week, being the introductory week, shouldn't be all that bad.

After class I waited around for Andy to get done with his class. Charlotte asked if I would d go with her to the Westbahnhof to register for a discount coupon valid for all trains in Austria. I said that I was going there anyway so we took the SB43 to Alserstrasse and walked to the U6 platform where we waited for the train to come. It didn't. Something had happened which was causing the trains to not work so she and I hopped back on the SB43 (we had to skip the first strassenbahn because it was so full) and took it back to Langegasse where the Central office is. Then we took the SB5 all the way to the Westbahnhof. It was SO crowded, but we eventually made it.

When we got off I told her where to go to get her discount processed then I sprinted off towards the Raimann Theatre. It isn't far from my dormitory so it wasn't too hard to find. I had tickets waiting for me and Jesse to go see Der Besuch Der Alten Dame the musical. I had read the play last year in German class so I was excited to see an adaptation of a story that I already knew so well. However, when I got to the theatre I found out that Der Besuch Der Alten Dame was not playing there. It was back in the first district near Karlsplatz and the Ubahn trains were still down so I walked back to my dorm and went to Andy's room. We decided that since it was my last night of eating meat (I'm giving up English and meat for lent) we might as well go crazy and get a good last meal. We went to KFC! Yeah... Who would have ever thought that there would be a KFC in Vienna a world famous capitol city of Europe? Not me for sure.

We walked to Mariahilferstrasse, which is only 3 minutes away from our dorm, and found KFC. We split a bucket with fries and cokes to drink. It was so delicious, but I had forgotten that gross sticky feeling your fingers get when you're finally done eating the chicken that no amount of dry napkins can fix. Yuck! Afterwards we thought we might get lucky with the Ubahn and that the trains might be running again so we went to the nearest U3 stop. Still not working... So we headed home. I headed to my room to take a shower and got ready for bed.

Even though I am bummed that I wasn't able to make it to see Der Besuch Der Alten Dame tonight I know that I can see it at some other time. Plus, Stephen wasn't able to join us tonight due to the conflict of one of his classes. We'll be going to see Carmen on Friday evening at the Volksoper and I already know where that is. So all is well.

Goodnight all!