Day 39

This morning I woke up at 6:45 and got dressed quietly so that I would wake up Christoph. I took the U3 two stops to the Plasmazentrum and waited until 8:00, their opening time. I went in and registered and met with the doctor who took some blood to test and gave me a basic health exam. Altogether the process took about 45 minutes, but pending on my good blood results, I will be able to donate plasma next Friday at 8:00AM (and get €20 in return)!

Since it was still early when I left the Plasmazentrum I headed across the street to a small cafe where I had a breakfast cappuccino and a glass of water. I thought about what, since it was (technically) the weekend, I should do with my morning. I decided to walk along Mariahilferstraße, which is the major shopping strip in Vienna, and do some window shopping. I walked around for probably an hour and a half going into a few stores and trying some things on, but not actually buying anything.

After that I decided that since I saw a 13A bus that I knew was heading back towards the office, I'd just walk there using the busses as my guides. It was sunny out and eventually I put my jacket in my bag and enjoyed the sunny walk back to the campus. Around 10:30 I got hungry for lunch so I stopped at a Döner restaurant and ordered their vegetarian sandwich. It was so good! In between a really soft roll were grilled onions and mushrooms topped with feta cheese, tomato slices, lettuce, yogurt sauce, and pepper. Once I finished that I kept following the passing busses to the office. I stopped at a Billa to grab some Golden delicious apples too for snacks later on.

I arrived at the Institute about a half of an hour later and went inside. I printed off some sheet music that I had been practicing in my computer and then headed to the piano to start working on it again. I played for about 45 minutes then decided that it'd probably be a goo idea to go back to my dorm and do my laundry. It's tricky doing laundry here because to the (approximately) 220 students living here there are only 2 washing machines and one dryer. It makes for a lot of waiting and passive aggressively moving someone else's laundry due to the fact that they're 10 minutes late to get their laundry.

I took the SB43 to the U6 and got off an the Westbahnhof. I headed up to my room just as Christoph was leaving to go to class. I took my laundry downstairs to the basement only to discover that each of the two washing machines still had about a hour to go on their cycles. So I took my stuff back upstairs and set an alarm on my phone so I would be downstairs right when the other laundry-doers where there to change their loads. I decided to take time working in my blog.

When my alarm went off I grabbed my things and booked it downstairs. One washing machine was already being loaded and the other still had laundry in it, but was finished with its cycle. After about 5 minutes of patiently waiting for the owner to come and claim their laundry, I moved it all out onto the top of the washing machine and put my things in. I stayed around for another 5 minutes once the cycle had started to make sure that I had selected the right program, then went upstairs again and set another alarm.

When my alarm went off and I went downstairs to change the load, I saw that the dryer was currently out of service. (Grumble, grumble, grumble...) So I loaded everything back into my laundry bag and took it all upstairs to dry. I hung my socks out of my desk drawers, jeans on the window, my sheets over my suitcase and anything else where it could dry. Then I had to get ready for the night.

At 5:20 I left my room to get to the same area as the Central College office, because I had an audition for the Vienna University choir. There were seven guys there and the director went around to us individually to hear us sing. The first guy, an Italian studying here, could understand most of what the director was saying, but not all of the technical terms so then the director started speaking (from what I could tell) perfect Italian. When he got to me had asked whether or not I had had singing lessons. I said yes. He then said "Your teacher is a soprano, right?". I was floored. Yup. He told me that I have a habit of singing like a soprano in terms of my muscular techniques and that because of that training I have been vocally castrating myself (Yeesh!). He worked with me for a few minutes on getting a full sound and then moved on to the others in the group. He had me read some music first so that I could go because he knew that I was going to see Die Fledermaus (The Bat) at the Volksoper in less than 30 minutes. He told me that practice was on Wednesday night at 8:00 and that he'd see me there.

After that I ran to the SB 41, about a mile and a half away, and took it to the Volksoper. I got my ticket from the reservation desk and took my place in the standing room in the back of the theatre. The show started and Stephen got there 10 minutes later. After the first act, we both found places to sit for the remaining two acts. After the show we separated and took transit back to our dorms.

When I got back to Haus Bürgenland 3 I went upstairs and got Andy. We knocked on Anneke and Janaya's doors (they weren't there) and walked to Haus Salzburg. We called up to Jesse's room and had him let us in. We headed upstairs to the kitchen on the 5th floor where everyone already was: Janaya, Anneke, Paithan, Tony, and Stephen.

Since I had made dinner last week for Stephen, Andy, and myself, Stephen said he'd do the same for us this week. So while the rest of us were chatting, Stephen was cooking salmon, rice, and mixed vegetables and it was a really good meal! We all hung out until about 2:00AM then I decided to go back to the dorm with Andy. I had to be quiet so as not to wake up Christoph while I made my way through my self-created jungle of dry/ drying clothes and made my bed. Then it was finally off to bed.