Vienna: Week 1

I have been in Austria for 5 days now, but this is the first time I have been able to get to my computer. I have been so busy ever since I left for the airport last Wednesday. Back in Georgia we actually had snow (*see photo) which later turned into ice: lots and lots of ice. At our mountain house in northeast Georgia we had about 10 inches of snow and it hadn’t melted at all the morning I left. From past experiences we knew that the snow-plowman doesn’t plow all the way down to our house, so we moved our car about half a mile down the gravel road to be sure we could get out. We figured it wouldn’t be too bad to walk up there, especially since we do it frequently…we were wrong. We rarely walk up there in snow, never in 10 inches of snow, and never with 50+ pounds of luggage. Using our problem solving skills my mom, dad, and I grabbed some sleds to put the luggage on and drag to the top of the hill. I am confident this made it much easier than simply carrying my bags, but it was still shockingly difficult. About halfway up the hill I realized I should probably start going to the gym more often.
After we finally got in the car and left the mountains we drove down to Atlanta where the highway was covered in ice. Some out of state people have recently said Georgians were “wimps” when it comes to snow, and we may be on occasion, but this particular instance was not one of those occasions. Half of the highway was covered with at least 5 inches of ice. We progressed down a major highway at about 8 miles an hour before we decided to hop on Marta. We made it safely to the airport and I boarded my plane. I had a layover in France, which I was really excited about until I saw the airport. Charles de Gaulle is huge and confusing. As I was trying to navigate my way to my next gate I met another IES student from Atlanta. We found our plane together and got to know each other as we waited to board. We had mutual friends and got along great.
Our first day in Vienna consisted of sightseeing in the airport. We waited for all the other IES students to arrive, and instead of going to our apartments/housing in Vienna we loaded buses and drove 4 hours to the Austrian mountains: to Deutchlandsberg specifically.
We stayed there for four days and got to know the other students and visited a castle near our hotel. It was fun, but long and I could not have been more ready to get to Vienna.
Sunday night we finally made it to Wien!! I was so excited. One of my roommates and I caught a cab and started to head to our apartment. Our cab was a new Mercedes and our cab driver was adorable. He gave us little tidbits about the city, and was as excited as us when we told him where we were living. We live in the 9th district of Vienna and our apartment is wonderful. The building is a light yellow and made in the Baroque style. The inside has beautiful tiling and great old curvy stairs. It was a bit of a hike to our flat with the luggage, but we made it with a little help from our landlady.
I wanted to see the city, but my roommates and I were all so tired we just ordered pizza and went straight to bed. We had to be up early on Monday to go to the police station and register with our address as a resident in Vienna. After that we went to school for our first class.
For the next 3 weeks we will only be taking German. “Intensive German”… after one day I can tell you, intense is an understatement. We will meet for three hours a day, Monday thru Friday. Today we only met for an hour and a half but I already feel like the material I have to learn by tomorrow is what would normally be learned in months. By tomorrow we are to have studied and learned a list of vocabulary, all the primary question words (who, what, when, etc), common Austrian idioms, how to conjugation a regular verb in the present tense(1st person singular & plural, 2nd person singular & plural, and 3rd person singular & plural), and numbers 1 through 100. My brain feels like gupe just imagine all of this information… that being said, I am off to study…
Ein, zwei, drei….goodnight all.