So life's been pretty busy here in Wisconsin... lots of summer events and working to save up money for my further adventures in Austria, and I haven't had time to write here. The good news is that I turned in my application for residency and I found an apartment!
The residency application came first, and it really couldn't have gone better. Of course it didn't start out that way. When I called and made the appointment to go and turn my paperwork in at the consulate an Austrian woman called me back saying that I couldn't come on Monday. Then she asked what I needed to turn in, and when I was arriving in Austria. When she found out I was starting in September she got very strict with me, saying that I should have turned it in a month or two ago, which at this point, helps nothing, not to mention, I didn't have all the paperwork two months ago. Needless to say I was nervous about going in on Monday. Getting there was fun, I spent the night with friends in Beloit, Wisconsin, and then drove into Evanston, Illinois and took the L into the city center. As I was on the L I realized I had left my passport pictures at home, so I started calling my friends to find me a nearby Walgreens or someplace that did passport pictures. Luckily they weren't mad at me for getting them out of bed at 7:30, and they helped me out, and the Walgreens they directed me to was the fastest Walgreens ever.
When I got to the consulate two hours before my appointed time (just to be sure that I was seen that day), there were a few people there already. We all had a lot of waiting to do, and by the time it was my turn we had formed a little family. We laughed, we cried, we told our life stories, we had inside jokes... at least it was entertaining. When I walked up to the window where everyone had turned in their paperwork (through a little slit at the bottom of the glass) it turned out that I had the old application, so I had to re-do my application. Mind you, they told me later they hadn't actually posted the new application online yet, but somehow I was supposed to have the new application, or know that they had changed it. In the end the woman who had yelled at me on the phone buzzed me back into the consulate, and we sat in her office talking while she went through my paperwork. She was actually really nice, she and the office intern knew the area of Austria I'll be in, so they had all kinds of great advice for me, and she was really happy with all the paperwork I had, even though I was missing an official translation of my criminal background, and had not found an apartment.
However... now I have an apartment! At the consulate they told me I would have a really hard time finding an apartment around either Bad Vöslau or Berndorf, and I should just try to find a place in Baden. Baden is like a county seat for the area, and it has around 25,000 people. It's a spa town, where all the royals used to go hang out on the weekends, so it should be pretty nice. My apartment is near the train station, and since it's normally a vacation apartment it's fully furnished! That will save me a lot of money in the long run, even though the rent isn't the best, it's within what I had thought I'd spend.
So those two big issues are taken care of! I just finished packing up to go teach German at the Concordia Language Villages summer camp in northern Minnesota. It should be a lot of fun, and a good teaching experience! I'll be gone until the very end of August, and I have no idea if I'll have time/internet access to post anything. See you in September!
