Herbstferien (fall vacation)

Alright so to tell you more about my week since Kristin was in Baden!

On Wednesday I met up with Steffi, an Austrian living in Baden studying to be an English and Spanish teacher.  We had coffee and chatted for a few hours, it was really great to get to know another Austrian, especially as I haven't met many Austrians my age in the area.  On Thursday I went over to Liz's house to do some laundry (since my washer still doesn't work, and my landlord hasn't answered my emails, must email him again this week), have dinner and hang out.  The laundry took forever, but it was fun to hang out with Liz and chat about life!

Clearly I have an excellent track record with electronics at the moment… My old laptop crashed 4 times the night before I left the US, so my parents (who really are the best) bought me a new one on the way to the airport.  Then I get to my apartment where my washer doesn't work, and in the first week I broke the incredibly cheep flimsy toaster… Then on the train ride to Graz on Friday my camera falls on the floor and breaks, which I didn't realize until yesterday.  My friend Peter who was hiking with us (and is also an excellent photographer, I'm hoping to steel some of his pictures from Saturday), told me that I should reverse engineer the issue.  Basically he meant that I should drop it again and see if that fixed the problem, as turning it off and on, taking out the battery, and all other possible solutions failed.  When I was back at Kristin's after our hike I decided to give it a try, I mean as long as it didn't land on the screen it really couldn't get any worse, could it?  So I estimated about how far the fall was, and then dropped my camera, and as it turns out it works again!  I really should never doubt engineers.

One of my pictures with my "broken" camera.

Peter and Johannes, rather fuzzy!

Anyway, back to my weekend:  On Friday after I got to Graz and dropped my stuff at Kristin's we went for a short wander around the city.  It was short because the sun sets at about 4:30, so we were running out of light!  We met up with our friends Johannes (Austria) and Rob (Wisconsin) at one of the Irish pubs; Rob also brought two Austrian friends with him, and we had a really good time with a lot of language switching.  We went to Posaunne for dinner, it was one of my favorite places when I studied in Graz, to order you just pick out the card for the entrée or side you want, check mark what toppings you want (I usually order pizza) and hand it off to the waitress.  I got a pizza with salami, corn, kidney beans, and an egg (of course there was cheese and sauce as well).  It was quite delicious, and I always have a hard time deciding what sort of pizza to create there.  

As I said before on Saturday we went for a hike up Schöckl, the highest place around Graz.  I'm not quite sure if it's a mountain or a very large hill, but Johannes called it a mountain so I'm gonna go with that.  It was a pretty tough hike as the trail is pretty steep at points, and it's very rocky (some solid rock, some loose rock), but I'd say it was well worth it.  We had really great weather, the views were great despite it being a bit smoggy/foggy down in the valleys.  When we got to the top we stopped and had some soup and drink at one of the restaurants.  We sat out on the balcony wrapped in blankets eating Goulasch and chatting.  We took this crazy Hexzenbahn (witch train) down a small part of the mountain, not exactly the safest feeling "ride" in the world, and then my cart was really slow, so the other 3 were waiting for me at the bottom & making fun of me, but I swear I really didn't put on the breaks that much!  

Later Johannes, Kristin and I met up with two of Kristin's friends from Oklahoma who are in Graz and we went out to a Buschenschank*.  We had some good wine, a ton of good food (basically different meats, and cheeses on bread), and it was all pretty cheap.  It certainly wasn't the cheapest Buschenschank I've been to, but it was nice to be there and the food was good, but if you're a vegetarian it's hard to find something that doesn't include a large pile of meat.  I also got adventurous and had horseradish on some of my bread; I actually sort of like it in small doses it livens things up a bit! 

*Side note, I feel like I need to set up a lexicon of my commonly used German terms so I don't have to explain them every time I use them- If you wanna know what a Buschenschank is look at previous posts*

My Jausen plate (lots of different meats)

After dinner we met up with Rob again, and hung out with him and his rugby buddies chatting and having a good time.  Before we realized it it was ridiculous o'clock (a British saying), so we all split up and went to bed.  I really only slept about 2 hours, maybe a little more, and then I gave up on sleep and decided to just get up, get ready and catch the train back to Baden (which I'm riding as I'm writing this).  It was a really great week off, I had a lot of fun, got some good relaxing in there, had a social life… couldn't have asked for a better fall break (after only a month of working)!  The only fly in the ointment is that I spent a little more than I should've, and I won't be getting paid for another 9 days.  Moral of that story: I won't be getting into much "trouble" this week, but I will be going to a Matura Ball (like prom) on Saturday, I'm sure that will be a cultural experience!