But, the point is that she agreed that Vienna is more foreign than people think, since it's in Eureope. But moreso she thinks that Europe is very different from America and we just don't realize it. Especially with the language barriers. But she also told me that studying for a semester basically alone in a foreign country makes everything else you do seem easy. Which is true. Designing? Portfolio review? Not as scary as being yelled at in Slovainian at the border.
In other news, Austria, and possibly the rest of Europe, I wasn't too clear on that, is in the midst of the warmest fall in hundreds of years. I've heard ever, I've heard 1000, I've heard since the 1490s, whatever- it's been a long time. So, this is good and bad. It's bad because apparently at this time any other year people would be cross country skiing right now. It's good because "warm" here isn't all that warm. Yes there are days when it's in the 50s, but for the most part it's 30s and icy rain. And the occasional day of the coldest wind I've ever felt. And honestly, I'm sad to not have the snow, but I'm not a fan of cold. And it is nice to not be traveling in sub-zero weather. It's also apparently a really dry autum, which I didn't believe at first because I swear it rains at least once a day here.
There is apparently another weird weather thing going on here. Something called....well, it was in German, but it sounded like Fern or Forn. Basically it's just really low pressure, and it's giving people problems with blood pressure, and it makes it more likely for people to die in surgaries. It's also what I'm going to go ahead and blame my sinus problems on. I really didn't know sinuses could feel like this.
So, this is a typical conversation with a European when you first meet:
-Where in America are you from? California, or New York...?
-No, St. Louis. It's in the middle.
-Oh. It is by Texas?
-Umm..not really. It's exactly in the middle. Texas is kinda south.
-Oh. So, do you miss your family?
This conversation really happens, almost verbatim. It cracks me up too, that they all only know those 3 places in the USA, and even more that they have no qualms asking such a personal question only seconds after meeting you.
The other night, I met a Japanese couple (I forgot the girl's name, but the guy told me his name and then immediately followed it up with "But you can call me Charry", which made me wonder if he could tell that I could not rememeber/pronounce his name, or if he just says that to everyone. Or maybe every foreigner.) and the conversation went something like this
-Where in America are you from?
-St. Louis. It's in the middle.
-Oh, the Cardinals.
I was so excited by this that I immediately said "World Champions". They both laughed at me, and were like, "Oh, did the win?". And of course, I quickly followed up by admitting that Japan beat USA in the real world championships. And then we had a long conversation about baseball.
It must be crazy culture shock for them though. He is going from working in Toyko, where he would apparently work untill morning on a regular basis, to Vienna, where you can't even go grocery shopping after 7 pm. But they both seem to love their newfound free time. So yay for them. And they claim to be really bad at German too, but I don't believe them because they also said they're bad at English. That's the first rule when asking if anyone speaks another language, especially english. If they tell you they only speak a little, 9 times out of 10 they are lying because they are embaressed by grammatical mistakes.
Well, those are all my stories for now.
I took these pictures down by the river a little before 3 pm. Why it's sideways, I don't know.
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