ayearinvienna

A (n almost) compulsory blog about my year abroad experiences in Vienna.

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My chariot to Italy and back. I find it garishly coloured enough to earn such a name.

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I've been walking past this crumpled police car for 2 weeks now. Maybe the cops are all too involved to kick ass action movie car chases to clear it away. I hope they end better than this one... #vienna #police #carchase

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Having fallen through the clouds, we still had our heads in them after being given a skydiving award!!! (for participation, but still...) #skydiving #adrenaline #awards

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A small, pretty courtyard at Stift Klosterneuburg. Oh what being pious can bring!

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Part of the 'legalise weed' parade that rolled through Vienna yesterday. True to form, it was a very chilled out affair. Mostly people just sat on buses, smoking.

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A night out, then a day off. A chance a recover in sunny Stadtpark #sun #feiertag

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A fantastic application to the Kindertheater, in which the applicant thinks they will really enjoy their time in GERMANY working for the VIENNA children's theatre. #proofreading

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Beherrschung der Wiener Äthen

Sat in Bratislava airport, enjoying a pre-flight coffee and bagel in a fantastically middle class way, I was blessed with ways to entertain myself. Not only is Bratislava one of the entirely reasonable airports that offers its customers free wifi, I could also marvel at how empty it was and listen to Slovakian radio. The highlight of my radio experience, somewhat limited by the language barrier, was a middle-aged man (or at least I assume so) happily murdering Stromae’s hit Papaoutai in a phone in competition. Despite his replacing almost every consonant in the song with the letter D, after a brief chat with the presenter at the end of his performance he gave a small cheer, so I guessed he must’ve won whatever it was he was Da-Da-ing for. I could only wish him a good day whilst fervently hoping he wasn’t trying to embark upon a career as a Stromae tribute. But it also made me think about my appearance on the radio in Vienna two days ago, and that in comparison I can’t have sounded too bad at all.

I managed to get myself onto the Viennese airwaves by helping a friend of mine do his weekly Wednesday evening slot. I knew that for him it was more of a hobby than a job, and I hadn’t heard of the station before and the studio was rather small, so I wasn’t expecting it to be anything too serious. However, midway through the show, my friend told me that it broadcasts to an average of 5000 people! That was a bit of a shock and made me feel rather self conscious when, at the end of the show, we listened back to the parts where we had been talking and I realised how horrifically British my German had sounded. Had I have been in the Inglorious Bastards pub scene, I would’ve been discovered and shot long before counting three on my fingers had the chance to give me away. However, I still had an excellent time being on the radio and slightly increased sense of adrenaline I had throughout the whole show gave me a great buzz. Despite my accent not being perfect, I’m fairly happy that I gave Vienna a reliable weather report, some decent music and cracked a few jokes at the expense of two Austria’s most famous exports, Arnold Schwarzenegger and his muscles.

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A street festival to advertise another festival - I believe in a field - next month. #mariahilferstraße #festival #vienna #tents

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Your intrepid blog author (check alexmatthews7.tumblr.com Instagrammers) tries Pizzaschnitte skiing #steiermark #skiing #first timer

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Skifahren am Wochenende 2

... come nowhere near as far that weekend. Although red routes remained purely an invitation for me to fall flat on my arse, I was very proud of how far I managed to come in a short space of time.

The rest of the time there was spent relaxing, chatting, playing a few games and eating delicious food. There was a restaurant attached to the ski-lodge we were staying in that made the experience all the more luxurious, which did traditional Austrian food and was serviced by a traditionally heavily accented, funny, and drunk Austrian waiter. Imagine Peter Kay drinking more than an occasional Baileys and opening up in a pub near Lake Windermere, and you get somewhat close to our Kellner* for the evening. And for when he wasn’t being entertaining, we had our own jokes to go on, and of course skiing on the television in the background.

The ski lodge also had a small sauna. This gave me an opportunity I thought I’d missed by giving up Russian before my year abroad: heating myself up to an almost unbearable temperature before jumping into snow. Of course the Russians go that extra mile by whipping each other with branches in the sauna, but I think suddenly sinking waist deep into the snow as naked as the day I was born was extreme enough. And I can quite honestly say that if I did this several times a month as a cleansing ritual, I wouldn’t think twice about annexing the Crimea either, particularly as it would give me somewhere warmer to move to.

By Sunday lunchtime the weather had gotten worse and the snow that had started falling was bad for skiing – apparently. My colleague’s husband, who would probably make an excellent iron man contestant, decided that that evening he wanted to play football, and therefore we left on the Sunday afternoon. Not wanting to let a 50+ year-old man get the better of me, I agreed to go along and play as well, despite having muscles as stiff as Putin’s face at a gay wedding. Or after another round of Botox. Despite being very tired, the football was an excellent way to round off the perfect weekend, especially as in the car on the way there and back I was able to sit and listen to the Generalsekretär of the Austrian Foreign Ministry discuss the country’s foreign policy. Incredible!

*Waiter

[alexmatthews7]

Skifahren am Wochenende

In the past, many people were surprised to hear that I had never been skiing. Not just Austrians, who mostly appear to be fired out of the womb and straight onto the slopes, using the short time just before landing to equip themselves with skis and puffy jackets, but also my other friends from around the world. I think this is partly because I like doing sports that are in the same class as skiing (climbing, kayaking, surfing), and partly because my eminently middle class background would suggest that my family had hit the slopes several times during my childhood. But they didn’t. I also didn’t join any school skiing trips because I don’t like trying to learn things when my friends (whose middle class families had bothered to winter for a few weeks in the snowy mountains of Europe) are already very good at them. Following all this logic, however, two weeks ago I decided to complete another major outdoor sport, live up to my middle class routes, and suck it up and allow small Austrian children to laugh at me: I accepted an invitation to go skiing.

As I’ve already said, the vast majority of Austrians are very good at skiing, and also take a large interest in the sport in general. When a ski-jumper gets his landing a little wrong and breaks something, I always thought it was only himself, his family, and his sponsors who would get a little be upset about it. Over here, however, the national newspapers and the population at large join in. I was invited to my colleague’s ski lodge in Steiermark*, and went with her husband and son, Cecilia, and my other colleague’s whole family, meaning that beforehand I had a whole crowd of little ski instructors giggling at the baby steps they would teach me.

As it were I didn’t see the children all too often. As I slowly increased my skill level to be able to attempt blue routes, they were bombing around all over the resort. Fortunately that left me more time with my colleague’s husband, who during his student years had made some money by working as a ski instructor. Now, after years as a successful banker, he obviously felt comfortable enough financially to be able to offer me some tips for free. I am extremely grateful, however, as without his help I would have…  

*Styria

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A midnight jaunt to the top of a mountain. It was beautiful in a way my phone camera couldn't capture, so I just photographed evidence instead. #mountains #steiermark #midnight

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One happy English bunny, one fake-smiling welsh one after today.

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Interesting poster placement; the poster on the left is for an 'everything in one place' shopping centre, more directly translated as 'here everything meets everything else. On the right, an unplanned pregnancy poster. Help for when things have met that shouldn't have... #advertising #vienna

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The very best of old boys dates

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Our dance teacher and master of Austrian etiquette also appears to be a master of recycling. Or a conjurer of bins. #manybins #recycling