#payerbach

[elarafritzenwalden]

Kuhner Country House Semmering, Payerbach, Austria; 1930

Adolf Loos

see map | more information 1, 2, 3 | + video

via "Daidalos 32: Rustic Manners" (1989)

[cottontaiils]

Rest of April: Case Procrastination

After I returned from a lovely spring break, I had to prepare for my 4 days of class in April...tough life right? It was the most painful school work I think I have ever done because I was academically out of shape. I had become accustomed to late mornings with slow afternoons shopping, drinking coffee and taking photos with a few classes sprinkled here and there (for which I didn't even have to prep for). So writing a 10 page case paper with ridiculous...I watched the entire series of Castle to date to avoid working on it. I wrote 7 pages on the last day before it was due...luckily my group was awesome and in the same boat, with an embarrassed high five shared at Travel Shack with Sanja 2 nights before it was due. 

Backtrack slightly...we had an awesome residence party again for an end of spring break/ Natasha's birthday celebration. It was supposed to be a holiday themed party, but of course only Maxime, his roommates and I dressed up for the party. We all had the option of changing with our rooms being upstairs but still, no one dressed up! It was a good turnout for being a sunday party at the end of spring break and we had an awesome night...lesson learned: Never trust a Russian with drinking games, you won't win.

I had to come to a pretty tough decision in April with my summer plans still on the fence. I have had an incredible summer job, where I love the environment and my customers but I have some problems with staff politics and burnout from working a ton. It is hard to walk away from something that you love but I felt like it was necessary to not destroy how I felt about that place. It might not make sense from an outside point of view, but a lot of my favorite memories were there as my family camped there for years before I started working there.

Back to school...so we finished our cases and groggily met at Wien Miedling to go on a field trip for our class. Somehow my backpack was just as full for an overnight trip as it was for 3 nights in Slovenia...how? I absolutely loved where we stayed for our class trip, Payerbach, Austria! Google it, it is stunning. To me it was a mixture of Banff, Alberta and Kimberley, British Columbia, which are two places I am in love with in Canada. After dinner and a quick info session, we had some time to meet with our groups to finalize our presentations. Apparently, my group was the only one that actually finished their presentations pre-trip so we just had to educate each other on our topics as we each took on a company after the visits instead of splitting pieces of each company. Maybe not the best tactic but it was easier, we were just hedging our bets on whose presentation we would have to do. We got to know our classmates pretty quickly in a game of never have I ever and went for a midnight walk to see the amazingly starry sky...there may have been an impromptu dance class under the stars.

The next morning as case presentations were announced, our group had our fingers crossed for each others...i.e. I had LOMO, Sanja had Manner and Daria had TTTech. As much as I love LOMO, the pressure of presenting a solution on it was not a good feeling...sure enough mine was chosen and we weren't hired by the company. After the course seminar finished, we went up the gondola to see the incredible views. Being a little scared of heights, the gondola ride was harrowing but worth it. We had a wicked snowball fight at the top, which digressed to snow art AKA hurling yourself at a 15 foot high snow bank...awesome. We were sufficiently cooled off, with wet bums and satisfied inner children. All around a successful class trip.

In the final days of April, I experienced a Balkan party...basically mainstream music dubbed over in Croatian, Serbian, etc and ballads were added into the mix. It was an interesting experience.

One of my favorite days was April 28, where I went on a wine tour with 3 other girls (Taryn, Darian and Erin). It was such an awesome day. Killer weather, we rented a paddle boat and started tasting wine at 2 in the afternoon...mix that with sun and we didn't last long. As part of the package we got a 20 euro wine voucher to take bottles home with us, considering the tour cost 35 and we had a train ride there and back, it was well worth the 45 euro. I got lobster red burnt and experienced my first kebab when we got back into Vienna on the steps of parliament. Which was one of the most epic ways to experience my first kebab. Mmm.

The next day was a HUGE picnic on the donau island with close to 100 exchange students taking over the the green space, I can't wait to have more days like that and maybe I will be more brave about swimming in the river. As I said, Canadians are used to cold rivers and lakes but it doesn't mean that we like them. :)