Touring Linz

I will start this blog with Saturday. Saturday was my first day acting as a tourist in Linz. I met my mentor at 12 for lunch, we rode the tram about 15 minutes into the city and then got off at the Hauptplatz, which is the main square of Linz. The following photo is courtesy of the internet because I could never take such a beautiful photo. If you look at the top of my page, you will also notice that I made my banner the top of the Dreifaltigkeitssäule, or in English the Holy Trinity Column. On our ride to the main square, my mentor and I decided that we were going to have classic austria cuisine for lunch. I ended up having roast pork with knödel and sauerkraut. For those wondering what a knödel is, it is a round ball of something that reminds you of bread and potatoes at the same time (more bread than potato though). It was a good meal, not amazing but definitely not bad.I wanted to try the famous Linzer Torte (Linz cake) later that afternoon, maybe after sight seeing I would be hungry again. However, 4:30 came around and my mentor and I after sight seeing and shopping were both still full from lunch. I found that incredible as I normally am hungry every 3 hours like clockwork.However, there was more to my afternoon than food, there was also churches.

Mariendom

The first church we stopped at was the Mariendom, more commonly known as the new dome. This “new” dome was built in 1927. This dome sits in the center of it’s own square of sorts. It had beautiful stain glass inside, and as much as it is dark on the inside, it is a warm dark. I have been to Notre-Dame in Paris, and it uses a grey stone that also makes the inside of the church very dark. However, I think it is a not as “cozy” feeling of a dark with the grey stone as compared to the lighter brown of the Mariendom. The next church we stopped at was the Martin Luther Church, which was built in 1844. The story behind this church is when it was built it had to be built 50 meters from the road to avoid dominating the appearance of the street. At the time of its construction the Catholic building regulations were still in force. Today all the building to its left and right sit at the same distance back from the road, however, the sidewalk is larger on its side of the street than the other, which does allow for a little better photograph of it (however still  hard in the narrow streets).

Martin Luther Church

The next church we saw was the Karmeliten Kirche, which did have some baroque architecture inside.

We then continued our tour to the Landestheater of Linz, which is the city’s main concert hall, and on route we passed another building which I believe was the Landeskulturdirektion Building. However, I was more amused by the statue outside of it than the actual building. I still don’t know what that statue is of.  After our tour wrapped up we wandered through a couple shops and I found some cute boots. My saturday evening was then spent having a small dinner and relaxing with my roommates.

My Sunday was spent studying. Partially because I needed to and partially because basically everything shuts down on Sunday. There are no grocery stores open, there are no businesses open, and there are very few restaurants open.So on Monday I walked into my first exam of the semester. It was for the intensive German class I have been taking, and honestly it was a decently hard exam. My reaction to being finished was wanting some hot chocolate (a little comfort food) as I was not feeling that great about the test. However, Fanni also took the same level course as I did, and also found the exam hard. Her reaction to being done was getting a bottle of wine to celebrate. Kayla, Fanni, and I ended up splitting the bottle of wine and just enjoying each others company for the night. Monday and Tuesday haven’t been too exciting, but tomorrow(Thursday) I leave bright and early to catch a train at 6 am to head towards Pécs, Hungary! I am very excited about the trip, I will be visiting one of my older sister’s good friends. Hopefully my ability to take a photo will improve as the semester goes on, but I am sure I will have plenty to tell you about on Monday if not sooner.

Relaxing in Raab Heim

I got to go on a walk yesterday with Fanni (that is the correct way of spelling my roommate’s name). It was a beautiful afternoon the sun was shining and we got to just spend an hour wandering around since we did not have class.

We started down a path that ended up leading us to a major road which was not what we were looking for on this beautiful afternoon. We then backtracked and followed signs to the Linz Golf Platz. I was extremely surprised at the placement of the golf area (there wasn’t a course just an area to practice your swing, putting, and taking shots out of different terrain). It was on top of a hill and had a good view over the surrounding areas, it seemed like prime real-estate. Fanni’s father is a photographer, and she has grown up bringing a camera with her everywhere she goes. So all the pictures are courtesy of her. 

As you can see, she is a good photographer, and the city was covered in a clouds, but it was still a beautiful area to stumble upon in our area of the city.We then continued our walk, following the tracks of the golf carts and other vehicles that occasionally pass through. The tracks ended up leading us back behind the campus. We discovered cute houses and big fields that I would have never known were just five minutes behind our campus. The houses in all the areas we wandered through had completely different architecture from what I was used to and were a lot smaller too. I also found it amusing that I saw 3 or 4 homes that had chicken coops behind them and kept chickens. The university is on the edge of Linz (the second largest city in Austria with just under 200,000 people), but I still found it weird to see people technically living in the city have chickens.

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My evening yesterday wrapped up with me making “Chicken with Walnuts” for Fanni and I, and when Kayla (my south Korean roommate) came home she also had some. It was amusing for me to hear Fanni say her mouth was burning a little after she ate the meal and drink a little milk, while Kayla added more spice to the dish. Kayla loved it and told me it was the most South Korean “like” dish she has had in Linz and it made her extremely happy as she was missing food from home. The sauce for the chicken had soy sauce, sherry, red pepper flakes, ginger, a little sugar, and a little salt for those that wanted to know what was south korean about it. It obviously was not very South Korean, but Kayla was missing flavors that are not easy to find in the restaurants here. I was extremely happy by the compliment and the day.

Today has been spent in my dorm (Julius Raab (pronounced like Robb with the o sound a little more drawn out) Heim). I should have been doing a little more studying for my exam of my Intensive German Class, however, I didn’t have the motivation. I have done quite a bit of studying and I believe between tomorrow night, sunday, and monday morning I will be quite prepared for the test.

Tomorrow most students are going to a concentration camp, however, I believe those are better experienced as an individual and not in a group of 50. Therefore I have elected to stay around town, I am meeting a mentor of mine tomorrow for lunch and an afternoon exploring Linz’s big sights and maybe doing a little shopping. I hopefully will have more pictures and more positive news to post soon.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers.

10 Days In

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The first week did not go as I expected it would. When I first learned of how early I had to arrive for orientation, a full month ahead of real classes, I thought this would be an easy month. I would go to orientation which would involve receiving a student ID, registering for classes, and a campus tour. I would get that done in a day, then I would shop for a day or two for all the things I needed, and then it would be relaxing and occasionally going to a pre-semester intensive German language course. Well it turned out I was wrong.

The first week here has turned into a circus act through many bureaucratic hoops, a series of purchases and returns, of ATM runs because I didn’t have cash and didn’t realize none of my cards would be accepted, and adjusting to living without an oven or a microwave.

On Monday, I had orientation, now the first part was informative and complete within an hour. We then took a group photo which was relatively quick for a group our size, however, a half hour was spent on a photo where you probably can’t really see everyone’s faces. Following this was an hour of buying tickets for trips sponsored by Erasmus and an erasmus card which gave you a sim card (for five euros). Erasmus being a non-profit whose goal is to make studying abroad and being an international student a good experience. However, they allotted way too much time for this and it was a lot of standing around. We got a campus tour around 11 and then got promptly picked up by our mentors to join the bureaucratic circus. I also learned that Austrians our way to polite sometimes which results in some inefficient ways of getting things done. Our to do list included:

1. Get our Student ID

2. Pay our student union fee( every student has to, it is a law here in Austria that you have to join the Student Union which is really strange to me as an American. I also have no idea what it does for me as an exchange student…no one else knew the answer to that question either). We did this at a kiosk with our student ID’s. At this kiosk we also got to pick our pin, student password, and set up our ability to use the Mensa.

Just up to this step took us until 2:30…. 2 and half hours (no lunch break, much to my surprise) of a lot of standing around and waiting on people. My mentor decided we would walk around with another mentor’s group. When our group of 5 people was completely finished we waited for at least 45 minutes on the other group (which was also small). I asked my mentor why couldn’t we just go on, and she replied “Because we told the other group we would go with them.” I hope you now understand my comment earlier of Austrians being extremely polite to the point of being less efficient.

The rest of the items on the list included taking passport photos, creating our Aktiv Pass (which gives us discounts around the city and a huge discount on our monthly rate to use the tram only 10  vs 45 euros), and opening a bank account. These 3 items took us another 2 and a half hours. At five o’clock I was foot sore, hungry, and wished people were less polite.

The rest of my week continued to be interesting with trying to make my phone functional, get all things straightened out with my housing payments and bank, and trying to fine inexpensive cookware, which I have decided is impossible. The cheapest boiling pot I found was 24 euros.

That is enough with the ugly and bad though, so now I will tell you about some of the good things that have happened to me this week.

Schlierbach and Styre

This was the prettiest part of my week, I paid for one excursion through erasmus and it was this one. It was a short drive outside of Linz to a monastery, Schlierbach, and then too a small pretty town Styre. All the photos I have are from Schlierbach. Styre was also pretty but a two hour tour around the city resulted in me having freezing hands that didn’t want to come out of my coat pocket to take pictures. However, the monastery had beautiful Baroque architecture and a cheese factory that the monks and nuns use to earn their living.

Here are pictures from the inside of the church and of my roommates and I after tasting the delicious cheese.

A beautiful Monastery

I hope you enjoyed this post, sorry it was so late in coming, and know that the beginning of this week has gone more smoothly. Also I am sorry for the quality of some of the photos, but I wanted to put those in anyway so you could maybe get an idea of how detailed Schlierbach was. Hopefully you will read more good in future posts.

Arriving in Austria

After a nine and half hour flight, I finally landed in Munich at 7:05 am. I was extremely nervous, but happy that part of my trip was over. The next step took me through customs, and to my bag. My first panic attack occurred when I saw a man take a suitcase that was the same bright red and the same brand and make as mine off the baggage claim carousel. I panicked thinking I don’t know how to approach this, but I am concerned he has my bag as I didn’t see him even check the tag on it.I wait as he is with a group still waiting on bags and as the number of bags coming out dwindles I am concerned he really does have my bag. So I walk around the carousel in hopes of getting at a close enough angle to check the tag on it inconspicuously. When just about to get close enough I notice another bag exactly like mine appear on the carousel, luckily it was mine and I did not have to make a scene within my first half hour of landing. After I had my bag I rearranged my carry-ons which were rather heavy into my bag which still had room in it. I was prevented from packing more because of the weight limit.

Then it was wandering around until I found a sign for a train, mimicking the people who knew what they were doing with the automated machines for a ticket, I was shortly on route to the main train station in Munich. After a short communication with the information desk there, I had a ticket to Linz in hand and a half hour before my train arrived.

My first beverage in the Germany ended up being in not very German as I got a Venti Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks without water, however I did order and pay for it completely in German so that should count for something. Then it was a two and a half hour train ride and I was in Linz at 12:15 pm. After playing phone tag with my mentor, we finally met up. All of my mentors were extremely helpful and nice, and in return I gave them some Reese’s which they had never had before. They all enjoyed them and went for second pieces. After a tiring afternoon of grocery shopping and touring the campus. I crashed at 7:30 pm in my room:

It’s quite spacious and my only complaint is the lack of a microwave. I am living with two other young ladies who share a room next to mine, and we have a small kitchen and bathroom for ourselves as well. Kayla is from Seoul, South Korea and is here for the experience and does not know any German, but is excellent at English. I also have a roommate named Faunly (sp?) from Hungary, she is hoping to improve her German as well. We spent most the afternoon talking about our different Universities in German with one another. She was also very nice in offering me the use of her straightener and hair dryer after I ruined my converter after trying to make mine work. I am not really sure how I did it, but am grateful nothing essential of mine needs a converter. My computer and alarm clock don’t need it, and my phone, tablet, and camera can all be charged through my computer. Faunly and I are going out to get dinner, and tomorrow morning I have orientation at 9 am.

Thanks for all the prayers for my safety and please keep me in your prayers as I create my schedule tomorrow. I need 12 credit hours to transfer back to the College of Charleston.