When Heather came to stay

This weekend has been my absolute favourite one so far in Wienna, no exceptions. I had my first visitor (apart from Boyo) and it was fabulous! Things got off to a bit of a shaky start owing to transport confusion and Orange being the least helpful network in the world but we found each other eventually, dumped stuff at mine and then commenced jollity and merriment. First stop was the Naschmarkt for falafel from my usual man. Considering that it is probably my most eaten food in Vienna, I have done a terrible job of photographing it. Next time I eat there I will take a picture and post it to make you all jealous. Full of falafel-y goodness, we went for a wander round the First District. We gazed longingly into a fancy bakery window...

 ...picking out what we would eat if we were rich/Blair from Gossip Girl.

 At Stephansplatz, something strange was going on. There was a huge crowd of people, some soldiers (old fashioned ones, not actual fighting ones) a fancy car with Austrian flags and some posh looking people. My guess is that they were filming an advert or something but you never know in Vienna.

 It was freeeeeeezing, so we decided to have a nosy around Stephansdom. We didn't go far because we didn't want to pay, but we did see a man hoovering the statues. Yes, seriously:

 Our wanderings took us to Maria-Theresia Platz which is very pretty in the sunshine.

 This is the Kunst Historisches Museum (art history museum) One day when I am feeling particularly cultured I will go there, but not just yet.

 While it has been FREEZING in Vienna this week, I have come up with a theory. My theory is that it has been too cold for ice. I realise that this theory kind of falls apart when you think of places like the North Pole where there is loads of ice but I have seen very little considering the superlow temperatures.

 All that walking made us hungry so we decided to pop to a cafe for a drink and a cake. This is not a museum, this is the interior of Cafe Central:

 It became our favourite place of the whole weekend, I think it may actually be my favourite place in the whole city. Heather had a mango mousse with raspberry inside, all wrapped up in a white chocolate tower. The combination was so perfect "Jesus must have thought of it". That's how amazing it was.

 I had a raspberry and white chocolate concoction, topped with fresh raspberries, gold glitter and what appeared to be a bath pearl:

 it was actually a white chocolate ball with some kind of pearlescent pink coating. A French girl at the table next to us ordered the same dessert and to our horror she did not eat the ball. We contemplated encouraging her with a quick "C'est chocolat, nom nom nom nom nom" plus international hand signals for eating but decided against it. The whole cafe experience became even better (if that is even possible) when a man started to play the piano. I think we were possibly in heaven. If anyone wants to come and visit me, I promise we can go to Cafe Central.
In the evening we went to Centimeter. There was a big enough group of us for a 5 litre tower of beer...

 ...and a sword. This was the perfect end to a first day in Vienna.
After many pleasant hours of sleep we headed off for a day of culture and cake. We went the the Albertina, which I had heard is the biggest gallery in Wienna. I think this might have been a lie because we saw everything in about an hour and a half. Some of it was good but some was way toooo weird. The best part in my opinion was the toilets behind a secret door in the Imperial Apartments. Our cultural venture was followed by another Wiennese classic; Sachertorte.

 I have heard mixed reviews about this cake and having chosen to listen to the negative reviews I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it is actually very delicious. Nom nom nom nom nom

 Schönbrunn beckoned and in return for taking a picture for a very pretty but severely underdressed Japanese girl. she took one for us:

 The sun was shining which kind of took the edge off the fact that it was incredibly windy and FREEZING (I know I keep going on about how cold it has been but you really cannot imagine it!)

 The water in the fountain was all frozen. It looked quite thick but we didn't quite dare to stand on it with all our weight.

 After our Imperial visit we went to the Sky Bar on Kärntner Straße for a drink. We actually decided against it because it looked incredibly expensive but here is a picture of the view we would have been looking out on:

 After lusting after some sickeningly beautiful designer bags we went for a pre-dinner cocktail in DownStairs.

 Cherry Berry and Frozen Margarita (with complimentary peanuts) Deeeeeeelish.
After a meal in a traditional Austrian restaurant, we headed back to mine with all the necessary items for a very lovely Friday night:

 It is traditional for the Viennese to go to a Kaffeehaus for a big breakfast on a Saturday morning. I suspect most of them opt for the more traditional Semmeln with various meats, cheeses, boiled eggs, jam and honey, but we went for a huge piece of Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce. Nom nom nom nom nom.

 A few more sights were seen, souvenirs were bought, then we went for Japanese food at the Naschmarkt. This is one of the few meals that I did not photograph. Sorry about that. This weekend has been an amazing opportunity for me to tick off things that are on my to-do list, so we went up the Donauturm. It is 252m tall, but the viewing platform is only 150m up.

 The view was still pretty good though. This is the UN Complex, something that is also on my list of things to visit before I leave.

 The last thing, and possibly the non-food related highlight of the weekend was a trip to the Oper.

 We had to queue for ages to get tickets but we did well (after a minor altercation with an old man who thought he could beat us to the good places) and had plenty of time for wandering around and taking pictures before it started.

It was by far my favourite opera that I have seen. The overture alone is amazingly brilliant, the story is good, there are some classic lines and the singing was very good. In fact, it was so good I am considering seeing it again. I think that is quite enough for now, I am going to go and have a serious think about how to make a weekend as good as this one just was!

Vienna by night

What do people do when it is -100000000 degrees outside? That's right, they walk around taking photos. Or at least that's what I did. Here are a few night time snaps:

 a nose statue by the Stadtpark

 the Pestensäule on the Graben

 Julius Meinl

 Am Kohlmarkt

 the Hofburg Complex and NO PEOPLE!

 Wiener Eistraum...

ice skating in front of the Rathaus (town hall)

Just goes to show that even in the cold some things can be pretty beautiful!

Mit der 71er Bim fahren...

...in English this is "to travel on the 71 tram".  In my world, this means going to work because the route runs past both of my schools. In Wienerisch it means to die. To pop one's clog's. To snuff it. To kick the bucket. To go to meet one's maker. To shuffle off one's mortal coil (and so on and so forth in the style of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. 

 The reason for this is that the tram goes from the centre of the city to the Zentralfriedhof (central cemetery). Clever, you see?
Why I decided to go today (it has been -7 degrees) I will never know but I am glad I did. It is massive, and I mean SERIOUSLY HUGE. I could quite easily have got lost. Brace yourselves for some pretentious black and white photos of graves and the likes:

That is enough of the photos for now, I took about a million more but I think you are bored of all that artsy stuff. I spent over two hours just wandering around taking pictures on my own and it was very enjoyable. I should not say this because it has prompted people to tell me I am anti-social but don't believe a word of that.

      

 In the centre there is a church. As you probably know, I am not a big fan of churches but this one was really lovely. It is kind of Jugendstil-ish I think which means it is colourful and light. Actually it is one of the few churches I have ever seen where it is light enough to take photographs inside. So obviously I liked it. In fact, I think it might have been my favourite cemetery ever. It seemed very well-organised, the paths were all labelled nicely and there were lots of compost bins for old flowers and things. There was no graffiti and it was all very clean, much nicer than Père Lachaise in Paris.
 The whole cemetery was pretty much deserted (probably because it was so cold!) so it was very atmospheric. I found the old Jewish cemetery and had a good old nosy, it was really interesting.

It might sound silly but it made me think about how stupid Hitler was. So many of the Jewish names are German (my favourite was Sonnenschein, which is Sunshine in English), it just makes no sense to me that he was killing people from his own country, just because of their beliefs. What an idiot. But... that is a whole new blog post so I shall leave it there for now.

Fever Las Vegas

And so, another weekend down. They are passing increasingly rapidly, in fact there are only 14 more weekends until I return to the UK. Eek. This one was spent rather pleasantly. There are political troubles all over the world at the moment, even in Vienna actually. I went to a ball on Saturday night and while it was very enjoyable, I am not sure it was quite worth all the dramas in the world of Friend Politics. It was the Maturaball of the BORG in Schwechat and I was invited as Abby's date. The theme:

As this was my 5th or 6th Maturaball, I had high expectations. Luckily, I was not disappointed. In my experience, the weeks preceding the ball are spent not going to lessons in order to prepare for the ball. There is a lot of work involved, at this one there was even a wedding chapel! Oh yes, and everyone gets a "Ballspende", a little present:

Everyone was decked out in their finery. Abby and I actually looked like Grown Ups!

 The Balleröffnung is very formal, all the girls wear white dresses and the boys are in penguin suits and they do a fancy dance...

 ...and a Wiennese waltz. One day I will learn this

 There were some very questionable outfits, some worthy of a Gypsy Wedding, some on old women who really should not be showing that much leg/cleavage/skin in general and we spotted five or six women all wearing the same dress. Embarrassing! Sadly I did not photograph many of them, but I did manage to capture this fabulously glittery ensemble:

the one on the right also wore a silver sequinned jacket for much of the night, I was quite gutted when she took it off actually! It was a lovely evening, I didn't dance as I had no partner but we spent most of it talking to one of the teachers and her husband. He owns a vineyard and invited us to his wine cellar any time we like for some wine tasting so we will definitely be taking him up on that I think!

 The one downside of the evening was:

 while they are undoubtedly the most beautiful shoes I have ever owned, they are also excruciatingly painful after 6 hours. Despite sub-zero temperatures, we had to walk home barefoot.

 Today has been lovely, I caught up with a friend who I see all too infrequently. We went for lunch at Centimeter which is a brilliant place if you want to eat a lot of food from a strange receptacle. Today I had a kind of shovel full of stuff, mostly carbs actually. It was nice. It was nice to catch up, and even nicer to talk to someone different. All in all it has been a pleasant weekend, not least because it seems to be finally getting warmer. Hurrah!

What am I going to do?

I realise that to most people it still seems like a long time until I return to the UK, and in some respects it is ( 3 and a half months). However, for someone as skilled in procrastination as I am, it is high time I started thinking about life after Vienna. I am pretty much a Grown Up now, or at least as close as I am going to get, and this means thinking about a Grown Up Job. Cue Scooby Doo style "Yikes" and pained expression. Just over five years ago I applied for university and was thrilled at the prospect of studying subjects I was interested in and a fairly high chance of finding a career afterwards. I have been told by countless people (college tutors, careers advisers, lecturers, personal tutor) that a language degree is highly valued in the world of work. However, over the years it has become apparent that this is not the case unless you want to go into translation/interpreting/teaching, which I definitely don't. The fact of the matter is that I am just not interested enough in languages to motivate myself to translate or interpret, neither am I actually good enough because these jobs take an awful lot of skill. I knew right from the start of my time at Warwick that I did not want to go into teaching and despite having a lot of fun working in Austria, my assistantships have merely confirmed that teaching is not for me. I am not sure about the situation in the UK, but teachers in Austria get a lot of stick. They are often criticised for not working hard enough as they are usually given a maximum of around 25 teaching hours. What people do not realise is that this is just the beginning. Having spoken to the teachers at Good School, and listened to them stressing, I would say that they work somewhere in the region of 50-60 hours on top of this; preparing lessons, correcting work, putting tests together (because they STILL don't have standardised exams!). My time at Bad School is also making me appreciate what a thankless job it is, it must be incredibly hard trying to motivate people to learn something they have less than no interest in. It's not for me, that's for sure.

It is always after those three options that careers advisers start to falter, and this is also where I am a bit stuck. I know I don't want to do any of those. I also know that I do not want to sell my soul to some big corporate firm, working all hours and been treated like a slave. Besides, I may be a reasonably intelligent person but I can't talk the talk that you need to get through the countless rounds of interviews and assessment centres to get onto these schemes. I have a 2:1 from a decent university and nowhere to put my skills to into practise, at least without doing further study which also does not appeal, if for no other reason than the huge financial implications.

So as you can see I am in a bit of a quandary. I think the main reason for putting this on my blog is to get it out there in the open in the hope that I will come up with a bright idea. Jobs I would love to do:
- air hostess
- travel writer/photographer
- wedding planner
- florist
Sadly I think it is unlikely that I would get into any of these things for one reason or another. They say it's not what you know but who you know, and with this statement I wholeheartedly agree.

"what means" Frustration

Some of you may think that my job is a bit of a doss. You may well be right, given that I consider myself very unlucky if I don't get a three day weekend and work an average of 3hours per day. Considering the money it is certainly not to be sniffed at. While it is, granted, a pretty sweet gig, it is not without its pitfalls. The most obvious is the attitudes of the students in the two inner city schools I am working in. I understand that not everybody is enthusiastic about learning languages, I am fully aware of all the boring ins and outs which at the age of 16 seem completely pointless, but I don't try to do that! This morning I played Who Am I? (you know, the game where every one has a celebrity name on a post it on their head and you have to work out who it is using only yes or no questions) and I kid you not, it took a group of 4 students 45 minutes to complete it. I was a little shocked, especially as I had only intended it as a warm up exercise taking 15 minutes absolute maximum. So yes, complete and utter apathy does annoy me a lot and I find it downright rude when they refuse point blank to even try and speak in English during the lesson but that is not what I am ranting about today.

Having studied foreign languages for many years, I am the first to admit that people make mistakes and I also know all to well that to be overly criticised can be very damaging to a young person's confidence. I genuinely believe that is what marred my relationship with French at university. So yes, I acknowledge that there has to be scope for mistakes BUT... when it is a fundamental error that almost every student in every class makes, something has to be done. I think that those of you who have taught Germans or Austrians who are learning English will already have an idea what I'm talking about. If I remember correctly, we learned how to ask a question in the first term, if not it was certainly within the first year. I am therefore incredibly frustrated that nigh on every lesson I am confronted with the "question"... "What means...?" After nearly two years of facing the same problem I am at a loss with regards what to do. I have tried writing it in CAPITAL LETTERS on the board at the beginning of lessons, I have refused to answer the query until they form the question, I have even told them there would be a 10 cent fine for every time they said "what means...?" but nothing seems to work! I fear that it is a lost cause, not least because there are at least two teachers who still say it. Perhaps I am being overly harsh and if I am then I apologise, but there are so many things that I let go, I feel a line has to be drawn somewhere! That is all for now, I feel a lot better for that!

Plodding along

Greetings to you all, my devoted blog followers. It has been schon ein wee weilchen since I last wrote. This is partly laziness on my part, partly the fact that nothing has really been happening. Yesterday saw my return to Wienna after ten days in the UK. While Wien has admittedly been better in recent weeks, it was still nice to get away for a while. First stop on the magical whirlwind tour of the UK was Rotherscum, with a brief (but pleasant) detour to see the Grandparents. Though I was only there for two days I managed to achieve quite a lot I think. I saw old friends, went to my second home (Meadowhall), dyed my hair without dyeing the whole bathroom, slept in my own bed and almost learned the rules of rugby. I say this, I understand rugby in the same way that I understand German grammar. I get it in theory, but no matter how hard I try I just can't put it into practise. Oh well, it's hardly essential. Perhaps I should be more concerned about the grammar, particularly considering my alleged field of expertise.

We took a flying visit to Gloucester to have dinner with a friend before returning to Wales. Mr and Mrs Boyo were going on holiday for the week and for some reason beyond my comprehension, I was left in charge. They are under the impression that I am more responsible than their sons. HA. I am a master of disguise.

There is not an awful lot to do in Wales. Apart from Cardiff it is quite boring unless it's sunny, which obviously it wasn't. Cardiff is nice though, this is a nice statue that is in Cardiff Bay:

It has been nice to catch up on some proper telly rather that just American stuff. What I seem to mostly be loving at the moment is wedding programmes. Don't Tell The Bride, Four Weddings and Wedding House are firm favourites, but my new big love is Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. I am honestly in love with it. Do not worry though, I don't love them because I want to get married, it is mostly in preparation for the novelty wedding planning business that my friends and I will be setting up if/when we are not doing proper jobs by the time we're 26. I think light up wedding dresses are very underrated and that more people should have themed weddings. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory anyone?

On Friday we headed to Lahndan Taaaahn for the weekend. Boyo's friend very kindly agreed to put us up for the weekend. After a nightmare drive right through Central London and several trips through a tunnel, we finally made it to the flat, about 5 minutes from Canary Wharf. This did not help with the driving confusion:

 The flat was v fancy. Sadly, given that it is occupied by two 22 year old males, it is an absolute state. Now, I know I am messy, but I have never seen anything like it. It seriously makes my second year flat look like the type of place you could eat your dinner off the floor. Anyway, we headed into the city to get some lunch at Maoz (mmmmmm, falafel) and then trotted off to the Natural History Museum:

 It was BRILLIANT. I love love love dinosaurs, and there are loads. The only thing that disappointed me was that I am still no closer to finding out how they slept. I was hoping to be able to ask a member of staff, but the only person I came across was the man in the gift shop and he didn't really look like he would know. So I am none the wiser. The museum was followed by the first reunion of the weekend:

 I haven't seen anyone from uni since Graduation in July, so it was nice to see a selection of people. It made me miss them a lot actually, I miss having really good friends. That isn't to say I don't have friends here in Wienna because that would just be silly, but there aren't many people that I love as much as my uni peeps. Turns out I do miss something about Warwick. Who knew, eh? Friday's late night was followed with another reunion with the girls. Becky and I went on a mission to find Pineapple Dance Studios:

Sadly we did not find Andrew or Louie or Tricia, but we are planning to go again next time I am in London to do some more extensive research.

I love London, it is just so diverse. There were lots of lanterns as it has just been Chinese New Year. Unless I am very much mistaken, this is the Year of the Rabbit. I used to think I wanted to live in the capital, at least for a year or so. Now, having been there on a busy Saturday after next to no sleep, I am not so sure I could cope with it. I really am getting old. The original plan was to stay Saturday night as well and then go straight to the airport but an executive decision was made to go back to Wales on Saturday evening. A wise choice I feel.

Now I am back in Wienna. The journey back was relatively painless. I was kept amused by a very Welsh air hostess who kept having to repeat things to people when they didn't understand her. During the millisecond bus ride from the plane to the terminal the driver was whistling "La Vie en Rose" which make me smile an ironic smile as it was freezing and grey and nothing was looking particularly rosy. It cheered me up anyway. I have unpacked (kind of) and am now facing the daunting task of tidying up. Think I will leave that for a while and go and do something more interesting, so, I will bid you a fond adieu for now!