So much to talk about I guess it is only appropriate that this title should be ridiculously long. Vienna on New Years, Skiing in Gastein…
You know all those other times after I took a little vacation (not by choice) from my blog, when I said that I had done lots and had lots to talk about? Well, they all don’t compare, this is insane, I don’t even know where to start. I guess chronologically is the best way to go about it, although that always winds up being “chronologically”:P I guess I’ll just go with how I remember it, since that’s pretty much the best I can do.
To start things off and get the juices flowing I’ll talk about my current obsession, and give this most worthy tool some of the publicity it deserves. Pandora. It’s awesome, already, after about 2 days of use I have discovered several new artists who I will definetly be buying the near future. Oh yah, what is it? Well it’s a way for you to search a massive database (300,000 I think is the number I heard) intelligently. Since I am terrible at explaining things unless I use an example I will fall back onto that. For example: you type in an artist and then it matches the style of music, things from rythm to melodic and chordal progressions, to other artists who play in the same realm and who you might enjoy. Wow it’s great. And those who complain about the music being free should stuff it because the system is pretty much as close to perfect as it gets. You can search an artist but you really only get to listen to one song from them, as the chances of you getting a second song by the same artist are pretty slim from 300,000 choices. But when the song is played it gives you the album info so you can buy it. Already I have liked some so much that I intend to buy the albums. Lots of money but…ah well:)
On to the other stuff.
Christmas with the last host family
It was good. Big tree, good food, good people. A little formal compared to home but fun still. All the Christmas stuff is done here on Christmas Eve, dinner, presents the whole sh-bang. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I lost all my pictures from the last 4 months. I have nothing!!!!!! Well that’s not quite true, but I lost a lot, probably close to 800! I thought I had put them on my iriver but they’re not there! CRAP!!! Oh man that’s annoying. No pictures from Christmas, sorry guys.
ARG! Oh yeah, Christmas. I got a real Austrian hat from my ex-host-parents. It’s awesome, it’s like a cross between lord of the Rings and Austria. Got a couple cds, and a photo book of my region here in Austria. Oh man I can’t believe I lost all my pictures, that just sucks. From home I got some ski underwear, the worst movie ever made(original War of the Worlds) next to black mask and a book on bullshit, which Sarah also sent me:) Good to know that the resounding description of my character is “Bullshit”.
New Years in Vienna
It was awesome. I do have some pics of that, which will come in a moment. The party was great and it was also a last chance for me to see the oldies who are either going home in the next week or are already there. They will be sorely missed, I truly don’t know what we’re gonna do without them, our weekends are gonna be a hell of a lot more boring that’s for sure…oh man, I now have zero photos of them…this sucks. So we started the evening with a little get together in a flat in Vienna with just the exchange students and a few select other friends. That was a good time. Then we headed down to the real celebrations at the Rathaus (parliament buildings) in the centre of Vienna. We stayed there till after the countdown and fireworks were done. Then we headed a little deeper into the 1st district of Vienna (the pretty and old one) until we hit upon an irish pub where we holed up till about 3 in the morning. I still haven’t figured it out but whenever exchange students are together we almost always end up going to an Irish pub:P Anyway it was a blast and here is a countdown photo now in Vienna:
I would post other photos but I have just realized that all the pictures I took of New Years eve turned out terrible, you can barely see anything in all of them.
Gastein
On the 1st I headed to Bad Gastein for a week of skiing with my new host family. It was absolutely amazing. I met some of the extended family and they were all really nice people. The skiing of course was awesome, what with the 1.5m of snow that is down, maybe even more in the mountains. The Thermal baths that Bad Gastein is famous for were also awesome. I realized how much I miss swimming then. There is a pool here in Judenburg, a five minute walk from my new host parents so hopefully I will be able to put that to some good use once the roof is fixed from the snow cave in:P I also went for my first Rodeln-fahren in Gastein. It’s like toboganning except extreme Austrian style. They have chair lifts for their tobogan (sp?) runs and they are really fast. It was a blast.
No pictures of Gastein either:(
Now I’m at my new host parents and they are just awesome. I have my own flat which I have decided to call my zenlist flat (cross between minimalist and zen, clever eh!). There is very little there which is really cool. I have my bedroom and then one other room which is now empty except for a really good stereo system:) All I need really. I will get some photos once I am unpacked and settled in. Now I have to go mourn the loss of my photos some more…man that sucks.
Frieden,
Nick
