"now in vienna, there's ten pretty women..."

when i used to hear this leonard cohen song i thought he was talking about the ten pretty women that he was in love with or had neuroses about or whatever. now i realize he was being serious. there are literally ten pretty women in vienna. i feel so incredibly spoiled by the attractiveness of west coast americans - generally the people here are either terribly scary or gorgeous. very few in-betweens. most people look like they were out partying the night before until 4 am (for the last ten years), although i have yet to discern the location of these parties. otherwise i might look like that too.

let's see... it has been a very busy few days! saturday i went to go the area around mariahilferstrasse - a kind of times-square-y outdoor shopping wonderland. i saw two separate dudes wearing leather pants (before noon), and at least a dozen young lasses in yellow catsuits carrying backpacks that were presumably meant to look like jetpacks (but closely resembled, and possibly were, vacuums). i bought 'the very hungry caterpillar' in german for monika's son (11 euro!!!) and some wrapping paper, then wandered around until a marching band took to the streets and i lost the ability to walk and hear.

i came back to my hood for a snack and had something called kebap (also kebab). it was a meat sandwich (although i have no idea what kind of meat it was - i swear it was chicken but michael tells me it must have been goat or lamb - yikes.) with veggie fixins and a tsaziki-like sauce. sehr gut, and sehr cheap - 3 euros for that and a beer. i think if i run out of money i will just panhandle and eat kebap.

then i hopped a tram to monika's - a very fun evening indeed. the pachlers invited their friends torsten and gaby and their daugther sina. torsten comes from east germany and came to austria after the fall o' the wall, and gaby likes to wear belts with fringe on them. also, torsten likes to go tanning and work out 10 times a day and perm/highlight his hair. neither of them spoke any english, which made for an interesting and exhausting night for all of us. but all in all it was great fun - monika is a fantastic chef and the kids were adorable. they had tiny baby champagne glasses full of apple juice (which came from a boxed marked "100% cloudy!") - they would toast each other, guzzle it down, and lick their chops. also notable was that these 2 year olds both ate all of the fancy adult food (fish and potatoes that weren't fried or in stick form) off of fancy adult china with fancy adult flatware.

sunday i ventured out to the schottenring, which houses the university and the sigmund freud museum. the museum was a trip - it resides in freud's actual apartment while he lived in vienna. once again there appeared to be the problem of too much stuff and not enough space - belongings, photos, and manuscripts basically piled on top of each other everywhere - but at least i got a handy-dandy guide book with numbers to indicate was ist das. i always wish museums talked more about the actual impact and analysis of the things they house - more explanation than just exhibition - but i guess that's what college is for. i got "the joke and its relation to the unconscious" and went on my merry way to schwedenplatz. apparently this area is where the nightlife is, but at 5pm, i guess it hadn't started yet. i'll go back again another time. then i walked back to stephansplatz, finished kundera's "identity," and had some espresso. i came home, looking forward to a cozy night in with a bottle of wine, only to find that every store closes either all day or before 5 on sundays. boo!! tea and leftover cake sufficed nicely, though.

today i stayed in until around noon because it was raining outside. then i remembered i'm from portland and got my ass out of the house. wrestled with my financial conscience for an hour and a half at H&M, but ended up buying nothing (which was good because the USB modem stick i had to purchase was 100 freaking euros). then some more window shopping and a tiny bit of real shopping, at the "bipa!" for mascara and soap, and the eurospar for yet another amazing grocery store experience. i found some mustard, as well as lemongrass flavored water, real müsli, kefir, figs, and vino. yay! except i got yelled at by two scary austrian ladies for holding up the line trying to figure out the debit machine.

right now i am squandering wifi from a turkish pub near my apartment. its five other occupants are staring at me intently, and THE SWEETEST SHOW EVER is on tv. sarah palin's middle eastern döppleganger is dancing around, á la soul train, on a checkerboard floor. i thought this channel was like c-span or cnbc, since there is a weird ticker at the bottom, but i guess it's just middle eastern vh1. i love it. i'm going to make friends with the bartender here, she is sassy and chubby and blonde and is friends with all the turkish blue collars.

i don't mean to be all obnoxious and cliched, but i feel really alive here. my emotions are always extreme - terribly happy, supremely overwhelmed, nail-bitingly nervous, tearfully sad, stop-in-my-tracks awed. it feels great. it is still kind of unbelievable to me that i am here. last night i dreamt in broken german, which i think is a good sign. i navigate the public transport like a seasoned pro, and even signed up for a club card at the sephora-ish boutique downtown. i feel so fancy!! i really want someone to come visit so i can show off ;)

Lassen sie mich in ruhe oder ich rufe die polizei!

miscellaneous austria FACTS, according to me:
people love to eat ice cream, even when it's raining and cold
people love to smoke inside of malls and while holding their babies
no one receives education on the merits of brow grooming
brand names of food/drink: cappy juice, emotion water, tofeefee chocolate. and those are just things presently in my fridge.

DID YOU EVEN KNOW??
the word 'hamster' is germanic!
müsli from austria is delicious!
vienna has the world's oldest zoo! (at least that's what monika told me. she also told my mom, apparently, that austria has never been in any wars)

the pictures are: mariahilferstrasse, part of the schottenring, a palace (i lose track of which ones they are; they are literally everywhere), the vienna opera house, the danube canal, the menu for my welcome dinner from monika, the street i wish i lived on, the napkin from my delicious kebab adventure, a mean note one of my neighbors left on my floor (monika translated as something like 'it is an abomination that a person cannot leave her flowers outside without fear of them being stolen. for shame" then other people added "where's my ashtray!?" pretty funny), finally - the moon view from my apartment (creepy/pretty looking. speaking of creepy, i am tingling with excitement for the night a ghost appears in my 400 year old apartment).

Tschüss liebes!