first impressions - greece (i'm changing my name to euthalia and i'm never coming home)

naxos is AMAZING. the scenery and architecture is drop dead gorgeous everywhere you look, and my part of the island is full of nice old men and cheese shops. what else could anyone want out of life? i'm going to make this post quick and full of pictures because it's siesta time and i have to go get my beach on!!

if you click on the pictures they will get bigger.

this is my ferry! i took a train from the athens airpot to pireaus port, where the ferries leave from for the islands. the ferry was insane - i'll write more about that later.


this is the view of the port while waiting for the ferry to leave


this is part of a beach in naxos - the water is even more colorful than this picture shows (i forgot to bring my memory card reader so this pictures are not the best - i'll upload others if/when i ever go back to vienna


this is the sea in the port area of naxos town


same


this is an unfinished temple for apollo/doorway to nowhere. it was started some 2600 years ago and i guess they never got around to finishing it. there is a cafe called "relax! cafe" down the hill from it - probably the builders took the hint. or maybe sarah palin was in charge of its planning?


same unfinished temple for apollo


byzantine church


same byzantine church. you are not allowed to take pictures inside :(


horsies!


this is the beach that is maybe 20 steps from my hostel


this is a hotel my mom would stay at


this is my view from my balcony if i look to the left


view from balcony if i look to the right


this is a view of the northwest part of naxos

yaaaaay greece! time to go get a kitrone and do some sunbathing. love to all!!

it's a price i have to pay - i'm a big girl all the way

so... still going to greece! i leave my house in like 12 hours! i am so so excited!

sunday through wednesday i will be in naxos, thursday through saturday i will be in santorini, and saturday night/sunday day i will be in athens. i found amazing hostels at ridiculously cheap rates. i have no set plans other than to hike lots, beach it up, and eat and drink my fill of ouzo and tarama salata. it would also be nice if i had a bathtub at one of my hostels, which would justify (somewhat) my purchase of lots of fun spa products.

i just tried to find songs centered around my destinations. if you can manage it, don't ever download yanni's "santorini." i wasn't paying enough attention and now i own this piece of crap.

anyway, things are going well... except i have a most horrendous headcold. finding a pharmacy past noon on a saturday is no small feat in this town - i spent an hour and a half searching online, and then another 45 minutes actually finding an open 'apotheke.' it was near the place where i was doing laundry, luckily. 99.99% of pharmacies here are open 9-5 weekdays and 8-12 saturdays. if there is an emergency, you can spend all of the energy you have finding one in a nearby district, walk to it, ring the scary little bell, and wait in the cold for a mean pharmacist to come help you. if you are lucky, as i was, they will give you grippostad c. i feel a lot better, albeit loopy and caffeinated. we'll see if it works. no luck refilling my US prescriptions though - i will have to see an austrian doctor for those.

this was an interesting and difficult adventure here because there is no such thing as walgreens. they have grocery stores which sell no medicine whatsoever. they have 'drugstores' that sell soap and toothpaste and eyeshadow and the austrian equivalent of 'slimfast' but no medicine whatsoever. then, they have 'apothekes,' which sell ridiculously expensive face/body products AND medicines (prescriptions, sudafed-ish things, advil-ish things, etc.). so it takes patience and tenacity to get well in this town, at least as a foreigner.

yesterday i tried medicating myself at the asian market, a new-found personal favorite. the korean soup and ginger tea are helping, but not as much as my GRIPPOSTAD! i like that word!

i am all ready for greece. have two swimsuits, good hiking shoes, citronella spray for skeeters, sunblock, and two good books. i might need more books, as two of my ferries are over 6 hours long. i will leave this to be resolved in the next few days. damn i wish someone would send me some books.

umm i am going to find an internet cafe to print my itinerary. then i am going to find a pub that knows how to make hot toddies, the only possible cure for this terrible cold. my only real worries are that 1) zeus already hates me and 2) i won't be able to taste my wonderful greek meals. pray to zeus for me.


xoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxo
ashley

going to greece!

i just booked my skyeurope ticket to athens! i'm so excited... i will arrive there this sunday! i haven't decided which islands i'll go to (at least two of the following: spetses, naxos, and santorini) but i wanted to get my flight while they were still fairly cheap. i'll also spend a night or two in athens but mostly i'm excited for the islands - i've heard nothing but amazing things about them. for a few hours i got caught up in fancies of combining it with a trip to malta, but i think i will save that for later in october or maybe thanksgiving time. because they don't celebrate thanksgiving here and i hear malta has some well-known birds.

since i last posted i've been reading a lot. i finished "when you are engulfed in flames" in a day; i've now moved on to the short fiction of oscar wilde. i'm going to need something a little more exotic to prep me for this holiday, though.

tuesday night i debated between going to see 'eraserhead' on the big screen at the film museum, or going to see a Missouri band called "someone still loves you boris yeltsin" at a club i haven't tried yet. i opted for the latter because doing anything lynchian alone at night in a foreign city seemed like maybe the worst idea i ever had. the band was pretty good - poppy and catchy. the club was fun - it's situated under one of the u-bahn lines so every so often the whole place would shake and there would be a nice additional whirring noise added to whatever song the band was playing. i would have stayed for my usual "i'm from america too!" speil, but i wasn't feeling so great. i think it's all the temperature changes (cold outside, warm in my house, hot in a crowded subway, cold walk to club, hot sweaty club, etc.).

yesterday was a walking adventure day - i went downtown in hopes of trying out a place called 'cafe central.' i guess it's where all the intellectuals used to hang out, and now it is an overpriced tourist attraction with dry cake and free wifi. it was unbelievably crowded so i went to a lebanese restaurant down the street instead - had some lentil soup, researched greece, people watched. then i walked down to the wiener konzerthaus, where leonard cohen was/is playing sold out shows last night/tonight. i was hoping that maybe they'd reserved some student discount tickets, but no such luck. i hung out outside the venue for a solid hour with some hitch-hiking australians who had made a fancy sign asking for tickets. they got one! there were two of them (people) and i was hoping maybe they would just give the single ticket to me, but no dice. i was going to try again tonight but it is raining like mad and, regardless, now i'm saving all my euros for greece. then i got semi-lost wandering around, found my way back to the stephansplatz, and stared at nothing for half an hour. i sometimes wonder what the hell i'm doing here, but then i remember that i felt that way in portland and i might as well be somewhere fancy if i'm going to contemplate the futility of my existence. right. right?

today the weather was as predictable as my german language abilities, so it was a good opportunity to catch up on some work and logistics management at home. i might go to the turkish pub for a round of darts later, but we'll see. my sleep is irritatingly back on pre-jet-lag-adjustment schedule, due mostly in part to good books and tired feet.

i think a lot about what wonderful friends and family i have. i don't know who reads this, but most likely if you do, i love you a whole darn lot. you are all so lovely and talented and interesting and generous and wonderful - i hope that my intermittent postcards and/or artery clogging gifts from abroad convey this properly.

auf wiedersehen for now meine lieben!
ashley

PS if you have greece info/tips please pass them along. my mom will have a heart-attack, but i think i'm going to try to be flexible and not have much booked in advance.


this is part of the hofburg imperial palace by day. i say 'part' because this thing takes up a solid 1/8th of downtown vienna. i've been to the at least 3 museums inside of it and still fail to recognize what it is when i walk by. you can read more about it here, if you like. as far as i can tell, the best part about this place is that it houses the 'princess sisi' museum - a venerable shrine to princess sisi, who was the incredibly vain and anorexic mother of franz ferdinand et al. they worship her here. she wasn't even that pretty or skinny, if you ask me.


this is that same part of the hofburg palace by night! so pretty...


this is the wiener konzerthaus. if you look closely you can see me begging for tickets in the cold pouring rain like a character from a dickens novel, if dickens was obsessed with jewish singer-songwriters in the 1980s.


this is an eastern european dish that michael would like me to learn how to make before i come home. yes, i am still inexplicably in love with him.

she's alone in the new pollution...

hey folks. i just figured out how to make my heater work without it smelling like 400 year old dust in my apartment - i think. if the end of this post starts to sound hazy we'll chalk it up to gas fumes.

yesterday i got to see monika + family again. we went to the 'vienna prater,' which is a giant permanent fair here in the city. it houses a huge ferris wheel, referred to as the 'riesenrad.' you may have seen it in 'the third man.' when you enter the lobby for the ride, you end up standing on a revolving platform with little ferris wheel-cart sized dioramas, and the walls have an (edited) history of vienna from roman occupation until 1955. super cool! <---- austrians LOVE to say this. the carts on the ferris wheel ride are huge - like twice the size of my bathroom in portland. if you book ahead, you can get a fancy furnished cart with coffee and cocktails inside! if someone comes to visit me i will do this nice thing for them, because i am nice.

then we went to dinner in a real biergarten. i think it was the first time i've actually done this, though i'm not exactly hip to the subtle difference between an austrian cafe and a biergarten. regardless, i had some sausage things with pommes (french fries) and a "salad." i put salad in scare-quotes because it was mostly potatoes, plus a few cucumbers, one slice of tomato, and one indiscernible white vegetable. also all of it was half-pickled. it was pretty good! it just wasn't a salad. OH and for dessert, lucas ordered this thing called mohnnudeln, which is potato pasta shaped like fat worms, covered in a butter, sugar, and poppy seed sauce. it is one of the strangest things i have ever tasted; not bad really, just not really dessert? and it is not exactly cover-of-gourmet worthy either - you can imagine what grey potato pasta looks like smothered in butter and crushed poppy seeds. mmmmmmmm!

then i came home and tried to navigate the seemingly endless maze of problems with my 'handy' (austrian cell phone) and internet connection and went to bed.

this morning i tried in vain to find envelopes for over an hour, until i finally called monika. she was like, 'uh, the post office?' duh. then i went out and got lots of fun things to put in those envelopes! i'll be sending out chocolate care packages to the fam this week, plus a few to portland/phoenix/philly (although i may have to combine recipients into one package. i have no idea what this will cost me). i also found a wunderbar bookstore with a huge and non-lame english section (most english sections consist of sci-fi, crime novels, and an endless array of sex in the city spinoffs). i got 'i am a strange loop,' 'the complete short stories of oscar wilde,' and the new david sedaris.

on my walk home i saw what i can only imagine was a political rally. the elections are coming up here, as at home, and there are signs all over the place. except here, when politicians put signs up, they offer up head shots to be defaced by teenage ne'er-do-wells. anyway, there was a huge stage right in front of the stephansplatz with a disproportionately small crowd. it was not like an obama rally. it was also not like a hitler rally, which i was afraid it might be. when the candidate was done talking an austrian pop band starting playing and people started rocking out. it seemed very low key for a campaign event - there were lots of security officers, but it didn't really seem secure. most of the officers were straightening their cute hats in shop window reflections.

now i am home and exhausted. i'm trying to finalize a trip to greece which i hope to take in the next week but i think i'll have to do that tomorrow. speaking of which, if anyone has any suggestions/info re: greece i would love to hear it. right now i'm thinking athens for a day or two, but and the remainder of a week on spetses and naxos.

alles liebes
ashley


this is the austrian national library. i got a card here, but it turns out i can't check out any books. it's literally the austrian national library, full of historical documents, original musical recordings, etc. things 8th grade teachers refer to as "primary sources." but it will be a fun place to hang out, to be sure.


this is the view from the steps of the library


this is the riesenrad. both monika and i forgot our cameras so i stole this from flickr. :-/


mohnnudeln.

blogger (or maybe the secret police?) won't let me upload the political rally video but i'll try again tomorrow.

the secret to life/non-death...

... is to listen to your favorite song whilst doing ANYTHING. mine, coincidentally, is "once in a lifetime" by the talking heads. today i did pretty much everything in tandem with this song, and today was a good day. coincidence? most likely. but who cares?

so much to catch up on!

so the last time i posted, i ended up playing darts with everyone in the pub where i was pirating wifi. i came in second behind a man who was aged no less than 150 years. his son/great-grandson/friend/employee bought me a glass of wine so i felt obliged. it is fun pretending like you don't know how darts works and then pretty much kicking everyone's ass.

since then i lose track of the days. does my diction sound weird? when i was abroad with my mom last year she would do this hilarious thing where she would try to emulate the accent of a region (as if they were speaking english) instead of actually trying to speak that language. i think maybe i am starting to do that, at least in writing.

anyways, since the last post i have:

1) been to the vienna modern art museum, aka the MUMOK. it was amazing. i starting feeling faint and having heart palpitations on the second floor. at first i thought i might be truly sick, but then i rationalized that i am probably just an art pussy. their main attraction this month was "good painting, bad art," which was nothing to write home about. but their residence exhibit was basically everything interesting and avante garde that happened in austria 1968-1971. most of it was superbly brilliant, and a solid half of it was simultaneously superbly brilliant AND stomach turning. all kinds of "utopian architecture," which i suppose means "art that is not painting and also makes you very uncomfortable - please don't bring your children." 8mm videos, giant inflatable "sculptures"/penises/living areas, paintings of chairs with boobs coming out of them. you know. just art.

2) been to an american pop show: a band called "portugal. the man." honestly, they kind of sucked. it was like a cross between journey and blonde redhead - which might sound great, but trust me; it wasn't. afterwards i introduced myself to the band members, because from my research they appeared to be from portland, but they seemed a bit put off because no one in portland has ever heard of them and everyone in vienna wanted their autograph. i was apparently dampening their fabulousness by talking about berbati's after they just played to an international crowd of 500 (woo-hoo?).

after this show i met an american and potential friend. her name is meaghan and she went to yale ('06). she studies cello at the conservatory here. i think maybe we could hang. it was so relieving and wonderful to speak to someone in english, especially about austria.

3) been to a balkan disco show: a band called bucovina club orkestar. they were good! they threw full bottles of vodka at the audience mid-way through their set. i was too far back to receive any of these delightful attendance gifts but whatever. everyone was dancing, as it is impossible not to do at any balkan music event.
on the subway on my way there, a strange young man kept asking me if i would have coffee with him at the next subway station tomorrow morning. i said "maybe!" but i said it in english and he did not speak english. i think i am thus relieved of obligation?
also on my way home from the show, two teenage boys asked for cigarettes in return for a swig of gosser bier. i said take the cigarettes; i don't want beer. they were apparently very offended by this, as they followed me 3 blocks down the street (though they clearly had a bus to catch), all while thrusting a half empty, teenage-saliva-swathed beer can at me. how very tempting!

4) been to a viennese laundromat. so amazing! in the first half hour i made friends with an old viennese lady because even she thought it was confusing. in the next hour and twenty minutes i made friends with one young couple from houston, and another older indian couple from lansing. now i know when i am lonely that i should just go to the laundromat.

nothing is funny right now. i am too tired. write more later.



this is the mumok


this is my new favorite cleaning agent


i too like sex more than gender!


this is the band i saw tonight


this is me in my sprockets uniform


xoxoxoxoxoxox
ashley

"try to remember always just to have a good time... good time... good time..."

so today i was kind of a bum. i slept until 8, ate some musli, read some freud, and fell back to sleep until 3(!). how lame! then i went into town but decided against museum hopping, as it was so late and most exhibition halls close between 6 and 7. so i went shopping instead. it has been so freaking cold and wet here for the past three days so i needed some autumnal gear. a black trench, black hat, black boots, black gloves, and purple umbrella later, i come home happy. then i try everything on and realize i look like the female version of the mike meyers "sprockets" character from SNL. tres chic!!

then i signed up on this site called justlanded.com, in hopes that maybe i will find a friend to navigate the daunting under-the-subway music scene with. then, while skyping with my mom, i was accosted by no less than three austrians wanting to be "chatty friends." now i am kinda bored and cold, i can't use up all the bandwidth on my usb internet stick to download a movie and i can't find any music show listings for the evening. guess i will see if freud will put me to sleep again?

more tomorrow my lovelies!

pictures are: me (next to jason priestly), and some gems from my walk about the museums quarter (look closely).

"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!

day 1... er 3?

so.... first post! guten aben! it is 7:10pm here in austria and i'm rounding out my first full good day. travel day (tuesday/wednesday) was pretty rough - i was totally sick (not sure if it was actually a bug or just nerves). the austrian air flight from DC to vienna was so amazingly kitsch it was unbelievable. first class had big purple chairs with yellow accents; economy had neon green chairs with orange accents, and every flight attendant wore head to toe red (i'm talking hats, tops, skirts, tights, and shoes). OH and they were also all hot, like in the 60s in america when you could discriminate for hotness. pretty amazing.

lucas and marc picked me up at the airport. they are the husband and son (respectively) of monika, my former aupair and surrogate sister/mother/shoulder to cry on while i am here. they live in the burbs but were kind enough to have my apartment pretty much all set up for me!

the apartment is quite different - the only shower is in the kitchen, which is immediately present upon entrance. i can't wait until someone comes to visit and i can cook them dinner while they are showering. they can even help with the soup broth if they squirt the shower head over the wall! the bed is typical austrian, as far as i can tell. no top sheet, one blanket, and one pillow. although it is unbelievably comfortable for being so utilitarian. also, the apartment holds more storage than i can ever imagine using - 4 full sized bureau/armoires, all much bigger than the one that i had in my apartment in PDX. this amazes me - space for clothing for a family of 12, but no bathtub??

my neighborhood, according to monika, is 'full of those turkish people.' but it feels really safe and there are always children yelling and causing a raucous so i guess that's a good thing? also, apparently none of the turks (is that a derogatory term?) speak english, which is good because it forces me to practice german. there is a subway stop 3 blocks away, and bus stops all around. also a really great looking farmer's-type market right by the subway stop (i haven't tried it yet, but will this weekend).

today i finally woke up feeling like i could start adventuring. i took the subway to stephansplatz (where st. stephan's cathedral is - literally. you come up the subway escalator and there it is, in it's permanently under constructed glory). the point of going there was to get a usb internet stick for use in my apartment, which i purchased, then had to immediately return because it was not compatible with macs. :( they said sometime in october. i inquired as to which day in october. they said 'sometime in october' a few more times. i think this is how it works here.

i walked around A LOT, had some coffee, did a ton of people watching, had some more coffee, walked more, went to the english bookshop (purchased milan kundera's 'identity'), ate some broth and noodles, walked more, and went to the vienna jewish museum. the first floor exhibition was under construction (a running theme), but there was a great max berger exhibit on the bottom floor, some funky hologram exhibit on the second, and literally thousands and thousands of relics on the third. it looks like they have hardly begun to unpack them, as the glass cases surround boxes of what appears to be another 4 floors worth of jewish artifacts. i wasn't allowed to take pictures and a museum employee was literally 20 steps behind me every where i went (except the kids' room, which had the entire hebrew alphabet spelled out with legos). then i got back on the subway for home and took a shower. in the kitchen.

then i went to a viennese grocery store, which is amazingly fun to do. an entire 1/6 of the store is dedicated to chocolate. also, i could not find mustard anywhere, but hangers and men's socks were readily available. they hurry you through the checkout line, make you throw everything back into your basket, then usher you to another area to bag your own groceries. i had to watch 3 or 4 people do this before i even dared attempt the process. the checkout lady was scarrrry. so i got fruits and veggies, cherry jam, spicy sausage sticks, cheese, pasta, pesto, and a bottle of champagne. the champagne is for tomorrow night, when monika and her family/friends are having me over for a special welcome dinner. i am very excited! but scared they will make me speak in german. BUT i am getting pretty good at it; i just ordered a glass of red wine like a real viennese/turkish local. yes it tastes like they put carbonation and sweet n' lo in it, but i just don't care.

i know i am forgetting a lot but i will be better about keeping up with this (in case anyone cares) :)

pictures are: monika, my kitchen shower, my fancy ass toilet, the view from my flat (a pizza parlor), and st. stephans cathedral

guten nacht my lovelies... write again soon!!