just another day in vienna...

Hey there!

Another post... and no, I haven't been traveling, but there have been so many things happening just here in Vienna that I figured a post might be necessary!

1. Our insanely long Easter break ended the first week of April and we headed back to class... we're still trying to organize classes and credits without going crazy. The university here is much too relaxed!

2. The Young Adults group I'm a part of at the Vienna Community Church is taking part in Project Centipede, which is a program within the church that sends supplies to Romanian orphanages and schools a couple times per year. Us college kids have spent a couple hours packing boxes in order to prepare for the trip this May, which I'll be going on!

3. Two or three weeks ago at church my friend Jill and I got to talking to a woman at our church who was interested to find out that we were Landscape Architect students. She said she was working on a project that had a need for some LAs. She said she'd be in touch. Jill and I often get offers for work, though -- translation: mow their lawn or plant their miserable backyard garden with annuals. Things were a little different this time, though. She got us in touch with the project manager and it turns out that the project is somewhat major. It involves the redesigning and revamping of the landscaping of a Shopping Centre in Wiener Neustadt, a town about 45 minutes south of Vienna. The lady from church owns the real estate company that just acquired this shopping centre, and so Jill and I are now trying to organize ourselves and figure out what to do with this major opportunity that's just been dropped into our laps. We've been to an info meeting and have gone on a site visit with the project manager, but don't necessarily have the job yet -- we've got to work out a proposal and we'll see what happens from there. Even if we don't end up getting the job, the experience alone will be worth all the work! Plus... it will count for some credits back at home, excellent!

4. The weather is lovely. Except for the last three days. I do believe it was warmer at home than it was here! We dropped back down to about 5 degrees again... it was HORRIBLE. But things are looking up, and tomorrow is supposed to hit 20 degrees.

5. We had our first European kino experience last week -- a kino is a movie theatre. Theaters are much different here as you'd expect -- when going inside I felt more like I was going into a bar than a theater. Tickets were much cheaper, the actual theater was much smaller, only about 30 seats, and Jill, myself, and a friend Lauren were the only people in it. Lovely.

6. For the past three days one of our classmates from Guelph came to visit us -- she's currently studying in Copenhagen -- and brought two friends with her, so we had a full house! It was nice having visitors, I was able to test my skills as a tour guide and got to visit several of my favourite spots again. I think they got a pretty thorough experience of Viennese life -- we took them to the Staatsoper, Vienna's biggest opera house, and saw Swan Lake performed. That's another plus about Vienna -- there's always several shows going on in all the theaters and opera houses, and ultra cheap tickets are always available. However, cheap tickets also mean that views may be somewhat constricted... but we were able to go into the opera house which made the whole thing worth it even if we could only see half of the stage. We also took the girls to a Heuriger, which is a traditional Austrian wine tavern. These cottage-like taverns are everywhere in the rural outskirts of Vienna, and they serve all types of Austrian cuisine but are mainly known for selling their own house wine straight from their vineyards for fairly cheap. It's just a nice, very Europey thing to do.

And tomorrow we're gathering in the park to play frisbee... just another weekend in Vienna!