The Journey Thus Far

*Nick in Vienna*

So it turns out I can’t sleep on planes…it also turns out I am more affected by jet lag than I formerly thought. We landed in Vienna on Tuesday morning and I had not slept at all on the flight. It took me until yesterday to start feeling any kind of normal. It’s a six hour time difference here from Ohio, and thus far it has not agreed with me. The main problem though, is that my fantasy baseball team is in the finals right now and I can’t be up to watch it (since most games happen between 3 and 6 am here). I do fully intend to be up for the playoffs though when the Cardinals are playing…well, maybe not the NLDS.

We spent most of Thursday and Friday trying to figure out my visa, which mean that I was just crazy stressed out. We went to multiple offices, traveled across vast areas of Vienna, and didn’t really get anywhere – well I did figure out what I need, it is just all in America, but it will be taken care of eventually. It was a very weird way to see the city again. Most of it was new to us, and it really is an amazingly beautiful city, but I was so stressed that all the magnificent churches and decorated houses just looked mean. Also, some of the stuff we had already seen on our honeymoon when we were here for a couple days. I felt like, “oh look, it’s the freaking kunsthistorisches museum…” (the museum is actually very amazing)
Oh well, I will soon calm down and be able to enjoy the city much more. We’ll post pictures of our neighborhood soon, which is quite lovely, by the way.

We went to mass tonight at a cute little Catholic church about 4 blocks from here. The service was mostly attended by people 40-50 years older than me, although there were a handful of younger people. For some reason I have always kind of liked that situation. I feel very special- like the older people value and appreciate me for being there. It is like the warm feeling one gets when pleasing one’s grandparents. Since my grandparents have passed I rarely get that feeling. The service itself was quite nice. It is good practice for my German since I know the mass pretty well. Since I couldn’t understand all of the homily, when I was confused I could just pretend the Priest was saying what I would want him to say. For a quasi-heretic like me it worked very well. I plan on going to mass often.

It turns out watching TV on the internet it not as easy as we thought it would be. I write this only as a word of warning. Many sites, such as Hulu or NBC.com (we are big Office fans), won’t allow viewers with IP addresses outside of the US. We found this program that masks IP addresses and kind of works, but it is not perfect and doesn’t work for all sites. This is probably for the better – I could easily waste too much time – but it is kind of a downer.

A final word on my apartment for those of you that are curious – it is way nicer than I thought it would be. Big living room with a nice TV and huge desk, nice big bed and big wardrobes, great views out the front, dishwasher and washing machine, and on a nice quiet street. I thought people might want to read that (Mom), and also there is a couch if anyone wants to come visit Vienna. The shower on the other hand…well it is weird…that is all I will say for now. I’ll post a couple pictures of the apartment.

Wien ist anders! (that is written on like everything here – it means, “Vienna is different”).