Settling In

*Jane in Vienna*

Right now we are watching the Ohio State – Illinois game on justintv.com. It’s 10 pm here and we’re drinking Radlers, beer mixed with lemon lime soda. We’ve noticed that it’s very quiet here once the sun goes down, which is rather early, because Vienna is at the end of its time zone. It seems that the Viennese, at least those of the 12th district, stay inside after sunset. But during the day the main pedestrian area near our apartment, Meidlingerhauptstrasse, is filled with people.

We’ve been speaking a lot of German here, because it seems that many older Viennese do not remember the English they learned as students. As a result, Nick’s German is improving noticeably every few days and he’s showing the good sign of forgetting parts of English. This means that his brain is grudgingly making room. I’ve noticed that already I am picking up the Viennese accent, not something I wanted to do, because it is seen by other Germans as a hick accent. For some reason I pick up other people’s manners of speaking incredibly quickly, sometimes even after just speaking to someone for a few hours.

Now let’s check in with Mason…he’s asleep in his crate. In Columbus he never went in there unless we made him, but after spending so many anxious hours in the crate during our flight over here, he seems to have bonded with it in a special way. The big news from him is that his owners have found a Hundzone not too far from their apartment, and they’ve been taking him there every afternoon. Yesterday he played for several minutes with a miniature doberman, and her owner was nice enough to talk with his owners, kindly speaking slowly and allowing time for definitions of new words to be given.

Cultural differences so far: strangers do not greet each other on the street in any way; in many places there aren’t lines – people just assume that if you don’t butt in front of them, you must not want to do whatever it is that the line is for; the shower is very weird (not a cultural difference, but Nick really wanted to say this and will devote an entire post to it later); cars stop for pedestrians here! and pedestrians don’t j-walk, even if the street is completely clear (this is meant to oppose the street culture of Columbus).

Item of greatest worry: the keys for my apartment in Paris were supposed to arrive here today, and they didn’t. I am worried that somehow I don’t understand how to receive packages here, and I have made a horrible mistake.

Dying to know if the keys will ever arrive? Check for updates later.