still here.

Monday: Tacos and a fruitless quest for Sachertorte. That's about it.

Tuesday: Grumpy internship, and then Breakfast for Dinner, following the completion of my Referat on Thomas Mann, which awed my professor solely because I put stupid captions on the pictures. Aside from an easy A, I'm grateful to Malloy for at least teaching enough of the basics on Thomas Mann that I had ample material to bullshit with. I never said I was a good student. [ Irrelevant Aside: Mom likes to tell me I peaked in middle school, which is so reassuring for someone healthily in the smackdab of the first quarter of her life - according to my mother, I'm currently a shell of my wunderkind, 12 year old self -- liken that to what I remember of middle school - a lot of angst, a bad haircut, and Pepsi One.] So we stock up on beers at the conveniently always-open Supermarket at Westbanhof, cook some greasy, delicious eggs n' bacon, and get drunk enough to expound on all manner of Ex-Patriately things. Namely our dogs. That was a joke. In honor of that Goddamned PainInTheAss Euro Soccer Tournament I wrote about, Suzanne snagged some facepaint, and in a moment of drunken "This is a good idea" she covered me in it, so I went home with Annie prepared to answer anyone who dared ask which country I was supporting with "THE UNIVERSE." Mainly I looked insane.

Wednesday: Met with Necmiye, the Kurdish girl in one of my classes who I see once a week to work on English (basically we get coffee and talk about how annoying our class is), and then blasted Grammar time. I hate Grammar class, as does everyone on this trip, because it's not the useful, practical stuff we learned at the Goethe-Institut, it's structureless, meandering lectures about grammar forms we will never, ever need to use. Fortunately this week we actually learn something worthwhile, and afterwards, Rob and I go to the Votiv Park Cafe, also known as THE BEST CAFE IN THE WORLD, and have another of those ambling conversations that has no real route but made me feel a lot more sunny about This Whole Business afterwards - and talking, the mere act of communicating, has been one of the benefits of being here, whereas at Hamilton, no one ever says anything or listens to anyone unless they're drunk and then they forget it in the morning. Of course, that's not the case everywhere, but I think the kids here know me twice as well as the people I go to school with, despite having known me less than 6 months; maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I'm a little bitter, and maybe that's just how it is. Point being, I love that cafe - the only waitstaff being a friendly old man, this little kid who can't be more than eleven, and a tiny dog.

Thursday: Toured Parlament, which was fun, solely because it's in the middle of the "FAN ZONE" which has barricaded nearly every interesting building in Vienna. Annie and I dash over to the Modern Art Museum to see an exhibit called "Bad Painting, Good Art" which was, as promised, horrible, but we had a fine time. I doodled Kanye West on my notes during class. I am getting very good at doodling Kanye West.

Friday: University Class is snoresville, Annie meets me and we go on an Aida mission after a giganto lunch of sushi. One thing I do not want to eat when I get home - fucking sushi. I've had enough sushi to populate an aquarium. Weather is horribly cold and wintry, so we waste a few hours in a bookstore looking at coffee table hardbacks until we go see "The Happening" which may honestly be the worst movie I've ever seen - granted, my standards of Freaky Things has been raised to new heights by the perfection of The Twilight Zone. Afterwards I meet up with Ceci, from high school, and take her tp the Zwoelfapostlkeller for some schnitzel and beers, where we just end up gossiping about our graduating class (who's married, who's about to get married, who's in Asia, and who has a baby). Surreal, to say the least, to be throwing around names from my high school yearbook with a fellow Tulsan in the middle of Vienna, Austria.

Saturday: LAKE HUNT. Going only by a vague sense of direction and the big blue blot on the map, Annie, Tommy and I went questing for this lake, which we found and promptly lounged beside and enjoyed the weather for the ten minutes that it wasn't cloudy. Falafel dinner. Realized Neubaugasse is a really, really long street. Watched 6 episodes of The Twilight Zone with Annie due to lack of energy, money, ideas, and do not regret it, because Dennis Hopper was once very very young and a Neo-Nazi and poor William Shatner wasn't imagining the gremlin on the wing of the plane. Granted, it was just a man in a sheep costume, and much more frightening when I was small.

Sunday: Into the woods, twice in one day - first with Annie, wandering into Grinzing and looking down at the panorama of tiny Vienna and pointing out all the landmarks we now know: the Spittelau trash compactor tower, the Riesenrad, Stephansdom and the Votivkirche. Later, I went on my own and got lost, ended up in a field, and just kind of sat there for half an hour as the dog-walkers and joggers went by, thinking damn, this is just about it, isn't it.

And that's it.