Sorry, I know it's been forever since I last posted, but i've been running around getting settled into my job and into my new home!
About two (three?) weeks ago I finally started my job. I'm working as an English assistant at two different schools. The first school is a school for future teachers, and I've been working with the English teachers. This is incredibly awesome because I just finished doing the exact same thing in the USA. Essentially, the students are like my friends back home and they are all around my age or older than me. It's awesome. The other school that I work at is attached to the teacher school and is basically a middle school. All of the students there are totally fascinated by the fact that I'm a "real American"! They're super adorable and I can finally understand why someone might want to teach kids these age. They like to come up to me and show me their English quizzes and tell me random things about themselves in German. It's seriously the cutest thing EVER.
Other than school, I've pretty much been chilling around and exploring the area. Vorarlberg really is super beautiful, albeit a little removed from pretty much every other place in the world. But I really like it and am working hard to learn the regional dialect and meet people while I'm here. Anyway, I have to be off, but expect a longer (and more detailed) update soon!
Mack
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Beer and Pretzels and Mountains, Oh My!
So, the past week has been ridiculously eventful. I arrived in Feldkirch on Thursday, September 24th after an eternity on planes, trains, and automobiles. I flew out of Detroit Metro at noon and arrived in Zurich the next day around 8AM Zurich time (aka 2 AM Detroit time). From Zurich, my town is only an hour and a half away if you take the fast train, which is not really a big deal. The fast trains, however, only leave once every few hours. Of course, my flight came in just after the previous train left, so I ended up hanging around the main train station with my 90 lbs of luggage for approximately two hours in relatively chilly weather. I was fortunate enough to have an entire row of seats to myself on the plane and had gotten some sleep, but DAMN was I tired.
After I finally made it to Feldkirch, I had to wait around another couple of hours for the office of my new home to open. Since school hadn't quite started yet, the boarding school aspect of the catholic school was only open from 2PM to 5PM Monday through Friday, which means I had some time wait. Instead of being super lame and moping around with my luggage while waiting for the office to open, I decided to put my luggage into the lockers at the train station and pick up some important things. I stopped to pick up the basic necessities (shampoo, batteries :), toothpaste) and then headed to the Austrian version of IKEA.
Now, the Austrian IKEA has quite possibly the worst name EVER. I've noticed that sometimes when languages borrow from one another, certain things really do get "lost in translation". For example, the Austrian IKEA is called "XXXLutz". What the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds more like a nudey bar or an erotic shop than an IKEA. Does Lutz--whoever he is--have an extra extra large...Lutz? Silly Austrians. But despite the name, the store itself is great. They pretty much have every sort of household need and a random selection of hot foods. Thanks to XXXLutz, I am now the proud owner of a XXX towel and a XXX set of sheets. They make me feel dxxxxrty living with the nuns.
I finally was able to get into my room, and the woman running the front desk (Sabine) is super fabulous. She pretty much told me I could use anything at all in the entire building and gave me the rundown on how to register in the city. Germans and Austrians have a really strange obsession with paperwork. In order to get anything done, you have to fill out a multitude of tedious and repetitive forms and then take those forms to other places where you have to fill out more tedious and repetive forms. And then when you leave the country for good, you have to go and do the same thing to un-register yourself. As of right now, I am only halfway registered with the city. Because apparently I have to do it twice. And it's in the same building. Just a different entrance. You really think that they would combine these things to make it easier for themselves.
My room is really simple, but totally adequate. And for some reason I have two beds in my room. Which I will probably push together to make a super-bed that I can sprawl across and dream about the nuns. I don't get an internet connection in my room, but if I go just down the hall to the common room I can get to the interwebs, which is not ideal, but it could be far worse. There are other places in the building I can connect to as well, but I haven't quite figured them out yet. One of the...uhhhh....coolest things about my place of residency is that I have to climb the stairway to heaven to get there. No joke. I live with nuns in a private catholic boarding school, I have XXX bedding, and take the stairway to heaven to get to my front door. My life clearly has taken a turn for the worse.
My town, being in the Alps, is quite mountainous. (Duh.) The main center of the town where all the shops, roads, and schools are is in the valley. Everything else is in the mountains. In order to get to my room, I climb what has been appropriately nicknamed the "Himmelstiege", which in English roughly translates to "Heaven's Stairs". They are two sets of stairs, consisting of about 300 stairs each, that I have to take each time I want to go back to the center of town and to the place where I live. It sucks now, but I keep telling myself that the buns of steel it will give me will totally be worth it in the end.
They just totally blow my mind. And my calf muscles.
The day after I arrived in Feldkirch, I made the trek out to Augsburg, Germany to meet up with my lovely friend Michelle. From there, we headed out to Munich to savor the Tracht, beer, and pretzel glories of Oktoberfest. When we arrived in Munich, the weather was looking great (and so were we) and we took the U-Bahn over to the Wiese where the festival is held.
And I don't think I've ever seen so many people ever in my entire life in one place. Oktoberfest is kind of a weird event. It's basically a giant beer celebration, but there's also a giant carnival going on, with rides and all sorts of delicious carnival foods and little kids who probably don't need to be exposed to all the wasted-face-ness. It was like a Michigan football game on crack. And everyone there was drinking like a recovered alcholic who had fallen off the sober train. It was a hot mess. We managed to walk around the festival for a bit and eat some nom noms before it started raining. Now, remember earlier when I mentioned that sometimes the German-English phrases get lost in translation? I'd just like to provide this picture as proof.
And I always thought it meant "two in the pink, one in the stink." Apparently I was wrong.
We attempted to get into a tent when the rain started coming, but we eventually decided that we preferred to NOT be groped by Spanish men, so we headed back to the hostel, swearing that we would be awake at 7AM to make it to the tents early enough to get in and get a seat.
This proved to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. We pulled into Oktoberfest around 8:30 AM and got in the line for the Paulaner tent, which was already swarming with people. We ended up waiting to get inside the tent for about 2-2.5 hours outside in the pouring rain. When we eventually got in, it took us forever and a day to find a seat. The trick with Oktoberfest is that the waiters won't serve anyone who doesn't have a seat. So in order to get a beer, you have to actually find a spot at a table, which is much easier said than done. Michelle and I floated around the beer tent for a good solid hour before we established a permanent place with a very friendly bunch of Italians.
These Italians were under the impression that Michelle and I were actually German. And we didn't exactly ever give them any reason to think otherwise. So we ended up drinking with them for a few hours, and then headed back into the city center to eat some delicious German food at Andechs.
The next day I spent in Augsburg visiting Molly and then I headed off to orienation on Monday. And that's pretty much all the news for the time being!
After I finally made it to Feldkirch, I had to wait around another couple of hours for the office of my new home to open. Since school hadn't quite started yet, the boarding school aspect of the catholic school was only open from 2PM to 5PM Monday through Friday, which means I had some time wait. Instead of being super lame and moping around with my luggage while waiting for the office to open, I decided to put my luggage into the lockers at the train station and pick up some important things. I stopped to pick up the basic necessities (shampoo, batteries :), toothpaste) and then headed to the Austrian version of IKEA.
Now, the Austrian IKEA has quite possibly the worst name EVER. I've noticed that sometimes when languages borrow from one another, certain things really do get "lost in translation". For example, the Austrian IKEA is called "XXXLutz". What the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds more like a nudey bar or an erotic shop than an IKEA. Does Lutz--whoever he is--have an extra extra large...Lutz? Silly Austrians. But despite the name, the store itself is great. They pretty much have every sort of household need and a random selection of hot foods. Thanks to XXXLutz, I am now the proud owner of a XXX towel and a XXX set of sheets. They make me feel dxxxxrty living with the nuns.
I finally was able to get into my room, and the woman running the front desk (Sabine) is super fabulous. She pretty much told me I could use anything at all in the entire building and gave me the rundown on how to register in the city. Germans and Austrians have a really strange obsession with paperwork. In order to get anything done, you have to fill out a multitude of tedious and repetitive forms and then take those forms to other places where you have to fill out more tedious and repetive forms. And then when you leave the country for good, you have to go and do the same thing to un-register yourself. As of right now, I am only halfway registered with the city. Because apparently I have to do it twice. And it's in the same building. Just a different entrance. You really think that they would combine these things to make it easier for themselves.
My room is really simple, but totally adequate. And for some reason I have two beds in my room. Which I will probably push together to make a super-bed that I can sprawl across and dream about the nuns. I don't get an internet connection in my room, but if I go just down the hall to the common room I can get to the interwebs, which is not ideal, but it could be far worse. There are other places in the building I can connect to as well, but I haven't quite figured them out yet. One of the...uhhhh....coolest things about my place of residency is that I have to climb the stairway to heaven to get there. No joke. I live with nuns in a private catholic boarding school, I have XXX bedding, and take the stairway to heaven to get to my front door. My life clearly has taken a turn for the worse.
My town, being in the Alps, is quite mountainous. (Duh.) The main center of the town where all the shops, roads, and schools are is in the valley. Everything else is in the mountains. In order to get to my room, I climb what has been appropriately nicknamed the "Himmelstiege", which in English roughly translates to "Heaven's Stairs". They are two sets of stairs, consisting of about 300 stairs each, that I have to take each time I want to go back to the center of town and to the place where I live. It sucks now, but I keep telling myself that the buns of steel it will give me will totally be worth it in the end.
The day after I arrived in Feldkirch, I made the trek out to Augsburg, Germany to meet up with my lovely friend Michelle. From there, we headed out to Munich to savor the Tracht, beer, and pretzel glories of Oktoberfest. When we arrived in Munich, the weather was looking great (and so were we) and we took the U-Bahn over to the Wiese where the festival is held.
And I don't think I've ever seen so many people ever in my entire life in one place. Oktoberfest is kind of a weird event. It's basically a giant beer celebration, but there's also a giant carnival going on, with rides and all sorts of delicious carnival foods and little kids who probably don't need to be exposed to all the wasted-face-ness. It was like a Michigan football game on crack. And everyone there was drinking like a recovered alcholic who had fallen off the sober train. It was a hot mess. We managed to walk around the festival for a bit and eat some nom noms before it started raining. Now, remember earlier when I mentioned that sometimes the German-English phrases get lost in translation? I'd just like to provide this picture as proof.
And I always thought it meant "two in the pink, one in the stink." Apparently I was wrong.
We attempted to get into a tent when the rain started coming, but we eventually decided that we preferred to NOT be groped by Spanish men, so we headed back to the hostel, swearing that we would be awake at 7AM to make it to the tents early enough to get in and get a seat.
This proved to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. We pulled into Oktoberfest around 8:30 AM and got in the line for the Paulaner tent, which was already swarming with people. We ended up waiting to get inside the tent for about 2-2.5 hours outside in the pouring rain. When we eventually got in, it took us forever and a day to find a seat. The trick with Oktoberfest is that the waiters won't serve anyone who doesn't have a seat. So in order to get a beer, you have to actually find a spot at a table, which is much easier said than done. Michelle and I floated around the beer tent for a good solid hour before we established a permanent place with a very friendly bunch of Italians.
These Italians were under the impression that Michelle and I were actually German. And we didn't exactly ever give them any reason to think otherwise. So we ended up drinking with them for a few hours, and then headed back into the city center to eat some delicious German food at Andechs.
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