Interviews Round 2

Well, I had another interview on Thursday. This one was with a newspaper. Its a national paper in Austria, and it writes about economic happenings. I think its called the Bösen Kurrier, but don't quote me on that, because I'm not a hundred percent certain. The interview went well. We started off in a bit of German, but switched to English, so I'd be sure of what I'd be doing there. Herr Perger's English isn't as good as Dr. Oswald's was, but I'm pretty sure it's still better than my German. He wore a plaid jacket and dark pants. I had on my now customary black (bleh -- it's not my best color) suit and a sweater. I was only in the interview for about 20 minutes, and I think it went well. If I take an internship there, I'll be choosing a theme to write about for the entire semester, and then research and write weekly articles that will be published. It sounded pretty interesting, and now I have a bit of a dilemma of which one to choose.

Now I guess I should tell you about actually getting to the interview, because it was rather harrowing! On the map, it looked easy-peasy, but in real life it wasn't quite that way. Taking the subway wasn't a big deal, even though I still really don't like them. I think it has something to do with hearing about NYC's Molepeople. They just kind of creep me out. After the subway, I had to take the Straßenbahn about two stops and get off and walk a couple of blocks. There's two S-Bahn's that go in the direction I needed to, the 21 and the N. When I looked at the map, I thought I was looking at the 21 when I was actually looking at the N. The 21 turns before it gets to the stop I want. Since I was like, oh, they both go the same way, I'll just get on whichever comes first, I got on the 21. When I realized that it wasn't actually going to get to the stop I wanted, I figured I'd just stay on it til the end and it would have to loop back. Now I'm lucky that I planned on arriving early, or else I would have had an even bigger problem. Because apparently, trains in Europe don't have short runs like they do in State College. Because it was 12:05 and we had just reached the end of the line. Keep in mind that my appointment was at 12:00. The driver looked back at me in his little mirror like, "Why are you still here?" so I walked up and uttered the most important phrase an American needs in any German-speaking country..."Sprechen Sie Englisch bitte?" Fortunately for me, he said that he could, then showed me the map of where I needed to get off. After he took his break, he turned the S-Bahn back on and proceeded to drive about 6 miles per hour back to where I needed to be. Now, he was a very nice man, but I was late already and having a heart attack in his trolley. By the way, in all of this confusion, I found a tack shop in Vienna, which is cool in and of itself. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't been "lost," but it's just nifty to know that they exist here too. :-) Once we were at the stop I needed, the driver made a point of looking back in his mirror and catching my eye to make sure I got off. On another side note, on the way back, we picked up a beggar. I don't know why, but besides being a totally new experience for me, I felt kind of weird. I mean, you see beggars on the streets, usually from eastern Europe or Turkey, but to be approached by one in the S-Bahn was somehow different. Harder to ignore I guess. Anyway, I got off where I was supposed to this time, and then had to ask directions from a girl at the cross-walk. She said she didn't know, but there was a map there, and she explained to me how to get where I wanted to go. Now I want you all to be very impressed, because all of this was in German, and I GOT IT!! Sehr toll. I finally managed to get to my interview around 12:25. Not a great way to start off, but he was nice about it, and I made sure to apologize in German.

Getting back to IES wasn't as bad. I had it figured out by then. I gave a group presentation in German class on "Der Standard," one of the papers in Austria. It's a pretty cool paper, kind of like the New York Times, and the presentation went well. We didn't even have the fire drill in the middle of ours like we thought we were going to.

I had some time to kill before our Berlin Tour meeting, so I got online and chatted with Matt and some people from home. But mostly Matt. :-) At the meeting, we were told that we were going to be visiting five cities instead of the original three. Starting Saturday morning, we'll be visiting Prague, Dresden, Weimar, Berlin, and Pottsdam. I'll be gone for ten days, but I'm hoping to bring my laptop with me so I can keep blogging. Also, I can't call anybody while I'm outside of Austria, but I think it's still either free or cheap for me to recieve calls. But I plan on taking a lot of pictures, and seeing so many things! It's going to be super wonderful, and towels are provided. You laugh at that, but at a lot of hostels here, they aren't and they take up a lot of room. I think I'm only bringing two backpacks, so it's going to be tight anyway. Adding in a towel or two would cause zipper-bursting!

We invited Laura for dinner last night because Alex, our pseudo-RA, made us Tirolean Knödeln. They're kind of like dumplings with pieces of meat and spices in them, and then in a chicken broth. They're amazing. I ate three and I was full. Each one is almost the size of my fist, and Alex made it all from scratch. We also sprung for a two-Euro bottle of wine, which is like wonderful. Usually we only go for one-Euro bottles, which can be hit or miss. But this one was a winner.

Now a very curious thing happened. I checked facebook because I swear I'm addicted, and lo-and-behold, some other chick posted on Matt's wall. I consider this somewhat of an affront, because I kind of claimed his wall as my turf and I tend to take it over. Then she said that she wanted him to teach her to dance and that they should be dance partners for life. Hmm. I was kind of bent out of shape about all of this, and wrote on there that there was talkage necessary. Facebook for Matt is really nifty because it goes to his phone, so I knew he'd get it.

Then I went and had a chat with Mom and Erika about this whole internship dealy, then my phone started to ring after I had hung up with them. Since nobody ever calls me (mostly because my phone is always off) this was one of those Major Life Events. It turned out that it was Hunny, and he thought he was in trouble. Of course he wasn't and went on to explain that the chick that wrote on his wall was married to his best friend. Oops. After that all was cleared up we had a very nice and very silly conversation. :-) He had to go teach snotty little kids (literally) how to swim, so it wasn't a super long conversation, but we got to talk later on AIM. The rest of the night was devoted to being unproductive and saying that I was going to study, but I never actually got motivated enough to do so.

This morning we had our German finals, which is very exciting, because we went through about 37.5 hours of German class in the last week. It's CRAZY I tell you. But now it's all over and I think I did a fairly decent job. So yeah. That's all for now, folks!

Hopefully, I'll have my computer with me, but if I don't, look for massively long blog postings in a week and a half.

Love always,
Amanda