Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 16:42:00 +0200 Subject: "The Periodic Adventures and the Adventurous Periodical of Marleigh," Issue 7 Greetings! I went to Vienna, and it was ok. I left for the train station Thursday soon after mailing my last issue of this silly newsletter. I almost left Kate's present there, a doll I bought for her. As it was, I was on the train when I realized I left the bag with the doll in it at the train station. I dashed out of the train, ran through the underpass to the ticket booth, grabbed the bag, and ran back. The doors were closed, but the train hadn't started moving yet when I got there. I pulled the door open and ran in, despite the guy yelling at me, and made the train. Then I had to wait about 2 hours at the airport, so it turned out making that particular train wasn't that important. Ted, Gabriel, and Nick met me at the airport, having just arrived in Vienna themselves. We went down the list of hotels my mother sent me from her travel books, and ended up with one in Stefansplatz, which is in the main part of town. The hotel turned out to be rather frilly and pink, but we managed to get one room for the four of us with bath for a reasonable price, so we forgave the decor. You got to the hotel by ducking under this scaffolding, since the building was having construction done. I thought the contrast between the Victorian interior and the run down exterior to be rather symbolic of Vienna, a wierd mix of beatnik squalor and stodgy high culture. That was probably just me, though. I find symbolism in everything. The next morning, we called Jan's hotel again, and left a message that he call us around 6pm that night, and left the name and number of the hotel. We spent the day touring St. Stefan's Cathedral, the giant antique Ferris Wheel, and St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral. It was warm enough to wander around without jackets, and we had lunch in an outdoor cafe. I ended up with a little sunburn, but enjoying the warm weather was worth it. Oddly enough, the highlight of the day was a piece of playground equipment we found while walking along the Danube. It was sort of a four person teeter-totter, which also spun in a circle. We played on it for about an hour. Playing with your friends, in Vienna, by the Danube, on a beautiful day, with a cathedral right down the street... it was rather nice. I guess you had to have been there. We went back to the hotel early to wait for Jan's call, which didn't come. We didn't want to leave, since he might call, so we took naps and watched bad American movies dubbed into German. It turns out Sylvester Stallone's "Cliffhanger" is perfectly understandable without comprehensible dialoge. Then again, I suspected that before I watched it. Saturday morning I tried the hotel again and Jan answered. It turns out that only one of the five or six messages we left actually got to Jan, even though he checked the front desk a lot. It turned out that the MIT Concert Choir was singing at the cathedral down the street in about half an hour, so I kicked the others out of bed so we could go. Ted and Nick flaked and stayed in bed, but Gabriel and I went to the concert. It turned out that I knew several other Concert Choir members, many of whom were quite surprised to have a Bostonian audience. Jan and Joung-Mo decided to skip touring a castle with their group so they could spend the day with us. We toured some catacombs (complete with Hapsburg intestines in jars and neatly stacked plague victim bones. Can we say "ewwww!"?), hung out in the museum at Castle Belvedere (had a nice Klimt exhibit), and wandered about taking pictures. The choir was having another concert that night, so then Jan and Mo had to run off. We went back to our hotel and took a nap (yeah, lame, I know, but you get tired after a week of serious travel), then attempted to find this church the choir was singing at. Let me tell you, finding a particular church in Vienna is like finding a particular CVS in Boston. Jan gave us the street name, but failed to write down the exact address. We ended up walking the wrong way down the street and searched about 5 churches before finally finding the right one, an hour late. Luckily, the concert was happening after the mass, so we showed up just in time for the concert itself. It was very nice, and afterwards Jan, Joung-Mo, and Ingrid met us at our hotel room, where we all mostly fell asleep. I left for Ulm the next day. It was a day of boring travel. I met this guy named Vincent on the train. He's a mechanical engineering student in Frankfurt, though he's originally from Benin, this small African country near Nigeria. He asked for my phone number, which I gave him because his conversation was amusing. I did make a point of mentioning my boyfriend after that, though. That didn't seem to phase him, though, so maybe he really did just want to talk. He was really impressed with how well I spoke English. Maybe he's just amused by hearing English spoken with an American accent, as opposed to a German or an African one. This week at work was junk. We moved all of our stuff, but the network still isn't up, making my productivity this week exactly nil. On the other hand, I found out today that I have Friday and Monday off. Ralf was shocked I didn't know. Since I'm Catholic and all, I clearly can't go to work Friday because I'd be going to confession. He teased me quite a bit about it. Now I find myself with a long weekend. I considered going to Berlin, but I don't think I have the energy yet after that insane amount of travel last week. I might go to Stuttgart for the day sometime this weekend, and Ralf's offered to show me around a bit, since I don't have a car. We're going to visit a castle and some caves on Monday, as well as wander about the countryside. It was really funny hearing him talk about what there was to do. He kept qualifying everything, "Bodensee is a big lake, well, not as big as in the States, but big for Germany" or the caves, which he was also sure were not as big as the ones in the states. German Word of the Week: der Einspruch = protest As I mentioned, our hotel in Vienna was down the street from Stefansplatz, which is also apparantly a favored place for demonstrations. Every night, there was an anti-American demonstration in Stefansplatz, complete with Yugoslavian flags, banners saying "Klinton ist der zweite Hitler," and police in full riot gear. That was a bit freaky for me. Much as I liked Vienna, I was sort of glad to leave all that wierdness behind. Honor and Glory... to Kate, for sending me books, and Jan, for carrying them to Ted, Gabriel, Nick, Jan, Mo, Ingrid, Eric, etc... for visiting me to MikeP, Kate, and my grandparents, for letters Dishonor and Notoriety... to religion tax, deducted directly from your income (60DM a month for me) to trains which are inexplicably more expensive than others Wow that was long. I'll stop before I accedently go on for anouther six paragraphs. Freuliche Ostern! Marleigh PS: If one of you know why Germany would set their clocks forward about a week before the states, I'd like to know.