Mario, a lost camera, and those damn Bulgarians!

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Gruss Gott!

Hello friends and family again from Vienna! This will be a relatively short blog but i felt i should update you all! There is a restaurant near our hotel called Marios. It is cheap and it is very good food. Its mostly Italian stuff. it is all run by one guy...Mario! He is a one man show! We have been frequenting his place often because of its proximity to the hotel, and how good it is. He makes a great pizza, calzone, calamari and various types of pasta.

Past few days have been quite cool out and it even rained the yesterday. I cant remember if i mentioned but on monday with my business class we went to a law firm here in Austria that specializes in labor law, which i found quite interesting. The laws, you know, are quite different over here, and some people can get some really nice benefits when it comes to maternity leave and sick days.

And as you know we went to Mauthausen on tuesday. But i have one more comment about tuesday...on the way to Mauthausen we drove on a major highway in Austria....and i have to say it was the smoothest road i have even been on. It was damn near perfect! If the roads were like that in the US...well they probably wont ever be. On the way back from Mauthausen we stopped at a hotel/restaurant for something to eat. it as really good food, and i just got a New York Club Sandwich....fancy that. They also had a desert tray that had many many austrian delicacies on it. i chose a strawberry custard pie thingy. It was delicious. I then went to the small gift shop that it had and browsed around. I decided to buy some Austrian candies that was chocolate with orange flavored vodka in the middle of them. Those were really good too! I was walking around to people in our group and letting everyone try it. Later i figured out you should only eat one at a time...cuz i put 3 in my mouth at once, and all the vodka was a bit too much to bear!

Also, this is bad news, but on the ride home from the bus, i fell asleep, then in my disorientation while getting off the bus when we arrived back at our hotel, i left my digital camera on the bus. I was so mad when i discovered i no longer had it. so i emailed my teacher asap, and prayed to St. Anthony..the patron saint of lost things. my teacher informed me that i would have a relatively good chance of getting the camera back since the bus was provided by the Ministry of the Interior of Austria....a very big person in Austria. So that made me feel a bit better. Today as i was waking up from my nap, our room phone was ringing, and it was our teacher, and he informed me that the camera is found and i will be able to get it next week. I asked why cant i just go over there and get it now? well he said Austrian bureacracy is wierd and yada yada....i dont know what that has to do with my camera but oh well i will get my camera back eventually.

Wednesday was another slow kind of day really. Woke up, went to class, came back and napped. I find the naps help with keeping my energy up. When i woke up i got some laundry detergent from some girls, and decided to try and do a little laundry by hand....so i washed some socks, and underwear and a few dago-T shirts.....this proved to be difficult, cuz all i had to wash them in was a small sink, then try and rinse them out in the shower. I hung all the clothes up around my bathroom and let them dry. Needless to say, it didnt turn out well today when i felt them they were still wet, and it looks like they need to be rinsed again...so i think im just going to take them to the laundry mat later on.

We then had another meeting with our university of Vienna students to work on our collaborative project. We went into a lecture hall that Dr. Sigmund Freud himself taught in! Imagine that. THe room reminded me of a roman or greek senate hall. it was round and had benches with a small spot in front of you for your notebook. The seats were very uncomfortable tho. After that a few of my fellow students and i were really hungry so we went to a place on the campus called Gongle. a very good restaruant. Side note: the university of vienna has 72,000 students enrolled. AMAZING! and you can get beer just about anywhere on the campus, even out of vending machines....YEA VENDING MACHINE BEER!!!!!!!! how bout them apples. So we sit down to Gongle and order a half liter of Gosser beer and order dinner. i have a pork cutlet with a side salad of like potatos and sour crout. it was really good. turns out there was a big soccer game going on that night and lots of students had gathered at Gongle to watch. It was Man-U vs. Barcelona, Barcelona won. Right as we were getting ready to leave, some Bulgarians that were sitting next to us started talking with us and eventually they just moved all over to our table and we began ording anohter half liter of beer. we were talking for a good long time, and another liter of beer later it was 11:30 at night! The Bulgarians sure know how to drink. i was feeling pretty good after my 2 liters of beer and was getting pretty sleepy! there names were Gergana, Victor and Lidiya, they were all very nice and very fun people. They have been living in Vienna for 2 years and are students at the Univeristy of Vienna.

So myself and several other students hop on the strassenbahn and head back to the hotel, i get some wicked hiccups and get strange looks from people on the strassenbahn...i get back up into my room and am very tired so i pass right out and go to bed.

This weekend should be really fun, since we dont have class at all until sunday night. Tomorrow, we have our biggest company visit, which is to Deloitte consulting. Our teacher seems pretty nervous about it, because they are going to have us work on a case study with them for a local energy supplier called Verbund. it is the biggest electricity supplier in vienna, and they are looking to expand into Turkey. And they want us to help them with some Human Resources stuff. should be interesting. but then heres the best part, after the meeting with Deloitte myself and many other students are catching a train to the Czech Republic and spending the weekend in Prague. We will be staying in a Hostel, and then returning on sunday afternoon. Kinda sucks since i probably wont have my camera til next week, but oh well.

so thats all i have for you now. i will most likely do another blog on sunday when i get back from Prague and i will let you all know how it is.

Auf Wiedersehen!!!!!!

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Comments

[Rose]

haha
You would comment on the roads. DORK!!! :)