Lost In Translation

Throughout this semester, whenever I've been placed in a non-german speaking City (namely Prague and Budapest) its really highlighted just how functional I've become in alt Wien. I can order coffee like champ and I've even help a few lost souls find their way through the subway system, albeit with broken sentences and superfluous hand gestures. Perhaps I've gotten cocky of late because the universe saw fit to knock me down a language peg or two.



The end of last week was characterized by some Parisian visitors which Matt John and I spent a good amount of time taking to our favorite places to drink, eat and well drink some more. Sidenote: most of my time outside my room is spent with coffee in hand. One night on the way to our favorite/only Indian restaurant we emerged to be confronted by the dreaded u-bahn ticket checkers. While their threat is omnipresent, I've only had to show my ticket 3 times since I got here.

With my monthly ticket in hand and a friendly smile I approached the woman who had stopped us. She took my ticket, returned the smile and asked me a question I thought I understood. I said "No, not this night" in response and her smile disappeared faster than I realized facial muscles could move. I then gleaned that her response was something along the lines of "then I can't let you through".

This boggled my mind. See, the question I thought she asked me was "are you going out drinking tonight?" I was with 7 other people my age and I thought she was making friendly, though admittedly awkward, small talk. WRONG. She actually asked me for my student ID proving I had the right to use a student's semester u-bahn pass. The problem of the words I know for ID related things, I didn't hear any of them. I heard Trinken, to drink. So when I said no, I was essentially admitted to trying to cheat Vienna's dear old subway system. I eventually figured out what it was she really asked, showed her my school ID and continued through. Fortunately (for me at least) those traveling with me had much larger problems with their subway tickets meaning no one witnessed me make a fool of myself first hand. Still, I thought it was too funny to hide from the world.

A search of my ITunes library has yielded...

John Coltrane's Blue Train (we actually came off the orange line but disregard that)

and

M.Ward's (again i know) Chinese Translation

stay tuned for the beginning of a series highlighting some of vienna's fine establishments.

Disaster has Struck

I lost my previously mentioned bouncy ball.

It was a good ball that was taken before its time. may it rest in peace.

i only have the itunes purchases version of the song so i can't share it with you all but i WAS going to post M.Ward's Sad, Sad, Song from Transfigurations of Vincent. you could probably find it on the interweb.

The Greatest Euro Ever Spent

With the current state of the american economy spending money around these parts is never an event with out consideration (though i find that when i spend money of booze increasingly less consideration goes into the money i spend on the next drink or end of night falafel, but i digress; and relax mom, i'm fine). but two days ago on the way back from the supermarket i made perhaps the most rewarding impulse buy to date. I spent one euro in one of those gumball type machines but instead of bad gum that got too rubbery and lost all flavor in mere seconds I got a bouncy ball! It has already provided hours of entertainment and will continue to do so for a good long while.
no music today but instead videos.

This is what happens when you combine 250000 bouncy balls and a lovely san francisco afternoon.



and this is a cool making-of video for the above ad.

Its been two days since I've worn socks.

Three days ago a terrible thing happened. I reached into my hamper to grab a pair of socks (I don't always get around to sorting and folding my socks after I do laundry because I hate it). As I donned my foot coverings I realized that this was my last pair of socks. I had to do laundry again. damn it. Whats worse it highlighted the loss of half of my favorite pair of socks a few weeks ago, because if only i had those red and gray socks I could have made it another day.
if you've been keeping up on the Vienna blog circuit you already know that doing laundry here is a rather hellacious misadventure. Well recently things have gotten worse. For about two weeks there was only one laundry machine, which was bad but not awful because the cycle is only about 30 minutes long. Then one evening laundry room attendees were greeted with the triumphant return of the second washing machine. HUZZAH!
But just when things were looking up they got so much worse. Soon the second dryer had a sign that simply read, scrawled in pencil, "KAPUTT!" What makes this so bad is the dryer cycle here is 90 minutes and even after that your clothes still aren't dry; they're really just hot enough that the water will evaporate when you take it out of the dryer, if you're lucky. Come to think of it, its more a sauna then a dryer. Well as you may have gleaned from the title, I did not do laundry due to unavoidable delays (read: my favorite Irish pub in vienna) and have been wearing my Chucks with out socks. As a result I live in a constant state of fear that my shoes and feet will smell bad. They don't for now so I'm safe but my fear has led me to frequently remove my shoes in public.
Laundry day is tomorrow because I've run out of more than just socks now. Wish me luck.

Ryan Adams Talking about Smelly Socks before going into "Easy Plateau" during a show in, I think, Scotland.