@all three of you - yes, come to Vienna, and say hi when you get here!
Right now, I'm getting a very different sort of showcase from Vienna's weather - lightning in sheets grabs out across a sky full of clouds, and rain pummels at the windows as if desperately seeking shelter from the roars of thunder behind. The slow burning of the previous week has been replaced by flashing fury of a sort rare in England. This week in general the weather has been a little cooler, and a breeze has lifted the air a little too, though most of the days have still been hot and punctuated by smaller storms. This is the biggest of the lot by far, though, with the spectacular light show in the heavens rumbling and groaning at a city that has seen it a thousand times before. The windows are closed, the streets emptied, but amid the relaxed age of Vienna's buildings it is hard to feel the terror that an ancient sky-god might suitably hope to impress upon me with such a display.
My explorations of the city continue, bit by bit: one learns as much from a mundane day as an exciting one in a new place, though. The local mini-supermarket is still an education - gouda fills in Austria the standard "block of cheese" niche that the UK has cheddar for, for example, and chorizo is harder to come by but there are numerous varieties of kabanosy which is something I could never find in Birmingham but used to like eating in Cambridge. Despite its small size, the Billa has a sort of deli counter with a lot of cheese & bread varieties that I haven't yet looked at much. Milk always comes in cartons; it's easier to find tissue pocket-packets than boxes (and they're cheaper than in the UK despite most food items being slightly more expensive); all these little things one starts learning the way around over time.
I'm doing well for visitors generally - another former CTS friend (and current EA employee) visited recently, and I've got a visitor this coming weekend too. On Glaurung's last day here we went round the "folk museum", which turned out to be thoroughly worthwhile, I highly recommend it. A good folk museum (and this is such) is a great window onto life and history from the perspective of the ordinary people who lived through the last few centuries. Among other things, I noticed that Austria has a much stronger habit of using bark in things like basket construction where it isn't done in the UK, and of course there are adaptations like giant woven over-shoes for mountain and snow that are less needed in the UK. The principle of houses or rooms having externally opening "heating ovens", where a large fire would be lit from the outside into a big decorative ceramic container that could heat the room, was also one I hadn't come across before but is apparently more traditional in these parts. Plus I discovered the word pickaroon when trying to work out what a particular woodcutting tool was (it was indeed a pickaroon). The symbolism used in folk culture is also interesting - the double-headed eagle has a strong tradition here, and also the dragon, a commonplace used in decorations, roof beam endings, and more. Finally, I got some hope that eventually I'll find good Austrian cider, which is apparently more of a thing in Styria - "die Most ist halbe die Kost" (roughly, and I may be misremembering word-genders, "The cider is half the meal") apparently being a local saying from that area!
This week's main job is paperwork, especially starting my doctoral enrolment forms and sorting out banking issues, which sadly doesn't leave a lot more to put here other than a general sense of frustration at bureaucracy that no doubt most people have rather too much of the time. I now officially have 30 "working hours" a week, consisting of 2 8-hr days, 2 7-hr ones, and a three day weekend. In practice I think work time may bleed into Fri/Sat more most of the time, but such is life. I've met my department, who are lovely and diverse in origin: no two of us come from the same country of origin, and only two of us (myself and Tara, my professor) share a first language. Fluent English is shared nonetheless, and is the
lingua franca for all of us, which of course suits me fairly well. I'm not the best of social butterflies at the best of times, but the (thoroughly international) community of Vienna have been utterly lovely thus far.
And on that pleasant note, I think that's another update sorted