The First Few Days

I made it to Graz! The trip could not have gone more smoothly. The 8 hour flight wasn't much fun and it was hard to sleep on the plane. I sat next to a very nice old man who had moved from Vienna to Cleveland, Ohio in 1939, but comes back to visit his friends in Vienna once a year. We had a nice conversation throughout the flight, during which he told me about Austira, Vienna, his family and all sorts of stories.

After landing in Graz arond 11am local time, my mentor for the semester, Johannes, met me at the airport and we took a 10 minute train ride from the airport to Graz. My apartment was only a couple blocks from the train station. The building I live in is very nice. It's divided into apartments, or flats, and each flat has 5 rooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a balcony. My room here is probably the nicest I have had in College. So far I have met four of my five roommates. They all seem nice, but we haven't spoken very much.

After dropping my things off at the apartment, Johannes tried to talk me into buying a bike because it is cheaper than taking the bus everyday. Lots of people here ride bikes. There are really nice bike lanes and plenty of places to lock up your bike. So we went to a local shop and looked at bikes, but I'm leaning toward taking the bus because it will start getting cold here soon.



Next, Johannes taught me how to use the bus system and showed me how to find the campus (a 15 to 20 minute bus ride away). We walked through the main building and stopped by the international students' office. From there we went to the bank to set up a local account. Here instead of writing checks, they do direct money transfers. I am so glad Johannes was with me. I don't know any German yet and the people working at the bank did not know very much English. So he helped translate. After the bank we ran some more errands to get sheets, gorceries, and school supplies.


Buying sheets was so confusing. They don't sell a set of sheets here like they do in the U.S. Everything is sold seperately. You have to buy a matching pillow case and a blanket cover (like a pillow case for your blanket) set. The fitted sheet is sold seperately and does not include the flat sheet. My mentor Johannes told me no one here uses a flat sheet because there is no need for a flat sheet if you have a blanket. But after looking around a little longer I found a white flat sheet. I thought buying sheets would be one of the easier errands. Who knew buying sheets could be so complicated?



However, grocery shopping has been the most challenging task so far for a number of reasons. First, of course, the labels are entirely in German, including the cooking instructions. Second, most of what they sell is ingredients for local dishes. Almost all of the meat is pork. So these first few days I've been resorting to pasta because it's easy, cheap and I can boil pasta without needing to look at the instructions.

So after getting little sleep on the plane and then a full day's worth of errands, needless to say I crashed my first night here. Unfortunately I had to catch the bus to campus the next morning at 7:45am to register for the German intensive course. We spent the rest of that just wandering around the city and learning our way around. It's so easy to get around. The bus will take you anywhere. Graz is a very interesting city with lots of older buildings, some going back to the 15 and 1600s, and then lots of really modern buildings built with a variety of modern material. So the mix of styles is interesting.




The German intensive course started on Thursday and we are flying through the course. I think they are trying to teach us all of German I in three weeks. yikes! But its good because I needed to know German yesterday. I am so impressed with everyone in my class. There are about 16 of us and I am the only American. There are two girls from Canada and one girl from Australia, but that's it for native English speakers. We are being taught German in English, which is most people's second language. I just cannot imagine learning German in Spanish, the language I took in high school and College.

There is so much more to write, but I'll just post this for now and continue later. Pictures will be coming soon!





These two bottom pictures are from Hauptplatz (the central square)