The Apartment and Exploring

Today was a great day of exploring and new adventures, as well as many questions about how to say different things in German. We're trying to use 'danke' for thank you, and 'bitte' for please, just to start, and picking up as many short, useful phrases as possible! I'll tell you about my our apartment first though, as promised!

I live in the sixteenth district, a couple blocks from the Gurtle, which divides the inner city from the outer city (district 16 from districts 7&8). We live directly next to a Turkish bakery - which we visited this morning! - it has an assortment of Austrian and Turkish pastries, breads, desserts, etc. Directly across the street from the bakery is a Spar - which is a small supermarket, or grocery store. Very handy! However, super market's here have significantly fewer open hours, such as 7-7, and closed on Sunday, which might pose for a bit of a challenge with the daily shopping schedule that the Viennese generally have, and late classes that don't permit evening shopping after the commute home, but I'm sure as the semester aligns itself, these issues will be sorted out. 

Our apartment building has only two apartments, the landlady's and our own. The practice rooms are downstairs, and the door to our apartment is up a flight of stairs. I have four suite-mates, and one RA that I live with. We share an entrance/mud area, a small, but fully equipped kitchen, a dining area with a television, a half-bath, a full bathroom, and a shower room with a sink. It is pretty typical to have toilets in separate rooms from the shower/sink. There are four bedrooms, one for the RA, and three double rooms, although one of the doubles only has one student in it at this point. There is also a washing machine in our apartment, which is very handy! I'm pretty sure almost all the furniture, fixtures, dishes, silverware, etc. are from Ikea. It is rather homey, actually. Our land lady provided us with a lot of nice amenities. 

We all took this morning at our own pace, as we felt like resting, and the rain/cooler weather put us in lazy moods. But we wanted to get out and explore a little this afternoon, rain or shine! As they say in Princess Diaries, "Umbrellas up!" We left the apartment around three, and decided to walk so we could get a sense of the distance to district one, as well as get a closer look at the shops and sights. District sixteen is the home to a lot of immigrants, which is evident in the shops and restaurants on the streets. 

We walked past a lot of buildings today, asking our RA questions, and taking pictures along the way. However, our destination was definitely in my top three favorite things today! Cafe Central is a traditional Austrian cafe, that has become more of a tourist or special occasion place recently. The cafes in Austria are different than in the US. The room was grand, with ornate molding and painting on the ceiling, large columns, and in the center was a case of cakes, tortes, strudels, and other desserts. I got a layered 3 chocolate cake with moose and a bit of rum flavoring. It was superb! We all got different desserts, so we could pass them around and try six different things. I cannot explain the gastronomic experience! But maybe this photo will help...

I had such a fun day exploring with my suite-mates, and am having a great time getting to know them! I look forward to many more walks through Wien and shared culinary experiences. 

For now, auf wiedersehen!