Class at the UN, and a Rainy Friday

I have no real idea where this week went!  Lots of hanging out with friends and getting reading and school work done, and here we are back at the weekend.  One of my classes this semester is Environmental Management and Sustainability, and part of the course is to participate in a multi-university workshop along with UNIDO and SID here in Vienna.  The theme of the workshop is Local Energy Initiatives and yesterday was part one of the workshop. We met at the UN in the afternoon with about 75 other students and professors to listen to various speakers talk about projects working to bring energy to developing countries, and have the chance to ask questions before we begin our own case study analysis to be presented at the rest of the workshop in early June.

our tables with fancy microphones

we were very prepared and all there early as a group, being sure we all made it through security ok...

which led to some waiting around...

language reference guide on the wall

like I said...waiting...plenty of time for some pictures of Ostern Schokolade

Our professor in the middle...ready to begin!

It turned out to be a really interesting afternoon, and we were able to hear about so many great projects currently going on around the world to combat energy poverty; I'm excited to see where the rest of the semester leads.  While we were there several school/tour groups came into the galleries overlooking this large room, I would love to know what they thought was going on.  By the time we left the UN it had started to rain and get much colder, although that didn't stop several of us from getting dinner downtown afterwards.  The rain has continued off and on today, making it a good day to get laundry done and finish a paper.  Hopefully the weather will improve so I can go out and enjoy things tomorrow!

Saturday Part 2

These are all pictures from Saturday, basically everything minus the Easter Market photos from the previous post, although these pictures could have been taken anytime in the last week or so including today, we've had unbelievably gorgeous spring weather every day.

So after the first Easter market on Saturday towards the city center, I walked through the Hofburg and back around to the ring...

The Freyung passage, filled with shops

lots of people out enjoying the sunshine at Heldenplatz

the blossoming trees near the Rathaus

the Rathaus without the ice rink in front of it.  Apparently this space is almost always filled with something, so the one little green sign is about as bare as it gets.

Ok, so...now we fast forward to Schoenbrunn...after walking around the Easter market there for a bit, I decided to go around to the back of the Palace where all the gardens are and see how those are coming along since the last time we were over here it was still February and the statues hadn't even been uncovered yet.  Also, since I didn't have any major time constraints, I decided to walk up to the Gloriette and see what the view is like from up there.  

with the palace behind me, looking up at the Gloriette

almost there...

The view from the top

standing in the same spot, just zoomed in to see the Palace and the city more clearly

you can even see school up on the Kahlenberg from here!  

back down on the garden level, looking at the Palace over what will soon be lots of flowers.

off to the side of the Palace are some other gardens, where the flowers are already up

Spring has definitely sprung around here, although most flowers and trees are still not quite blossoming yet, but they will be very soon.  I'm back to reading today, but should hopefully have time to get back out to the park later this week and enjoy more of the weather!

Easter Markets!

Today was another gorgeous spring day here, so I decided this morning to get up and go visit a couple of the city's Easter markets that opened this weekend.  I started with the Old Vienna Easter Market at the Freyung, which is near the city center.   

There were lots of stands selling various craft and food items

And in the center of the market are piles and piles of painted eggs.  They were amazing.

and this giant painted egg at the end

and of course you need a basket for all these eggs...

After walking through this Easter market for a while, I wandered around the center of town just enjoying the weather.  The crowds were definitely out today, lots and lots of tourist buses and people wandering around with maps looking vaguely lost.  I took a bunch of pictures walking around today, but I think I'll save those for another post, since I have a feeling there will be a lot of pictures in this one when I'm finished.  I then went out to Schoenbrunn, which is on the other side of town, but definitely seemed worth the trip today.  

 

This market is a bit larger than the other one, with lots of tables for standing while having a glass of wine or beer, not a bad view with Schoenbrunn in the background 

Their pile of hand-painted eggs, not nearly as many as at the other market, but equally as beautiful 

adorable little wood animals

I actually ended up spending quite a bit of time wandering around the gardens at Schoenbrunn and going up to the Gloriette, which I had actually never made it up to before.  I'd always been there just as it was closing or when I didn't have time to walk all the way up there, but I'm so glad I did today, the view was gorgeous.  I'll post pictures of that along with my around town wanderings later. 

 

Home Cooked Meal

Tonight the young adult group from the church I've been going to all met at the home of our Pastor and his wife.  They open their apartment every other Wednesday evening for dinner and discussion time, and it really   was a very enjoyable evening.  I hadn't really realized that beyond my few simple pasta dishes I've cooked for myself (and heating things in the microwave which doesn't count), I haven't cooked or eaten anything in a home in almost the month I've been here.  Coming from a group of friends in NYC that have a habit of cooking for each other at least weekly if not more often, I didn't completely realize how much I miss that until I was able to enjoy it tonight.  Plus, I am still just amazed each new group of people I find myself in, just how different everyone in the group is, and how many different countries and cultures are represented in these groups.  I'm learning so much about so many things outside of the classroom from all of these people I'm able to spend time with, and I love it.

Also...for Christmas this past year, I got a German/English phrase calendar from my good friend Vera.  We studied 4 years of German together in high school, so German has always been a unique shared interest with us...now...this calendar has an extremely wide variety of phrases it translates.  These aren't your typical "Hello" "How are you?" "Good Night" type things, but today's was especially relevant to this, so I thought I'd share.

I'll hopefully get out with my camera again soon, I'm trying to be good about getting as much school work done on weekdays as I can, and saving the weekends to get out and explore.

Lots of Reading

I'm not totally sure where the past two days have gone!  I did make a good to-do list this week, and things are slowly getting checked off, so I'm apparently doing something...

Sunday I went to church, which was another great week of feeling super welcomed there.  After church 6 of us went wandering in search of somewhere to eat lunch...preferably outside...preferably in the sun (it was 70 degrees and sunny, and so beautiful out) after about an hour of walking through different neighborhoods, our standards were lowering slightly and we decided to forgo the sun and just take a table outside in the shade.  At that point we were plenty hungry, and the food (some sort of Middle Eastern/Asian fusion) was quite good.  We actually ended up in one of the busiest shopping areas of the city, but of course since it was Sunday nothing was open, which was probably ultimately good for my budget.  I do intend to go back there when I have some free time and stores are open just to see what all is over there.

I don't have class until Friday this week, so I'm trying to spread out the reading and other assignments I have over these 4 days this week, in hopes of really remembering the reading I'm doing.  Out of the 4 reading segments I need to complete, I'm on the last one, so hopefully this will sink in.  Today I also tried to get some errands done, and I did laundry (successfully for the 2nd time! I still have clothes!).  I bought some cleaning supplies on Saturday (another example of me staring at a wall of products not really sure what i'm buying), but hadn't actually cleaned yet, so this morning while my laundry was in downstairs I thought I'd clean the kitchen a bit.  Whatever I bought to clean with is STRONG.  My kitchen sparkles, but I nearly passed out from the fumes.  I think this bottle will go in the back of the cabinet and only brought out for deep cleaning days.  I went out this afternoon and got some of what appears to be a more eco-friendly, natural based cleaner...smells much better.

I'm back to the books for a bit before I call it a night.  I hope everyone is enjoying the first day of Spring!

Parks!

Living in NYC some of my favorite parts of the city were the parks, Central Park, Riverside Park, even Morningside Park so long as it is broad daylight...I think green spaces in large cities are what makes those cities livable and I'm glad that in planning these cities people thought to design parks (especially New York, thank you Frederick Law Olmsted).

When I moved to Vienna, I knew that they also take their green spaces seriously, and while this city wasn't planned in the way New York was, they did leave places for parks as areas expanded, and I have several close to me, so I got out and explored them while enjoying the perfect weather today.

I started here, which is just down the street

Abandoned cemetery among the trees...check.  I'm actually taking this picture 

through a fence between the trees 

Flowers!  These are some of the first i'd seen, considering we had snow last Friday, I'll take it.

I then walked up the hill to Türkenschanzpark, it's a ways up...but again...lovely park, large playground, lots and lots of families playing, people laying out on blankets just enjoying the afternoon.

This is towards the middle of the park, it's an observation tour and is open certain weekends throughout the year for people to go up in and look out, I'm sure the view up there is amazing.  The first weekend is in the middle of April, so I'll have to go back at some point and check it out.

Thankfully my nice fold up park blanket made it into one of my suitcases, so I will surely be getting that out soon and heading to the park to read and enjoy the nice weather.  We haven't sprung forward yet, so it's still getting dark fairly early in the evenings.  It's just past 6pm here now, and the sun has set and lights are coming on in the streets already.  I'm looking forward to it staying lighter a bit later soon.

Another spring event to look forward to, I booked a flight to London at the end of April to visit Sarah Beth!  Yay!  I'm so excited to go see her and where she's living now.  I haven't been to London since high school, so I'm excited to see the city as well :)

I hope you're also enjoying nice weather on this St. Patrick's Day!

Large Beautiful Homes

I mentioned before that the neighborhood just up (east? north? west? whatever way is sort of away from town...) from my house is filled with these large homes.  I don't mean just like...oh cute they have 3 floors...I mean HUGE.  I don't think necessarily only one family lives in each of these homes at present, but I only see one mailbox on some... 

The homes directly across the street from my building.  I'm sure they hate their view.

other lovely homes in the neighborhood.  It's hard to get the proper angle to actually take pictures of them, plus I don't want to look like a weirdo taking pictures in this neighborhood.

Some buildings down the street from me.

a home totally covered in vines

the shops just down and across the street from my building the other direction

a closeup of the corner of the building above.

The weather today has been perfect...very sunny and about 60 degrees.  I didn't have class today, so I've been running some errands and wandering around outside enjoying the weather!  Tomorrow should also be nice, so I'll think of somewhere fun to go with my camera.