wandering for food

After class broke for lunch a few of us wandered around until we found a restaurant that looked interesting. We chose Italian food and were promptly seated by a very helpful waiter. He seemed prepared to deal with Americans that do not speak any German and was fairly patient with us. He recommended a fantastic dish of Ravioli with what tasted like an artichoke and asparagus filling. Delicious! We followed this treat with a trip to the corner ice cream shop and i chose the flavor i had never heard of before. It was something called Marzan i think and tasted like hazelnut with a hint of buttered rum and there were interesting raisin like things scattered about in the ice cream. I have never felt so blatantly uneducated and imposing as i did when i ordered one scoop of ice cream. Not knowing how to say anything in German was so frustrating and the man helping me made it very apparent that there were people behind me in line that did know how to communicate like a civilized person. This has been humbling so far and I have set a new goal for me to learn German.



We next went on a tour of the city and i gained a new understanding and appreciation for the layout and people. One famous apartment buildings are shown above and these showed me how tucked away certain pieces of history could be found. The architecture was so fun and mind freeing. I am constantly perplexed and amazed with how people could just walk by such fascinating sites as if they were nothing special that they had been seeing everyday. This was one place that the language issue was transcended by art through architecture. Beautiful and inspiring to see the city as an eclectic center for architecture that narrates a history that is very much alive today. It also brought up the question, why are our buildings the way they are? Does form follow function? I will be musing about this for a while.

This beautiful view showed the different parts of Vienna and gave more perspective. Seeing that the locals actually use their woods and linking this to the readings about such was helpful. I was also reminded of my film class about the Weinmar cinema and the youth movements to get back to nature and have similar groups to the USA's girl and boy scouts. The existence of a populous that loyally uses their outdoors was very different from the California I'm used to. I am amazed at how efficient the transit system is here. The Coffee here was amazing and it was pleasant to experience the cultural difference in the drinking of coffee. There was no rush at all and we were expected to stay there for a very long time. The open air seating was new and gave us a nice opportunity to people watch and discus the days travels.