I've had a week in Vienna now and it's my third night living in my new place. Glasgow sent me on my way with a free whisky tasting at the airport, and two short flights later I arrived in Vienna to be greeted by a fresh fall of snow and my dad's lovely cousin Maria. She settled me in with hot cocoa made on the stove in her Dutch style kitchen and I fell asleep watching the snow fall past my window.
View from the window. It was still snowing when I woke up the next morning, and it continued for the next few days. On my first full day I wandered around the city pretty much mesmerised by the snow, stopping occasionally to warm up in Zara/H&M/etc.
I caught up with Anna and we continued rambling through the snow and making important stops to regain our strength.
It was amazing to be able to stay with (fairly distant) family to start my exchange. Maria is a great lady who was taking an intensive Russian language course the week I stayed with her but still made time to make me feel completely at home. This included taking me to an awesome restaurant in the old kitchen of an Austrian manor house, attempting to teach me German and showing me how to make an Ash Wednesday specialty, heringsalat (herring salad) complete with potato, pickles, apple, sour cream, and of course herring.
This was next level ethnic.
Pretty good though.
The rest of the week was more snow frolicking, gawking at beautiful Viennese architecture, several more hot chocolates and pastries, one more herring dish (Dutch style salt herring), morning training at the Spanish Riding School, pretending to speak German, teaching different international students different drinking games, settling into my student accommodation, discovering that you can smoke inside Austrian clubs, discovering that dancing in Austrian clubs makes your hair stink the next morning, and heaps more.
Definitely a successful start to exchange!
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