TGI FRIDAYS...in vienna?

dude i just had the craziest thanksgiving dinner ever. tgi fridays with a bunch of american exchange students. it was awesome. and, it was a buffet. ultra awesome. ok ok...not the best food...but a thanksgiving meal nonetheless. i'm not really sure how much pie i actually ate. i lost count at some point. and mashed potatoes...ohhhh man. the only problem i had was with the "stuffing". def not stuffing. more like compressed bread that tastes like compressed bread. very wierd.

met some awesome people though. a bunch of girls from tennesse, illinois, and other random places. they are all undergrads studying here for the semester at the business school in vienna. afterwards we walked around aimlessly, pretty uncomfortable from our feast, until we ran into a christmas market here. these things pop up like crazy around here, and are pretty popular. we all caught the last train home and now im sitting here in my hostel working on this stupid project. i have to work a lot in the next day or so cause im peacing out for a week on sunday....

oh ya and get this...talked to my renter today. reminded her that im leaving on the 16th of december. she told me that i have to pay for the entire month of december even if stay for 15 days. now i understand if this is an apartment. but no..its a hostel. im not just giving her money for no reason. but she is annoying me, and since im leaving for a week right at the beginning of december...i am officially moving out of my hostel..TOMORROW. whoa. out of nowhere. im gonna store my friend saara's place and then prob crash on her couch after i get back for a week...so ya...im packing up tomorrow.

thanksgiving...

went on a search with bin today for some turkey. failed completely. diverted to getting coffee and pie, which turned into a pastry and pie. that's the closest to thanksgiving i could get. good enough i suppose. but apparently some guys are gonna head to TGI FRIDAYS down the street from my school later tonight. i guess they have a good old american thankgiving meal. screw it. im going. gotta have some stuffing and turkey. the rest of 2009 wont be quite right if i dont completely stuff myself with this food today...i've actually never eaten at TGI Fridays before...and there's probably a good reason for that. but i'll do whatever it takes on thanksgiving..

randomness at 2 am

you know what im doing right now?? listening to kanye

west with bin at the hostel. haha. he's singing right

now. such a gangster...this is pretty much awesome

right now. much better than earlier...

i had a little run-in with the assistants at school.

since some of us didnt make the zaha presentation and

were late for our own presentations, we got a little

lecture from them. we were disrespectful they said.

felt kinda bad, but also realized how unorganized their

system is, which definitely cause all this lateness and

missing of events. it was kinda funny

though...honestly...of all the things they could

lecture us about..it was that. i can think of 1000

other problems that have been going on in our groups

that are more important. aahhh well.

today is thanksgiving! doesn't feel like it...obviosly

because im in vienna. (for those of you that dont know,

austria doesnt celebrate thanksgiving...just wanted to

clear that up). might go search for some turkey with

bin later. realllly wanna watch football but i dont

know if that will happen. plus we still have a ton of

work to do this weekend before our review. it just got

moved to monday, which means i wont be here for any

more reviews this semester. so jess gets here on

saturday afternoon, so im basically working until then.

and thats it for now!

VENEZIA AND THE WORST PLACE TO DRIVE IN ITALY

we thought we would take a route from florence over

to the mediterranean immediately. we crossed some

awesome mountains and made some interesting stops in

the middle of nowhere...climbed some hills and threw

leaves around like little kids. the atmosphere was much

different than tuscana. all the trees were yellow and

red, and there were no wineries in sight. just little

houses burning wood in the fireplace. weather was still

amazing. we have been pretty lucky with this. so far on

this entire trip, no clouds at all.

after we came down from the mountains and started

approaching the ocean, we realized how ugly the area we

were in actually was. it was like an industrial

coastline with TONS of stupid 18 wheelers getting in

our way. ughh. every building was from the 70s and was

completely ugly. if i had a map of italy i was X this

part out and tell no one to ever go there. it was funny

though, because we thought we were going to see this

amazing coastline, along with beautiful cliffs and

lakes, and all we saw was an ugly marsh on a now cloudy

day. so instead of stopping in this area, we went as

fast as the trucks would allow, to venice!

got there pretty late cause there was a lot of traffic.

maybe because there were so many trucks. seriously.

trucks invaded the eastern coast of italy. it was like

I-5 in the grapevine. by the time we parked our car and

took a boat to our hostel (again, only sheets for a towel, aka toga),

i had already spend like 60

euros. this place is expensive for sure. BUT AWESOME!

venice is a great place to explore nonstop. there are

so many boats to take, so many canals to see, and so

many little alleyways between them all. it was just

what you would expect venice to be..and it didnt really

stink. one thing we noticed was the dogs in venice.

apparently there are a variety of dogs that appear to

live on their own there. we are just walking along down

some alleyway, and a little dog passes us, looks up for

a moment, and keeps on going. he knows exactly where he

is walking. turns a corner...doesnt ever look the other

way. just moving right along. THIS HAPPENED THREE MORE

TIMES. so wierd. dogs have lots of meetings to make in

venice. they know exactly where they are going and are

uninterested in stopping to hang out with people along

the way...

anyways..venice was great. saw the bienalle there (art

exhibition thats pretty awesome) and explored a little

more after. had to take off before 5 pm that day to get

the car back, since we were paying like 1000 euros a

day to park. at that point it was go time again.

started driving at 6 pm for a good 6 hour cruise back

to vienna. that was good times, but not so interesting

because it was dark again, and moritz kept falling

asleep at the wheel. so i forced him to pull over so i

could drive...when we finally got back it was 12 pm,

and as i walked up to my place i received a good

rememberance of italy. set my bag down to unlock the

door, but i guess i set it down a little to hard. my

wine bottle i bought at the vineyard near florence was

inside. looked down at the ground....wine everywhere!

it was spewing from my back in every direction.

AWESOME. i love the smell of wine wherever i walk with

my backpack now...

and thats italy! now i have to work for the next 5

days. we have a review next weekend and we havent done

anything. half my group isnt even around yet. what a

disaster. ahhh whatever. good times anyways. after i

work my butt off this week its off to travel again next

week! salzburg, innsbruck, switzerland, paris, and then

london/ireland. holy crap thats intense...

FIRENZE!

driving driving driving....more castles...more domination..took the most random ways we could to florence. did some wine tasting along the way. found a little whole in the wall winery on the side of the road and tasted some of their wine right where they bottle their stuff. it was great. we stopped a lot to take in the beauty of the wine country there. its nothing like california. something different. sometimes stopped and ran thru some the vineyard fields. not the best idea since everyone has crazy dogs that chase us. kind of intense!

by the time we got to florence it was dark again. found a hostel that was pretty dope, and went to get some food of florence! the florentine beefsteak....ohhh ya. so good. but expensive. this place was for rich folk, but we didnt care. they didnt even give us a menu so we didnt know the prices. but we wanted the "beef" so who cares. it was amazing too, but cost each of us 30 euros. stupid. steak, potatoes, wine, and cookies. thats like 45 dollars for that stuff. geez.

florence is great though. the duomo there is so massive it almost seems like it doesnt belong at all. the duomo is a huge cathedral there in florence. its like the centerpiece of the city. we roamed around for the day, eating a plentiful amount of bread, salami, and cheese, as well as too much gelato. explored the leather markets. these are pretty well known for florence. mortiz bought a new wardrobe in leather there. it was crazy. everything but underwear. ridiculous. then we went and kicked it on top of a hill, at piazza michaelangelo, and saw the entire city, as well as walked through a bridge that people used to live on. it looked like it was about to fall over, so maybe that's why no one lives on it anymore..makes sense. we were pretty much dead tired by the end of the day so we hit the sauna and pool at our awesome hostel and kicked it with some travelers there. problem with goines swimming in this hostel is that they dont give you towels. sooo what do we do? use our sheets, of course. wearing them like togas walking through the hostel is always a good idea. except when you need to use them for sleeping, and they are all wet. not so good anymore.. next morning it was off to venice for full day of driving along the coast..

on the road again...SIENA, next stop!

off to siena this morning! took side roads to get there. avoid the tolls that way. plus we get to see tons of awesome stuff. we are in tuscana, which is comepletely awesome. wineries everywhere, towers on random hills, castles and castle towns every hour. we, of course, were listening to techno much of the way. we only had one cd and that was it. so basically i know these techno beats pretty well now. :) i was driving, of course, racing around all these little turns in the tiniest car ever. clemens wasnt feeling well...he kept coughing and asking us to roll the windows up. i dont want swine flu all that bad so i just ignored him consistenly all day. he was probably gonna leave us at siena and head to innsbruck back home.

the drive was awesome! stopped and explore like 4 villages that were old castle towns. climbed castles and completely dominated them. every town was like a little maze of streets crazy buildings. we found an old church in one town. no one was inside, and we were able to sneak up into the bell tower. it was so sketching though..i dont think anyone had been in there since the middle ages. there were bones of dead birds lying EVERYWHERE, and a reallllly old wooden staircase leading all the way up. if one plank on the staircase broke, we would fall alll the way down and most likely die..next to the birds. it was actually intense. but we made it up to the bell like champions would. all the towns were so amazing, and we had an awesome time exploring. so by the time we got to sienna it was dark. spend a little time in siena. one night. explored the medeival city to the max. piazza del campo is so dope.a huge plaza that overlooks a massive tower that can be seen from anywhere in the city. kicked it out there most of the time... clemens took off as expected. just me and moritz now. siena is really small so it didnt take long for us to see the whole city and take off again.

LAST TOURS OF ROME

next day woke up early to head out to the tours and such. wanted to hit the forum and the colosseum during the day, as well as the sistine chapel back up at the vatican. met a few people at the kapital for a bit and took off to see some good stuff. antonio and i split from the group and started exploring the forum. so amazing. these buildings are so dang old its ridiculous. also attempted to explore an old tower that looked pretty interesting from the ground up. we snuck inside some building, past security, and searched thru the building to find the entrance to the tower. we felt pretty awesome for a while, sneaking around and running away from people working there. in the end, we found nothing. but pretty funny nonetheless. hit the colosseam afterwards, which was pretty dope. so many massive battles took place there. destruction and death to max. its crazy that type of "fun" event was allowed back then. haha. not anymore thats for sure. at this point we were planning to head to the sistine chapel. got a text from one of our teaching assistants, saying that we needed to head to the museum again for a presentation with zaha now. wtf. we just presented yesterday! the text said to be there in a half hour. screw that! our group, which only consisted of moritz and i at the time, along with a few others, decided it wasnt worth going to. zaha doesnt care about our work anyways....

so we went to the vatican, while others rushed off to make zaha happy. the sistine was worth it though. michaelangelo is nuts. just a crazy painter painting nonstop on every wall of every room. oh ya, and rafael. i love that they named the ninja turtles after these dudes. so funny. spent a lot of time there, and of course, got into some religious talk w/moritz while staring up at the sistine ceiling. what else would come up, right? i mean, all the paintings basically explain where we came from according to the bible, along with other great stories. why not talk about what it all really means.

got a text afterwards from sarah...said the reviews went ehhh...alright. of course! apparently zaha didnt like anything really and didnt agree with the project brief all that much. wow, she is really involved in the class. or not..zaha did, however, invite everyone to dinner afterwards, and that's what sarah told me about. sooooo, what do we do? show up for dinner, of course. rushed over to piazza del popillo and walked in the restaurant all calm and cool it no big deal we missed the review. haha. everyone was already there, sitting down, all quite. we just stood there, akward as can be. the servers found us some extra chairs and we sat down quitely, explaining that we were "inside the vatican and couldnt leave"....or something. zaha didnt even notice we had entered. she was too busy staring at patrick and eating bread or something. but i sat in a spot that was directly in zaha's line of sight, so everytime i looked up towards the front of the restaurant, it would appear that zaha was checking me out. i mean, i dont want to brag, but im a pretty sexy guy. i cant help it if zaha likes what she sees, right? :) actually, she was probably trying to figure out who i was and why i was eating food that she was about to pay for. haha. but in the end we did get a free meal from zaha. so that was cool.

after that our whole class went out a grabbed some beers and sat on the spanish steps for a while. i, of course, purchased another toy from some italian guy selling randomness. this time it was a stretchy little thing that had a face on it. it was like a litte stretchy man. good price. 40 cents! boom. four other people bought them too so i didnt feel completely retarded. good times kickin it out there with everyone. what an awesome experience. sitting w/people from all over the world, on the spanish steps in rome, having a beer, and playing with a stretchy man thing. PERFECTO.

after a few of us went back to the little bar/cafe covered with vines. along the way, i got into an awesome convo about religion and other intersting stuff with my friend saara from finland. it turned into a 2 hr convo outside this little cafe. pretty cool to see people's point of view on different things in life and have the opportunity to explain where im at on faith, religion, life, etc.

later on it was time for moritz and i to prepare for our roadtrip back. it was going to be me, moritz and clemens, who joined us last minute since we had extra space in the car. (see, pavel bailed out on us because he wanted to do a competition in rome for a couple extra days...and by competition i mean architecture. and mark bailed out even before we left vienna...so there were two seats available on the way back...). but anyways, we went back to the hostel to print some maps to siena and some other villages. got to the computer and some dude was sitting there watching a movie..seriously? watching a movie at 2 am in a stinky hostel? stupid. we asked him how long he would be, and he said one hour. what? i think not. we immediately removed him from the room...no not really. but we told him we would be like ten mins, so he let us on. but the printer didnt work and the internet was slow, so that turned into a half hour. then all of a sudden the mouse stopped working, and we gave up and peaced out. haha. unfortunately the guy could no longer use the computer since the mouse wasnt working. we felt kind bad rolling in there, getting nothing accomplished, and then ruining his precious movie. ah well. THIS IS THE END OF ROME! we were getting up early the next day to take off for siena. roadtrip action on its way! no time limit, no plan, no worries...just how it should be!

day threeeee

woke up at 230! the problem with this is that we were supposed to meet with patrick at one to present our project! haha. we were so late. by the time we got moving it was 3 pm and we got over to zaha's office around 3:30. all but two reviews were finished (mine and pavels group). :) got there just in time and somehow presented whatever was flashing on the screen. somehwere it was alright, considering we were still half asleep. it so stupid they scheduled the review the day after the party. even patrick didnt want to be there. he was really drunk the night before..i remember that. zaha didnt show, as i assumed. whatever though. i dont care. review went okay. it was decent. again...didnt really care. was more interested in eating afterwards. and that we did. more pizza, of course. so delicious. ran around again for a while. everyone was tired, but kept moving to see some cool stuff. walked through the place where horse races used to take place. this was pretty awesome. it reminded me of gladiator when the chariots are running around racing eachother and battling nonstop. love it. then we all passed out because it was just necessary at that point...but that didnt work so well cause moritz likes to talk on the phone with his girlfriend forever, and he talks really loud. he's considerate that im sleeping but also not very aware that even if he opens the window and sticks his head out of it while on the phone, i can stilllll hear him. duh. geez. so i didnt really sleep for a while..

Day 2 Roma

woke up at 12 or 1 today. uggghh the day is already

half over because we were out so late last night.

dang it. we missed the tour by the german, but

seeing as that is completely unhelpful, i don't

care at all. i can see rome on my own in the next

few days. so today is the diploma review for

students that are doing their theses. its at the

hotel where zaha and patrick are staying. moritz

and i went over there to see the work and get a

glimpse of zaha. and get one we did. she didnt

attend the review, of course, but she did make an

appearance. haha.

she walks out into the lounge area where reviews

are going on, and yells "PATRICK!!" like he is her

little pet. apparently she does this alot. he stops

the review and goes to talk with her. they walk

towards to front of the hotel...he mentiones

something to her...and shE blows up! meanwhile all

of us are watching what is taking place. (and by

the way...seeing zaha face to face is a little

scary...if u dont know what i mean..look up zaha

hadid on google and you will understand. but it was

cool nonetheless to get to see her finally). she

then yells really loud, "WELL, I WAS INVITED TO

LUNCH, AND I CANNOT STAY! SHIT!!" and then she

continues to yell so loud that everyone in the

hotel is looking at her to see what the heck is

going on. haha. so she left for lunch, and patrick

comes back in smiling. hahaha. there was no way she

would show up for our review the next day if she

didnt even care about the diploma reviews. geeez.

stayed there for a bit more and then went exploring

again. found the piazza del popollo where a protest

was taking place. SO MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT THERE

SINGING AND YELLING IN ITALIAN ABOUT LABOR AND

STUFF. very cool. climbed up a hill overlooking the

piazza and the prostest. saw the whole city again

at dusk. geez this place is so amazing! walked over

to the spanish steps. really cool, except there was

a stupid exhibition about the falling of the berlin

wall set up ON THE STEPs. does that make sense?

wierd place to do that.

later met up with bin and antonio for some dinner.

met at the fontana de trevi, a famous and massive

fountain somehwere in rome. went for dinner.

italian of course. lasagna this time. wine

included. sat outside in an alley. amazing. cant

get enough of this culture. i could sit out here

for hours, or days. after we went for a beer in

preparation for the zahas museum opening party that

we were invited to! this was going to be great.

dance party with zaha in the house. yaaaa. found a

really cool cafe with moritz and antonio (guy from

spain) that was covered with vines, and filled with

people. they were even coving the street so no cars

could get through. crazy. stayed for a bit but then

found a jazz bar up the street, where i basically

felt like i was in new orleans all of a sudden.

didnt need that in italy, so we peaced out pretty

quick and got ready for the party action.

how many architecture students does it take to find

a museum? about 15, apparently. it took a while,

but we got there. and zaha had already rolled in.

she looked pissed to be there. they had her dressed

up in clothes a 21 year old should be wear, and

were photographing her like she was angelina jolie.

and she haaated it. bin and i were loving it

though. i ran behind her a few times while bin took

my picture looking like a retard in the background.

it was great. bin eventually got a real picture

with her...but she didnt even look at the camera.

she was looking somewhere else...in a realllly

uninterested manner. :) figures. the museum was

amazing. interesting design for sure. after

exploring it was dance off time. at this point it

was about one in the morning, and our whole studio,

along with all the employees of zaha hadid

architects, were dancing like crazy. it was a

blast. kind of fell in love too. not really...but

ya. didnt stop dancing till about 6 am, when the

party ended. time to find a bus back home. this

took about an hour for some reason. got back to the

hostel at 7 am. ugh.

DAY 1 ROMA

met the whole crew at the vatican. got a tour from

a guy that only speaks german. completely

unhelpful. st peters square is pretty much amazing.

and the church is even more amazing. the scale is

so huge its incredible. at this point in the tour

we ditched the german and went on our own tour thru

the building. it was great. a group of us explored

every little area, even the dome. we climbed up

there and saw the entire city of rome, and the

vatican city that surrounded us. yesssss. it will

be the best panoramic picture ever. not only that

but pavel, the russian, all of a sudden became a

model. he kept asking me to take pictures of him

overlooking the city while he posed in "serious

model poses"....haha.

and exploring the city was great after that. i

couldnt imagine any place i would have rather been.

walking thru amazing cobblestone streets (all

streets here are cobble) with little flats up above

and shutters opening up with clothes lines coming

out of them. down on the street are little

pizzerias and gelato stores everywhere (and of

course, i got three scoops immediately). and

everyone is say grazie and ciao all of a sudden

instead of danke and tschuss. thaaaats getting

confusing. explored some more. ran into the

PANTHEON. no big deal. oh hi, pantheon. its pretty

amazing to see some of the greatest architectural

works that exist in the world. us architects get a

little excited about all that :)

tried my first real italian pizza tonight. with

salami. its really good, but im not sure how i feel

about the ultra thin crispy crust. its so thin, its

like a cracker. which is fine, but i could probably

eat a second pizza. and the wine....oh the wine. i

think people here drink wine more than water. like

wine is flowing in the local river or something. im

okay with that...so by this time mortiz, pavel and

i were completely exhausted. we only had a couple

hrs sleep from the drive the night before and the

wine and pizza was making us crash. moritz fell

asleep at the dinner table. but we roamed around

some more after dinner, saw a few more interesting

buildings, including the colesseum and the forum.

no big deal. had a little more wine with the group

as we toured around and explored. contemplated life

back in the ancient times for a while. couldn't

help it as i was walking thru ancient history in

every direction i took.

by 9 pm we were dead tired. so we went back to the

hostel for a nap, hoping to get back up and run

around the city later than night. woke up at 11.

considered going back to sleep. but rallied and

woke up moritz. the russian wasn't moving. he was

unwilling to rally. so he passed back out, and we

met up with some of the class. walked for a

while..met up with more of the class...walked

again...lost some of the class...walked a little

farther...found more of the class in a college area

of rome. tons of bars and cafes and

restaurants...and young people. there's a courtyard

in the middle of it all where people just kick it

outside and have drinks and talk. we all went

there. eventually our whole studio was there (about

50 people) just having a good time. it was

AWESOME. so much fun goofing off with a bunch of

random people from our class. not to mention

screwing with the italians there was sell random

items that ALMOST nobody needs. except for me, of

course. one of my friends in class bought a head

massager from one of the sellers.....and it was the

most amazing thing ive ever experienced. and only 2

euros! i had to have one. so i did. ahhhh. amazing.

(but later pavel loved it so much that he stole

it...i think). so we were out till about 4 running

around thru that area...and peeing on a random

street every now and then. my friend saara had to

pee so much that we had to coin on of the streets

"pee street". it was a perfect spot. no one around,

lots of cars to hide in between, dark and

spooky....PERFECT! see, in italy, cafes don't

really like it when you pee in their restrooms, if

they have one at all. if they do, they will

probably charge you. i think they want people to

pee on the street. and everyone does, because in

many places in rome, everything just smells like

pee...kind of like our room...hmmmmmm.

ROMA UPDATES

sorry i havent posted in a while! ive been gone,

but here are my previous writings while i was away

on my italy trip....

now its off to rome! we were supposed to leave at

7:30 tonite, after i woke up from my day-long

nap..but moritz never showed up on time. by the

time he got to school (10:30 pm) i kind of knew

what happened. basically his car got towed a week

before but he didnt know, so he had to go search

and rescue his little car that we were supposed to

drive to rome. haha. sucks though, cause it cost

him 340 euros and he stepped in dog crap on the way

over there. not a good start to the night! so we

finally left at like 11 pm...pavel, moritz and I (a

russan from moscow who is hilarious, and german

from achen who appears to be on energy pills

constantly, and an american from LA who doesnt know

anything about driving thru europe at

night....amazing). and i was the first driver!

driving a stick shift little car from vienna to

rome is awesome! i had never drove in europe

before, so this was gonna be sweet.

and it was, but also a long long night. i drove

till 6 in the morning to bologna, italy while

listening to techno the entire time. we passed thru

some of the alps, and went thru a lot of tunnels.

couldn't see much though, as it was obviously dark.

moritz loves techno. after that i passed out for a

few hours, and then all of a sudden we were near

rome. the sun was shining and the wineries

surrounding us were amazing. it was like a whole

different world.

found our way to the hostel quickly before heading

off to the vatican. its wierd being here all of a

sudden. i mean, you can drive 10 hours in

california and still be in california. and thats

just a state. crazy. anyways...found our crappy

hostel (but what can you expect, right) and got a

room that smelled like pee consistently. it was

great! the italian lady there seemed as if she was

mexican and basically her entire extended family

was living there. so strange. but whatever we don't

care about that. gotta meet everyone at the

VATICAN. boom.

oh ya, and i must also say that we didnt anticipate

the cost of certain things in terms of driving a

car thru europe. as amazing as it is, these

countries don't like drving very much. they seems

to discourage it with their stupid highway tolls.

we paid 42 euros for 10 hours of driving, just to

be present on the highway. stuuuupid. and then, of

course, we realized that we can't just park our car

anywhere. we have to pay for that too. so

everywhere we went, we were paying like 20 euros

per day. not much when you split it, but it all

adds up in the end. whaaatever.

a litte studio update...

here's some updated renderings of the shoes and bags, and some research we did for our chair design...the silversurfer lady is BACK!

leaving for roma!

its 8 pm here in vienna, and im about to drive all night to rome. its gonna be great. i just slept from 10 am to 5 pm, and im ready to make it happen. hopefully we make it there alive. its going to be a loooong night. pray that u see another post on this wall in the next couple days
ciao..

roma tomorrow...

yeaaaah going to italy tomorrow night! we are road-tripping it in a night. 10.5 hrs. yes! im at school right now trying to finish this stupid project. ugggh. im sick of doing it. but we have to potentially present to "the zaha" on sunday so we have to do something right. im stoked about this trip though. we stay in rome for four days with the class, and then when they all fly by back, three of us are going to drive to florence, siena, and venice, and the possibly take a scenic route through the austrian alps. so all in all we will be gone for 7 or 8 days.

buuttt, im still at school. its now 6 am. we are not finished with our work. and someone is screaming on the other side of the building. and someone else is sleeping on a table. where did my roommate go? this is stupid. in 12 hours we are leaving for rome, but we are DRIVING. this means we will be awake all night again. so basically, whenever we get done, we will be sleeping for the rest of the day so we can stay awake and trade off driving for the night. we will probably listen to lots of techno, because that's just what people do here. im not opposed, however, because it definitely keeps me awake.

sunday morning

forced myself to get up early this morning, even after not sleeping much this weekend. wanted to go to church. hadn't been to vienna christian center since the retreat like a month ago. missed the people and the service. it's awesome there. i can see god is there for sure. people from all over the world come together in one room for one reason. its awesome. and they are getting a new building...the first service is there next weekend. they are struggling to get it finished up, in terms of construction...so i think im gonna help out a little this week before i head to rome. its cool to be apart of their transition to a larger building and time of growth. theres not many churches that ive been to where you sit down and...on your left is a woman from nigeria dressed in traditional african clothes..on your right is a south african that knows french and is really of british descent...in front of you is a romanian who survived growing up in communist romania before moving to vienna, and behind me is a costa rican and and american on exchange, just here on a mission to serve the church. what the heck. that's so cool. people in this church are excited about god and really want to follow jesus no matter what. its great to be apart of!

wish i had some more time to kick it there. buuut im at school again! we have to do something by the time i go to rome! i dont know what that is but when my group shows up i'll find out!

GRAZZZZZZZZ

so on friday night 6 of us decided to head to graz this morning. its a smaller town about 4 hrs by the slow train away from vienna. there's lots of interesting architecture there. its good for a day trip from the city. but instead of going home to get some sleep before we left at 4:30 am for the train station, i decided to hang out at industrial design techno party in Greg Lynn's studio upstairs in the school. that was pretty cool, but it immediately led to meeting up with sarah, her boyfriend, and some friends from school at the "whole in the wall" voodoo bar on my way home. then it was off to the "hotdog stand" bar that actually has a hotdog stand in the bar. kinda cool. since it was getting really late, i made the decision to just stay out until i had to go meet bin and huan and the others at the train station. had my hotdog breakfast at the bar and walked home at 4 am to meet them. changed really quick, and walked to the subway station w/the roommates. i was sooo tired. stupid idea. it was like oxford deja vu....

we made it to the train station, but it was hard to find, so we definitely missed the train by 30 seconds. it was about 5:30 am at this time. sooo tired. we figured out a way to get there and back through different trains at different times, and basically this required us to make three different stops along the way over a period of 7 hours. haha. so we did it anyways (minus huan, who decided to head back to bed). it was crazy. we left at 6 am and got to graz around 1 pm. i did a little bit of sleeping in between these stops, but it was pretty annoying getting woken up all the time to change trains and walk around in the cold every now and then. there was some wait time in the middle, and we spent it cruising around little towns that we were stuck at. they were actually reallllly cool. one of them was so cool that we considered just staying there for the day eating snacks. mmmmm snacks. one snack we did try was this hot, sweet, wine that only comes around about this time of the year. it was wine. it was hot. it was sweet. interesting. not only that but the train ride on the way to these cities was beautiful. we were next to the alps, cruising thru mountains that were covered with trees changing colors completely, with larger mountains in the background beginning to show signs of snow. below all this was endless farmland with little traditional style austrian architecture. so awesome.

and graz was pretty amazing. saw some awesome contemporary architecture. for example, a blob building that kind of creeps through a part of the old city and houses some andy warhol artwork. nice. the six of us explored that for a while and then some other random pavilion on the river. but then...the castle on the hill. boom. it was awesome. overlooks the entire city...kind of reminded me of munich. stayed up there for while, joking around and doing stupid things as usual, and then headed out to a UN Studio building at the university there. its a glass concert hall. the first ever. its amazing. the concrete formwork was some of the coolest work i've ever seen. snuck around inside and watched some lady give a presentation to a class. then it was time to get some food. went to a little cafe and had a schnitzel burger while watching a little futbol on the tube there. this schnitzel burger was like the greasiest things i've ever eaten. it was PERFECT. topped it off with a couple bottles of wine while walking around the city towards the train station afterwards...everyone seems to love the idea of being able to have a drink on the street with no problems. kind of funny. by this time we were ready to head back. it was like 7 pm and i was about ready to die for exhaustion. but even so, i didnt sleep on the trains we took back. we all kicked it for hours and talked about complete randomness. it was great. train rides are actually pretty funny when you can make fun of eachother consistently...especially bin. he and i have a lot of fun together just making fun of eachother and joking around. its great. im hoping we can kick it a lot back in LA when he returns in February. also, im hoping Monica, a girl from LA that goes to school with bin, will be able to meet up with us when we get back as well. it's nice meeting some new people from california out here that i can easily keep in touch with when im back in the states.

so now im home, its 12 am. i am dead tired. when i think about the moments we spent running to the train station early this morning right before we missed it, it seems like 2 days ago. im finished with saturday. it was ridiculously long, but worth it. all this crap only cost me 30 euros. pretty awesome. would have been even cheaper if we didn't miss that first train, but hey...this story wouldnt be as interesting if we made that train and went straight to graz and back.

k im going to bed. goodnight people.

last day with lizzie

for our final day of adventures, liz and i hit the leopold museum to check out the edvard munch and gustav klimpt exhibitions. these guys are pretty famous artists, so we spend a few hours there checking out their work and staying out of the rain (because it wasn't snowing anymore...not as fun). after staring at artwork for a while we were pretty focused on eating food, and there was a great desire to eat bread and cheese. we had about an hour until we were going to meet up with Sebastian, a friend that was on exchange at our high school back in the day...so we hit the Naschmarkt, a super ultra long outdoor market that sells all kinds of random fresh food and drink, and clothing that looks like it comes from mexico. we were gonna buy bread and cheese there but we didnt have much time to enjoy it, so we bought instead the wierdest things we could find in a display case-- cheese-stuffed tomatoes (i think it was cheese) and fish wrapped spanish olives................hmmmmm. oh ya and 1 euro mini bottles of wine for each of us. haha. that was an experience. quickly ate the food there (FISHY, by the way...ughhh) and then drank our wine on the way to meet Sebastian at the operahouse. the weather was still cold and rainy but we loved it. liz was really enjoying just being in the atmosphere. its a good, temporary change from LA. its probably 90 degrees there right now.

anyways, met up with sebastian at starbucks (figures)...and then i was off to school for a little bit, leaving them to catch up for a couple hours. after taking care of dumb school things, we all met up again and went to an awesome czeck bar that served unpateurized Pilsner Urquell beer. pretty cool actually. talked with sebastian for a long time about high school, politics, religion, austria, the EU, the future, etc. it was awesome. although sebastian and i didnt know eachother well in high school, we remembered eachother for sure. it was just cool to see what's happened to someone in the last seven years, you know? he's studying business and law right now in vienna. not bad at all....

after a few strong beers it was definitely time to move. currently there is a student protest going on in vienna. students are upset about the current conditions in the education provided by the government. if you didn't already know, college is pretty much free here (i should have done my masters out here instead of getting a ton of loans in the US). even though it is free, students feel that they are not getting much from it. i can see that. the facilities here at the applied art school SUCK. and no one is organized. its pretty awful at times. so i can see why they are kinda pissed. so anyways, we went to Wien University and checked out the protest. there were tons of people there listening to someone speak...pretty cool. checked the library and some other buildings as well. and then it was time to bid sebastian goodbye. he had a ton of work that he had just put off for four hours. after, liz and i finally got our wish to eat bread and cheese, but it definitely wasnt the best bread and cheese, because all the stores were closed at this point. EXCEPT the one grocery store by my hostel in the subway station. haha. a ghetto little place, but it has bread and cheese nonetheless. took it home, along with like 8 chocolate bars for liz to give as gifts... :). went back and ate our fill until my heart wanted to stop beating, and then we hit the sack for the final night. (by the way, i got a second blanket from our renters and this was life-changing for us in terms of sharing a twin bed!). we couldn't sleep, because it was kinda early, but we knew we had to get up at 5:30 to get liz to the airport in time. so we laid there, like sardines again, but warm ones this time, talking a bit and starting at the ceiling. AND THEN THE ALARM WENT OFF. ugghhhh. so early! took liz to the train station and then went straight back to bed for four hours. Liz was off to Madrid, and our adventures were over. but it was definitely an awesome three days!

now i have a lot of school work to do. i havent done anything for a week. and we leave for our rome roadtrip in a week from now. haha.

liz is in the house

and now liz is here! had to meet her the next morning at cafe pruckel by my school. thought i would be there early to kick it for a while but nooooo...somehow she figured out my directions better than i could have imagined and she was there waiting for me.

let me tell you that we had an awesome time in the last few days. i didnt go to school for another three days after budapest so it nice to be out in the city doing whatever i hadn't done yet. we first hit schonbrunn palace, which is like the most famous landmark in the city. i hadn't been there yet though..so it was perfect. this place is massive. and full of awesomeness. even mozart played here when he was six years old. we explored the palace, complete with bedrooms, bathrooms, and ballrooms. and we definitely busted out an amazing waltz on the ballroom floor of this amazing dining room. ya we are THAT cool. explored the grounds outside, played in the leaves that were falling everywhere, ran through a maze, climbed a small mounted to get to this building called the gloriette, which overlooks the city...and played in the childrens playground for...a really long time. probably too long. but it was awesome. lots of laughing involved. always good!

afterwards we found a bar serving the famous weinerschnitzel and of course...beer. perfect combo after a long day of palace-exploring. surprisingly liz wasnt tired yet from the jet-lag...but that was about to change. not only was the schnitzel perfecto..but it was filling. and the beer made both of us sleepy. but we were planning on going to see the ucla architecture chair speak at the school i am at in vienna. kind of a coincidence that he was there. so after we had some delicious german beer, classic austrian food, and random conversation, we walked over and met my friends at school. liz was feeling good after a brisk walk outside on the way to the lecture. but right when we got inside that extra-warm building everything changed. about 3.5 seconds into the talk, liz was passed out next to me. little did she know that she had two more hours to attempt to stay awake through. haha. not a chance. i basically just watched her dose off and nod her head while trying to keep herself upright for the next couple hours. it was great. and after she was pretty much done for. so she, the roommates, and i went back to the hostel to kick it and call it a day. the plan was that liz would crash at our hostel and one of us would sleep on the floor or something..but that instantly became difficult when my renter wasn't around to give me extra blankets. so what did we do?? improvise, of course. share one blanket...on one twin bed. sounds stupid, i know...and you know what? it definitely was. but hilarious for sure! we were like sardines the whole night, and cold sardines i might add...because the heater decided that this night would be the night that it would turn off on its own. of course. that kind of thing has to happen, right?

and since the screen was down over the window, there was no real indication that morning ever came the next day. it was pitch black in our room FOREVER. so when we got up and thought it was like 9 am, it was actually noon. if you do the math right, this means that liz slept about 14.5 hours.........

but there was still plenty of time to see some good stuff. hit the bakery and ate tons of bread/pastries/snacks for breakfast and we to explore some of the downtown buildings and churches that are must-see for liz. today was the day earth decided to snow in vienna. this was pretty dope because the whole time we walked around, while it was freeeezing, everything was awesome because snow flakes were falling on us. saw a lot of cool buildings, and took a lot of funny pictures, as usual. found a series of statues in front of parliament that depict a man seriously punching a horse in a variety of positions. uppercut..right hook...hamaker...you name it. this guy was dominating horses all around parliament. so we dominated some too! explored some streets and alleyways on the way to the opera house, and then made the decision to buy show tickets from some random guy outside the operahouse instead of buying from people in the operahouse. we didnt' get scammed or anything (well, i guess it depends on how you define the word scam), but it wasn't EXACTLY what we had in mind. the reason we chose this show, over the one at the real operahouse, however, was because the operahouse was only showing ballet, whereas this other super-amazing show was going to have music, ballet, waltz, and opera all in one!!! sound to good to be true?? maybe....

but what's a visit to a traditional austrian concert without an awesome story to go with it...

but of course i can't forget talk about what we did in between paying 28 euros for the concert outside the operahouse and actually attending the concert 5 hours later.

found an awesome cafe, called cafe central...and seriously sat there for like 2.5 hrs and just drank coffee, people watched, and eat soup and bread. it was awesome. i ordered some special house coffee drink that had some apricot liquour in it. turned out to taste like i was sipping on a shot of vodka. :) it was reallllly good though. finally we were kicked out because the table became reserved. we weren't good enough to sit there anymore...so we went on an adventure to the danube river for an hour or so before the concert. its a cool place to sit on a bench and look at the river or go for a run on the trails there. kinda like being at caldwell park in the RDG, but a little better. found a grocery store to get some snack for the concert (as if it was a movie where we had to sneak candy into), and ended up with chocolate, a beer, and a radler (a radler is half beer half lemony-goodness). walked back towards the concert place with beers in hand because, well, you can do that in europe!

so, back to the concert. kinda sketch when we got there, but cool nonetheless. we expected a large room, but noooo. it was soo tiny. we were "vip" which actually just meant that we could sit in the first three rows....because there were only like 20 rows total! haha. so we were right in front on the TINY stage, with a bunch of musicians cramped up there and looking really upset about being there. it was obviously a tourist trap that we had entered. the lights didnt even dim. it was bright as day in there when they started playing a little mozart. but i must note that they were awesome musicians. they play really well, so that was good. but the whole situation was a little awkward, and cheesy. the worst part was when they brought out the ballet dancers. i mean, there was ABSOLUTELY no room for them on stage, but somehow they danced there anyways. all the musicians had to move back to the wall as much as they could to allow for the ballet dancers to have some space to twirl a little. haha. so stupid. but hilarious to watch. i scanned to room to see what other people thought. everyone seems to have the "WTF" face on. and so did we! but all in all is was a cool experience, and much for fun to talk about than the "real" ballet at the "real" operahouse.

afterwards we met up with some school friends and went to a bar i hadn't been to yet. it was a little dive cafe playing the best music ever...this old lady had all her record on a bookshelf and she was more busy changing those out then serving us beer. but serve us beer she did! it was a great place, and we got to know my friend alex, a bulgarian, a little better. sat there and talked with him about complete randomness for a couple hours until it was time for him to ride home and time for us to catch the night bus. walked for a while...found piles of leaves...played in them (of course)...got to the bus stop....thought we had 10 minutes to wait...went to the kebap stand...got a delicious kebap...the bus came during that period....we missed the bus....decided to start walking home...bad idea....caught a cab...home in 5 minutes. boom. stupid kebap!

PEST PART II

so then i got up and we went to budapest. i just wanted to sleep. but noooooo. ehh who cares. seriously budapest is gorgeous. the danube river is beautiful, the castles are awesome, and the bridges and amazing. it's picturesque for sure...basically is was like visiting one of the kingdoms in lord of the rings, minus the bows/arrow/hobbits/etc. it was sunny the whole weekend, so barna showed us around the river on the pest side downtown (where he lives, for 200 euros/month) and then hit the buda side by walking across a bridge that resembles a scaled down version on the brooklyn bridge. explored a castle and sat on a cliff overlooking the whole buda side while talking about the fall of communism in hungary. barna was telling me how they had a revolution three years ago involving some corruption in the government and how he was apart of it. they were running around fighting and stuff. yess. that's awesome! saw the inside of a really amazing church, but the interesting part was that where jesus is supposed to be on the altar (in statue form, of course) there was an old king that basically formed the city 1000 years ago and apparently was a strong catholic. interesing place to put him though...:) i must also say that every statue we saw involved some human we had never heard of, and a horse. we concluded after seeing this a million times that, in actuality, the horse is the important part of each statue. there was something amazing this certain horse did.........hmmm

after exploring the entire city, we hit the most popular hungarian destination in budapest...the BATHS. they have hot springs there, and they basically build a whole classical temple around it, which tons and tons of pools full of tons and tons of russians. this is really eastern europe now, and apparently lots of russians either vacation in hungary, or have relatives there. many people there used to speak russian, including barna's mom, because during communist reign, well, you know it goes...

but that baths were awesome. switching from hot water to a sauna to cold water to hot water blah blah blah was great. just kicked it there for three hours! europeans love this place. i must say i loved it too. and so did bin, especially when the fountains "peed" on him. haha. he likes that kind of stuff.

after we went to an amazing hungarian cafe that served some interesting hungarian and serbian dishes. i don't really even know what i ate, but i do know that it was muy deliciouso. it was some sort of meat with potatoes..and the atmosphere was great. just a bunch of hungarians drinking beer and smoking in a crowded little cafe that looked like it was about to fall down. nice.

after, it was off to a halloween/bollywood themed dance party that actually just turned out to be a typical techno dance party. still cool, just not "bollywood" cool. :) drinks were buy one get one free for a half hour when we got there, so we got a couple extra for the rest of the night w/out have to spend many more forints (forints are the hungarian currency). did a little chillin, did a little techno dancing, and it was all good. but at one point the dj was playing some kind of slower dance songs and they were making me sleepy (and i gotta mention that barna was not enjoying his girlfriend's company...cause he doesn't ever like to go out with her..hhaha), so we left and went to another place with a live band. of course, the lead singer of the band was dressed as a vampire. the band was wierd. they played odd things like american big band swing. what the?? it was pretty cool, but no one was really dressed up there except the lead singer so we peaced out and went back to barna's to hang out.

next day..woke up at 12. didnt move till 1. searched for lunch. but it was sunday. sundays suck for finding lunch. we walked a good 1 hour brisk walk around the city and finally found the most awesome place you could ever imagine...that's right...the most awesome place you could ever imagine! hungarian beef stew with homemade noodle balls and a pickled cucumber salad is the bomb. checked out a libeskind building and heroes square, which of course is fulled of famous horses with some weird men on them. by then the day was almost over, and it was time to eat again. so on our way out we hit a place that served a little goulash..yeaaah goulash. its like a soup that has meat and vegetables in it. good stuff. and finally barna wanted to show us a romantic part of the city...up at freedom statue (kind of like statue of liberty but smaller and overlooking the whole city). it was quite romantic. bin and i were able to hold eachother tightly while watching cars go over the mini-brooklyn bridge. haha. ok so at this point it was time to go home. and we did. got home in like 2 hours because barna was going like 10000 kilometers an hour back to austria...

budapessssssst

ok so my recent post separting buda and pest in the title is actually partly how things are in budapest. there is a buda side and a pest side, and both of them used to be separate cities! and they are really different, i must add. one is like the suburbia countryside/castle on a hill and the other is like downtown i guess. anyways....

BUDAPEST IS AWESOME. by far the most beautiful city that i've seen in europe. who would have thought that a place called hungary would be so cool? besides being clever and saying "i was completely satisfied in hungary", i didn't think there was much more it had to offer...

we left saturday morning at about 9 am with barna (a buddy from class who grew up in budapest) and his girlfriend, who is hungarian and from canada. wierd. anyways, i was so exhaused from the night before, and the night before that....because a bunch of us from school decided to go out and celebrate being done with presentations at the imfamous "wunderbar". good times there, and then off to some halloween party at a basement in some little hole in the wall bar. a group of us from school went, danced quite a bit, made fools of ourselves, and watched austrians celebrate halloween in a sort-of boring way. for instance..when they dress up, if at all, they actually dress up as witches, vampires, and ghosts. i don't know if anyone in america has done that for 10 years. we always try to do the wierdest, most retarded thing we can think of that will get the most laughs! definitely not the ghost costume...anyways, hung out with some new people from school, all really interesting, taught a chinese girl how to dance (also quite interesting), and stayed way too late for only sleeping 2 hours the previous night. had to take the night bus home again. dang.

sergio and i went to grab the bus...and he was being lazy so he rode the bus like one stop with me, but didn't have a bus pass, and what are the odds that a lady would be checking passes this time? haha..so as she comes up to make him pay a fine, we came to a stop, and he ran off the bus before she could do anything. awesome! and then i went home. the end!

of the night...