Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

So we haven’t had internet until today (Tuesday). On Saturday we did something Will calls “dry blogging.” This is where you write a blog post to be posted at a later date. I wrote this on Saturday and it mentions many of the same things Will talked about:

So, we’re here. It is Saturday night. We’re both doing what Will calls “dry blogging.” That’s where you write a blog post in a word processor to publish on the blog later, since we don’t have Internet in our room yet. We got back from downtown a little bit ago, where there is some kind of little festival going on. We each had a little dish of currywurst and a little roll of bread and we shared a big can of beer. Then we each got an ice cream cone and walked home.

Earlier, we went to Ikea to get some housewares. It’s nice to have bedsheets, towels, and a few dishes. On our way home from Ikea, the street car wasn’t running because of the events going on, so we were supposed to take a bus, but I let us get on the wrong one. We rode that for a few stops before getting off to figure out which bus we should actually be on. We quickly figured it out; however, we had to wait a half hour for the next one. Also, we had a big bag of stuff from Ikea to schlep around.

Good thing we had a map. I love our map. We got it from the hostel the first morning. And it includes a map of the public transportation system. I love our map.  In addition to the map, I have Will, who seems to have a super human memory of where things are and how to get there.

But we did get back from Ikea later than we wanted to. We were hoping to go to a supermarket to get some real food, but it was closed by the time we got there, and they are also closed on Sundays. We will have to either buy food from a gas station or go to restaurants tomorrow. I think we’re both looking forward to getting real food on Monday.

Friday we got up at the hostel at 8:00. We had breakfast, got our map, and checked out. We headed to our new home and got moved in. We didn’t stay in long. We wandered around downtown a bit and went to an Internet café to check in with people and check email. We had lunch at a pizzaria and looked around for bedsheets. There was also a neat church we looked inside. Another neat thing was outside the church there were tons of beanbags, blankets, and books that people could borrow and just sit and read. We wanted to go grocery shopping before going home, but we decided the only place we knew of was too far away.

The initial traveling was uneventful. We went from Minneapolis to Chicago to Stockholm to Frankfurt. Then we took a five-hour train ride to Linz. We took a taxi from the train station to the hostel. I couldn’t understand a word the taxi driver said. Since then, I’ve been doing okay language wise. No one has asked me to repeat myself so far, but I’ve only had short interactions, such as asking questions at train stations and in busses and ordering food. Generally, if there is context, I can understand people pretty well … besides the taxi driver.

Update: today (Tuesday) we went to the bank to set up a bank account.  I was a little nervous, but everything went really well.  We did the interaction entirely in German and the woman who helped us was very nice.  She said my German was good, but I’ve heard it said your language isn’t really good until people stop telling you it’s good.  I dunno.