If this was a livejournal...

... then my 'current mood' would be 'relieved'. Today I decided it was time to stop sending repeatedly unanswered emails to my coordinator and actually try phoning him. I had been putting this off because I don't really like phone calls if I can avoid them, and especially not phone calls in German, to someone who for all I knew could have had the worst and least intelligible accent this side of, well, Vienna is probably ground zero for unintelligible Deutsch actually. Never mind.

So anyhow, I phoned him, and I am now going to meet with him on monday afternoon. And he gave every indication of understanding everything I was saying, and didn't try switching to english! (This may be bad if he knows none, but you do not get to head an academic department without passable english I would think). Monday afternoon is after the supposed deadline for applying for courses, but he does not seem to think this will be a problem. I was confused when he said he had received my emails though, because why in hell would he just read them and not even reply with his visiting hours?? Hmph.

Other gargantuan achievements today include (and are in fact limited to) obtaining and charging with money the card we have to use to pay for the washing machines. Apparently coins would be too low tech or something. It does eliminate the change problem I guess, even if we do have to go to the bank to put more money on it. Washing is cheap (€1,60 for washing, drying free!), I may not actually wait until all my clothes are dirty and then wash them all at once now!

It is erasmus orientation week, which is like freshers week with better people, cheaper drinks and constant repetition of the three most important definitions of one's personality, to whit: nationality, home town, and course of study. On monday I went on a tour of the university led by a gloriously vague man who was obviously more concerned with fun than academia during his time as a student. This was followed by a semi regrettable trip to the erasmus club night, overcrowded, too loud and terrible music, but if you get there early drinks are actually free. It is mighty weird to be standing by the bar, cash in hand, and have a random cocktail thrust at you before you can even open your mouth to order. I left this at around ten and went on a long meandering walk through the near deserted streets of central Vienna (not sure if people don't go out late on Mondays, or more likely all the bars are further out of the centre than in London) with a new Finnish friend. If you will allow me to put on my T-rex voice a second: 'Guys! I have learnt more about Finland this week than I ever expected to know, it seems like a pretty OK country to me!'


Interestingly, though we all do a fair amount of drinking round here, nobody I know has taken it upon themselves to drink themselves into an embarrassing stupor, and were someone to suggest this as the sole goal of a night out, I think they would be looked at most oddly. This is made all the more topical following the extremely sad death of a UCL fresher after a fresher's event last weekend. It looks like he probably had an existing unknown health problem, rather than drinking himself to death, and he may not have imbibed much or anything at all, but still, there are many Sun etc articles recounting with horror and disapproval the plethora of cheap drink nights and adverts geared towards students that merely boast about how wasted it will be possible to get.

I don't really know what to think, except that there is something slightly off with the British attitude to drinking and yet I do not think it will ever be possible to change it, it is just what we do. The drink prices in Vienna and the ease with which beer can be obtained, combined with the bebevolent attitude to people sitting down and drinking it in public, are somewhat refreshing, and make an interesting counter argument to recent UK arguments about cutting down on supermarket booze deals etc.