It's a hard life

Hi there internet, how are you today?

Over the last week my room has slowly transitioned from floordrobe to fully furnished (ie it has a bed, a desk, some shelves and some drawers). This has been a somewhat arduous not to mention reasonably expensive task, and I hope I don't have to do it again any time soon! I hadn't realised how spoiled I had been up to now by furnished accommodation...

I'll be honest with you, I still haven't really gone out that much, although I have visited the odd restaurant/ beer dispensary with various Vienna friends who have had the decency not to move away (unlike most of my previous acquaintances here). The weather has been monotonously lovely, apart from when it dipped down to 14 or so degrees at the beginning of last week and everyone briefly thought it was the end of the world. We're comfortably above 20 now though.

I went in for lunch with my colleagues (weird to say, even if they do use the word a lot more often in german than in english) last Monday. They seem a very friendly bunch, much given to jokes and silliness, thank god. Not that I'd expect even a bunch of people who had partially left geology behind for the lofty peaks of thermodynamics and materials science to be anything else, really. But it was nice not to feel like I was sitting an exam by talking to them.

As luck would have it, they were planning a small research group seminar at the weekend, so I went along. One of the Professors owned a beautiful wooden house in a valley near Zell am See (Salzburg area) and so it was that a week before even starting I got to hang out with a bunch of geologists in an alpine house, with gorgeous views from every window. Also there was beer, schnapps, bread, cheese and meat. Oh, and progress reports from various students and postdocs on their research to date.

Although all the talks were pretty darn technical, I had at least heard of all the words before, so I didn't feel completely lost. It's really good just to switch my head back into excited about science mode, out of obsessed with furniture and application forms mode. It was also really good to spend such a big chunk of time extensively speaking german. Although it will take a while to get used to the sentence 'and of course Tom's project is looking at (such and such a thing)...' and having everyone look at me, whatever language it happens to be spoken in.

All in all I can't wait to go in tomorrow to start thinking about my own work and someday soon be able to talk about research successes and failures of my own!

Der Tom

Repeat Offender

So I moved to Vienna again. Which means more posts on this blog! The fabric of reality likes it much better when what I am writing and where I am writing it agrees with the blog title.

Although literally nobody reading this could have failed to discover this fact, I have in fact moved to Vienna to start a PhD in Geology at the University of Vienna. But that doesn't start for a couple of weeks yet, so I have had plenty of time to get my doing stuff shoes on and, well, do stuff. Note that this isn't the kind of scintillating, picture filled cultural voyaging stuff, rather the travelling to offices to get things signed, opening bank accounts, getting SIM cards and buying furniture stuff.

Currently (well, until Tuesday if the delivery counter at Ikea are to be believed) my living quarters consist of a very spacious (14 square meters) room with nothing in it apart from variously strewn about belongings and a matress I'm borrowing of a flatmate. I like it because a) it is a roof over my head, which wasn't a certainty a month ago and b) because it is central enough to be near what feels like EVERYTHING. I haven't adjusted out of London mode yet, being able to reach pretty much anywhere in central Vienna within half an hour and some of the most impressive architecture and parks of the Ringstrasse in around 15 minutes leads me to occasionally giggle under my breath like a mad man while I am (briefly) on the way to places. I'm getting to use the tram a lot here as well, which is mostly just nice because it is fun to go in trams.

There is a kitchen, WITH an oven and WITHOUT any form of shower/ bath etc (unfortunately as I discovered while property hunting, that latter is not a given). My flatmates seem very nice, obviously one of their best features being the fact that they are fluent in german. Our conversations havent ranged too widely yet, partly because they are both very busy working and studying for their exams. Thus is revealed the downside of the Austrian 'choose when you want to do your exam from these three dates' policy, you may be able to postpone your exam, but then you have to do a bunch of revision in September just before the next year starts....

We have had the odd conversation about how great Europe is and how english people are lame stick in the muds for not hanging out in it as often, and I promise I didn't have that conversation JUST to piss off Peter... I will say that I learned you can choose to go abroad to study for half a year or a full year in another country, when you are only 17 or 18. Even if you don't know the language to start with. When I asked how many people do it, the answer was 'oh, only a few in each year'. Can you imagine if we were allowed to do that in the UK? Would anyone go? I wouldn't have gone.

Aaanyway, I am hoping that having to speak at least a little german every day will go a long way towards improving my casual comprehension. I already learnt the german for semolina! It is Gries / Weizengries, if you were curious.

I could go on about how nice it is here but heck, you already knew that, didn't you?

Der Tom