The Austrian Stare

Kent, one of the advisors of the program, mentioned a phenomenon which he calls "The Austrian Stare." There are many things people do here that would be deemed socially unacceptable in the US. Staring is one of them. At first I thought it was because I'm an American, and Europeans seem to have a kind of x-ray vision for Americans, but no, mostly older people just like to stare, and it is completely fine to stare back.

Another thing is line etiquette. If you are next in line, you have to be quick, assertive and right behind the person in front of you, or others behind you will not hesitate to jump to the next open window/register. This happened to me in the grocery store the other day. The belt at the register was very short and I didn't see the little plastic dividers. The person behind me walked up and put his items right behind the person at checkout. I was warned of this beforehand.

Speaking of grocery stores, sales tax is quite high. It ranges from 10 percent on most food items to 20-25 percent on most other goods. When one buys a loaf of bread, they're not just paying for the loaf of bread. They're paying for the vast amount of benefits of the person that made the bread, the person that transported the bread, and the person that sold you the bread.

Public transit here is amazing, for the most part. The U-bahn, which is a subway system, runs frequent, fast, and services most of the main city. There are a lot of buses and streetcars as well. It's all quite cheap too.

The tap water is quite tasty. I could bottle it and sell it to Americans. Supposedly that's why their coffee tastes really good and why there is such a large coffee culture in Austria. I have yet to go to a kaffeehaus here, but I'm sure that will happen shortly.

Vienna truly is a beautiful city. The architecture is very old and grand, and the streets are clean, yet still old looking. Despite the cleanliness, I've seen vast amounts of graffiti. In the inner stadt (central district), one can find many street performers, including musicians. I've seen vast amounts of ads for operas around.

Speaking of music, yesterday and today were full of the majority of the music students in the program auditioning for 1. a teacher and 2. admittance to the performance workshop. All auditioning were required to attend, and I must say that I am quite impressed with the fellow music students here. I had a somewhat successful audition, I'd say.

These 3 weeks are full of German classes, meetings, tours and other stuff, but once I have some time to go out and experience more. I'll be sure to discuss more here.