March... where did it go?

The month of March was filled with many memorable moments, but flew by so fast that it's hard to believe it was even there.

Near the beginning of the month I noticed that my hair was getting a little long. As I've mentioned before, haircuts in Vienna are expensive, painful, and bad, therefore I really wasn't looking forward to getting one. So, I figured I'd do what most other guys do, and cut it myself. How hard could it be? I borrowed a pair of electric clippers from Daniel and decided to do it myself without any help. As I didn't want to get hair everywhere and I don't own a broom, I stepped into my shower, plugged the clippers in above my mirror, set it to the longest length and started with the back. It went pretty smoothly and felt about the right length, so I took a leap and went right down the center of my head, a reverse mohawk. To my horror, I discovered that "8" was much shorter than I had expected, but what was done was done. After what seemed like much too long, I was done, with a pile of hair on the floor, and far too little on my head.
The next few days were spent finding small patches of long hair and snipping them whenever I tracked down a pair of scissors. Now that it's begun to grow out, it's becoming a mullet dangerously fast, so, I might have to give in and get it cut properly, but not for a while.

On Saturday the 15th (the "official" St.Patrick's Day) I met up with Nicole, Ali's friend whom I had met a few weeks before, and went to see Carmen at the Volksoper. The Volksoper (the people's opera) only performs shows in German, meaning two things, Carmen was performed in German instead of the original French, and there were no subtitles. So, we didn't understand much, including the entire first half of the second act. However, one thing that amused me throughout most of the show was how poorly German lends itself to seductive arias like the famous song by Carmen. Instead of lightly trailing off the notes, as can be done in French where they leave out half of the word anyways, the propriety of German pronunciation occasionally requires harsh consonants at the end of words, which sound more like someone prepping for a spittoon than a seductress. Afterwards we met up with Andres, Daniel, Gabi, and Szilvia and went to a pub, which was pretty dead for "St.Patrick's Day", but we made the best of it.

When I returned from Canada after Christmas I brought back real maple syrup, and when Ali visited in February she brought me a box of pancake mix from home. Since Christmas, Cora and I had been talking about making a big pancake breakfast. Finally, the weekend before Easter, Sziszi offered to host a pancake brunch.

In the photo below (Going around the table clockwise from the bottom) are Gabi, Andres, Daniel, Carolina, me, Cora, Raphael, and Sziszi. Karin, Sziszi's roommate, was taking the photo.
Cora and I thought we'd get creative and make all the girls teddy bear pancakes with banana faces. We also made some x-rated pancakes for the guys, which they thought were funny. People were shocked that Cora and I were so talented at making things out of pancakes; we didn't tell anyone how easy it is.
After stuffing ourselves with far too many pancakes, we decided to go on a walk. Most people decided to go home, as it was already mid-afternoon, but Cora, Szilvia, Karin, and I went to Schönbrunn to wander through the Easter market. The Easter markets are a lot like the Christmas markets except on a smaller scale. There were a few booths overflowing with hand-painted eggs.
There were also a few spots where kids could play with some simple, old-fashioned toys, like stilts. Karin, Sziszi, and Cora tried out the tandem-walking boards, which were fun, for about 30 seconds...
On the Wednesday of the next week there was a talk by Dr. Frank Wilczek at the Fachhochschule (technical college) in Wiener Neustadt which is only a few minutes away from our offices. José, Szilvia, and I went from ECHEM and met up with Cora, Stefan, and a few others from AC2T. Dr.Wilczek is an American physicist from MIT who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction (quantum physics). His talk, which was entirely in English!, titled "The Universe is a Strange Place" was actually very entertaining and easy to follow. He talked all about quarks, gluons, dark energy, dark matter, and everything in between. If you're keen and look carefully at the photo below, you'll see I didn't actually take it, it's from 2005, but it's the same lecture. A few times in his presentation Cora and I were the only people who laughed at a joke because everyone else got a little lost in translation. For example, he made the (rather nerdy) joke of "so, it turns out you can have your quarks and eat them too!", which just confused all the non-native English speakers, but made us laugh awkwardly.On Easter Sunday I went with Nicole, her brother, and her brother's friend (all from Canada) to see the ballet Swan Lake at the Staatsoper. It turned out to be the premier, meaning the line for cheap tickets was long by the time we arrived, so we got crappy spots where you could only see half the stage at once. The ballet was interesting, better than most operas, and had a pretty cool ending, where the lead guy drowns on stage in a stormy lake. As it was the premier, during the bows people chucked bouquets of roses onto the stage from the boxes along the sides, like in the movies.

On Easter Monday, I was supposed to see the opera Tristan and Isolde by Wagner with Cora and Ariana, but thankfully Ariana had to cancel on us. I say thankfully because it is 4:45 long, a bit too long for my liking. Instead, I went with Caren and Ariana that Thursday to see Ariadne auf Naxos, a funny opera written by Richard Strauss where the first act, which is set backstage, shows everyone arguing when they find out that the serious opera and the comical dance show the Duke ordered for his party must both be performed simultaneously. The second act shows the performance on the stage, which has been flipped 180 degrees to the audience's perspective. The show was funny, and had a good elaborate set, so I enjoyed it. I find the minimalist modern adaptations a lot less entertaining.

The last weekend of March was very warm (~18C) so Szilvia, Gabor (Szilvia's boyfriend who was in town last weekend), Andres, and I decided to go to the Lainzer Tiergarten for a hike. Andres forgot about the time change, so it ended up being just the three of us.

The Lainzer Tiergaren is a 25 square kilometer wildlife preserve in the southwest corner of Vienna. The route we selected was about 7km long and wound through the "hills". We had only been walking along the path for a few minutes when a large wild boar came walking towards us in the other direction. It was pretty tame, so Gabor got as close as Szilvia would allow, to get a photo.
There still aren't many leaves on many of the trees here. Lots of buds, and leaves on bushes though, so it's only a matter of a few more weeks.
At the top of one path there is a sloping lawn which looks out over all of Vienna. We stopped for a bit and ate some pears that Sziszi had brought along.
From the lawn we walked another few kilometers down to the old royal hunting lodge and gardens. In the more sheltered gardens, many of the trees already had leaves.

Hard to believe this was a weekend hunting lodge.

I really like this photo with the dormers, chimneys, and clock tower all jumbled in together.
The main house is connected to the stables on either side by these verandas which Szilvia fell in low with.
A little ways down from the house there is a small "zoo" with some deer and mouflons like the one below.
After the hike, I went back to Haus Döbling and signed into Skype for a phone interview. The interview was for a job at Queen's as an "iCon" during the school year. I found out today that I got the job, so that's some good news, now all I need is a summer job. If anyone knows of anyone hiring for jobs in Brockville starting after June 9th, the please let me know.

So, as I said, March was an interesting month, I just don't know where it went, it was over so quickly. April is my last full month of work, and hopefully the nice weather will bring some adventure with it.

Speaking of adventure, I leave for my next one on Friday morning. I'll be meeting up with my friend Henrik who's living in Munich, but I won't tell you where until I return. Should be fun, but apparently the weather is supposed to be crappy, c'est la vie!