Kalamity Kat hits Austria

OK well I seem to have given up on my quest to write my blog in german but nevermind the only person who is likely to be bothered (or rather pretend to be) is Tom...who now has a personal mention in the blog which is more than enough of a present for him
Anyway.....it's 6pm now. Everyone was going hiking today (and I'm guessing they're still there). I wanted to go as I haven't really been out much lately and am probably looking like quite a social recluse but never mind, I decided that it was more important for me to be at church as I haven't been for 2 weeks due to Budapest and Venice and I wanted to go. Meh it's still not like church at home. Unfortunately there were no english songs this week but we did sing Ancient of Days and Holy is the Lord in german which I find pretty amusing!!!
Anyway after the service the lady sat next to me (Greta) actually spoke to me and she has an american husband (Ted) so I got talking to them. They also introduced me to a young couple Thomas and Rebecca - Thomas is austrian and Rebecca is his american wife. I got on really well with them all and they decided to take me to see some of Graz and so we drove to Mariatrost which is just outside of Graz. We were going to go to Buschenschrank for some lunch but it was completely packed so we found a chinese restaurant. The food there was pretty nice and we had a really nice time chatting. We dropped Ted off for an american football game which he had a ticket for and continued actually to Mariatrost picking up Tom and Rebecca's friend Rebecca (confusing or what) on the way. At Mariatrost we went for a walk through some maize and into the woods - think Delamere Forest but a lot nicer!!! We walked around for a bit and then Greta and I went back via the church (also called Mariatrost)....it'S free to go in and we had a quick look inside....it's baroque and really ornately detailed - really nice......and then yeah I got dropped off back here
Today was seriously the most beautiful day. Autumn is amazing anyway with all the golden leaves but today there was a cloudless blue sky and it was so warm. All the leaves were on the ground and were really crispy and crunchy and it was so so so nice.
I had a really good time and Greta and Ted invited me to a bible study at their house on Tuesday night although it's the last one as they're moving to America soon...but it'S literally like 100 metres down my road Another thing I'm doing on Tuesday is there's a prayer breakfast every Tuesday run by the OSM (equivalent to UCCF CU in England) so I'm going to go along to that too I think - only issue is that it starts at 7am and it's not particularly near to where I live
never mind alles gut

OK so today might not be one of the greatest days I have ever had.
We got some homework yesterday from our INTRODUCTORY seminar...always nice not. The problem is that it is really really ambiguous! I mean totally and as it's in an architecture related subject...it's just worse because they don#t care what you do or how you do it! So basically we have a "title" which is.....

Alle anderen sind schlecht (in english - everything else is bad)

and it's up to us to interpret it how we want....and that may or may not be related to architecture....but you also need (i think) to link it to

Wohnen ist leben (which is hard to translate as they both mean live in english but it basically means where you live is your life...ie. your home is your life)

and also how we present the work is also up to us. it has to be in a pdf and submitted online 24hours before the next seminar and I'm pretty stuck atm!

The seminar itself wasn't too bad. It's meant to be 4 hours long but was only 2 as it was introductory....there are only 4 non german speaking erasmus students in the class - scott, jeannine, me and Ivana a girl from Slovakia. It's led in german and I can keep up and understand but the amount of concentration it takes and the fact that I need to make sure I know exactly what has been said in case the others haven't understood is just so hard. I think the tutors realised that my german isn't entirely shocking and that I was following and understanding what was going on but still. The courses themselves may not be hard but it is twice the amount of work for us to actually do them because of the langauge barrier. Hopefully as we go on it'll start to get a little easier on the german front as we learn more.
The other issue is that I told Scott that he needed to speak more german....which he apparently can only do if he keeps asking me questions and tbh after concentrating on german for so long and so hard I really don't want to have to be correcting someone's german when my own isn't even good enough to really do so. So then he gets pissed off with me because I'm not helping and that's how he learns - buy a grammar book, speak to an austrian - I'm only english and there's only so much I can do.

I found out today that the Christian Union meetings are on thursday nights at 8.30pm which is great as I really want to be a part of it as I still haven't met any Christians here really. But guess what....the ONLY night I have a lecture is a thursday night from 8-10 so I can't make it which is jsut fantastic. uurrrggghhhhh. I haven't been to church for 2 weeks now due to going to Budapest and going to Venice (although I really did want to go to church in Venice but wasn't able to). I'm not sure how I feel about the church here and was hoping that through the CU here I'd beable to meet other Christian students and maybe go to their churches or meet some who go to the one I've been going to.

It really sucks and is so annoying as I didn't join any sports courses or anything else i nthe hope (partially) that I'd beable to be part of the CU. That's probably the only thing I actually miss about Liverpool - being part of the CU and going to church there. But there isn't a lot I can actually do about that right now.

OK so in the afternoon we had an introduction to our design course. I'm pretty excited about it because the project isn't actually set in Graz - the site is a coastal town in Croatia. I mean at Lpool the best you do (in 1st yr at least) is Chester which tbf isn't that great when you come from there anyway! So next weekend I get to spend a 3 day weekend working and visiting Croatia (the place is called Novigrad). It's so weird that I've been here for jsut over a month and already visited 4 countries in that time - it's just so easy and pretty cheap too to get around everywhere!

After ranting a LOT about that homework further up....I now have an idea for it so just need to put it into action - it's pretty complex so I won't bother explaining it now but it'll be on facebook if it's any good in the end!

Thursday nights I can tell are probably going to be pretty bad - we have a class from 8-10pm. The class is a computer one (ie you sit in front of a computer and supposedly get taught!) called Digitale Methoden der Darstellung (or in english Digital Design Methods). We spent the 2 hour slot learning how to use a programme called Autodesk Maya which does 3D stuff, animation and renderings. The course is run in german like the rest of my courses which isn't a problem in general for me. Plus it's run by masters students who speak pretty good english if we do get hopelessly stuck!!! It didn't start off too badly (especially as Maya operates in English so at least we understood what was going on a bit! That was until they made us use scripts. I'm not like a complete technophobe - I can use most normal programs but because there is so much to learn it takes me ages to learn the design ones. I think it might have something to do with me not enjoying them that much too sometimes. Last year it took me forever to learn how to use sketchup - I've got that now but Maya is just weird. After a 2 hour speed through everything we could possibly need to know about it, we have an assignment due in next friday at the latest. Scott can't get the program on his mac and my computer will def not run with it on as it struggles with sketchup (old computer, didn't think about what I'd need for architecture when I bought it as I was only 17) so we're gonna have to find a computer room and do a long stint in there - hopefully get it done quite quickly, maybe!

OK so after Budapest last weekend I decided to not sit around and wait for Christmas/something interesting to happen....but to make it happen myself. I decided that now would be a good time to go to Venice - before the flood season and carnival season so I spoke to Scott and we decided to go. As we were booking quite last minute, there wasn't much choice of accommodation and it was all quite a lot more expensive than Budapest - which tbf I expected.
So Friday morning we were up and at Graz Hbf for 7.15am. It was really disgusting wet and cold weather in Graz and the forecast was for rain in Venice. We arrived at Venezia Santa Lucia at 1.30pm to bright sunshine - no sign of rain at all...and that's how it stayed for the whole 3 days. It felt more like august than october a lot of the time although out of the sun it was quite cool.
After dropping bags off at our hotel, we decided to take a walk around our side of the island. I ended up buying a sketchbook and pencil (which seemed a good idea at the time) and we stopped along the way for icecream and a late lunch for which I had a med. veg rolled up pizza (Scott ordered a hamburger - original. not.)both by Zattere and then later on some dinner - I wasn't hungry but we found a nice restaurant in Campo Santa Margherita where Scott tried to order a Hawaiian pizza and the waiter looked horrified We then went across to Giudecca and San Giorgio Maggiore to see what was there, to have a better view of Venice as a whole and to see the sunset. Haha after lunch Scott posted some postcards he had written. He'd stamped and written them....but realised that (once he'd put them in the postbox) that he hadn't addressed them!!!!!! so he then had to go and buy some more!
Saturday morning we started early. We headed over to Murano - famous for its glass. We didn't go in the glass factory but we did look in the shops full of glass ornaments and have a bit of a wander around. We spent most of the rest of the day exploring the other side of the Grand Canal, visiting Ss. Giovanni e Paolo which was really beautiful and Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, sketching around a bit, getting lost down some of the more residential areas and eventually having dinner at the same place as the friday evening as it was really nice and pretty cheap too. I (predictably) had lasagne and it was pretty good.
Sunday started early again beginning at S. Marco which of course wasn't open as it was sunday. I suggested we went to the service there thus killing two birds with one stone and being able to go to church and get "free" entry into a building that is meant to be amazing. Anyway it didn't happen and we didn't go in later either which was a real shame. As well as sketching here, there and everywhere, eating icecream and breadrolls (cleverly smuggled into my bag at breakfast at the hotel with fillings too) we also headed down to Sant'Elena to have a look around that area. There is a lot of greenery around there which was nice to see and it was really nice just to sit there in the sun and eat a MAXIBON - yup I found one in Italy Unfortunately I didn't manage to track down any orangina in the end (which was my second goal!). We went for a late-ish dinner at a random restaurant we found - the food was ok, nothing particularly special but the service was appaulingly bad! but never mind. At about 9pm we headed towards the station. We were catching a train just before 1am to Venezia Mestre and then catching one at 1.30am from there to Bruck.....getting us home for around 8am. Only it didn't happen. We got to Mestre fine....although a little bored as there wasn't much to do (ie there was nothing!)....but the train to Bruck was delayed by 110 mins.....mestre is a tiny station and at that time nothing was open, not even anywhere to sit out of the cold (and it was FREEZING). When the train finally arrived we ended up squashed in a six person compartment with 4 other randomers - a really nice young couple and a random lady and her toddler. They all put the seats together to makes beds and Scott and I were then stuck at the other end of the carriage realising that we were getting off before them - it all worked out ok though. We eventuallz got back to our halls at about 10.30 ish. It's now 2pm and I haven't slept since 7am sunday morning as I'm not that good at sleeping on transport - got a lecture soon that'll probably send me to sleep!