Death and Glory

First of all, I'm a dirty rotten liar, at least when it comes to blogging. I had hoped to update more frequently this week, but my Deutschkurs proved to be even more demanding than I expected. Fortunately, I really like it. I was concerned that I'd struggle to keep up, but it's moving at a comfortable pace, and, more importantly, I feel like I'm at a similar level to most of the other students. Instead of the stern, merciless Austrian teacher I feared in my mind, I have a very friendly, approachable fellow named Ulrich. He's an outstanding teacher, and I really feel like I've improved dramatically in one week. I'm certainly getting my money's worth. I have class for 3 hours and 15 minutes, five days a week. On top of that, I've had at least two hours of homework each night. I'm already a third of the way through the course though, so I can manage for a couple more intense weeks.

My class is a motley assortment of Turks, Brazilians, Icelanders, Spaniards, and two of us boring old Americans. Everyone in the class is friendly, but I get along particularly well with the Brazilians. Last night after class, we set out to find the only Brazilian restaurant in Vienna, armed only with the knowledge that it was somewhere around Karlsplatz. Predictably, our hour long search was fruitless. We finally settled on a traditional Viennese restaurant. In an effort to look like Mr. Cool, I wanted to order a fancy pants beer, instead of one of the popular choices. In the front of the menu, there was a page labeled "Beer of the Month" (auf Deutsch) that listed two drinks. The beer at the top of the page seemed interesting, but it was a euro more expensive than the option below. Well, if you're out with a couple of Brazilian guys, trying to seem cool, something called "Himbeer" sounds pretty manly. I felt pretty proud of myself when I ordered it. Then, after a few minutes, our waiter returned with the drinks. For my two Brazilian companions he had hefty pints of Austrian beer. For me...a dainty glass bottle with a bright red bubbling soda. As I discovered when I finally reached home, "Himbeere" means rasberry. So much for that...

Today John and I went on an adventure to Zentralfriedhof, the second largest cemetery in Europe, in search of the graves of cool, old, dead Austrians. We naively assumed that a cemetary packed with famous corpses would have some sort of guide or map to the noteworthy graves. Nope. Instead, we wondered through row upon row, searching for both the great men of history and the greatest. Well, as it turns out, when you're looking for 6 or 7 graves in a cemetary with 3.3 million people interred, it's not a simple undertaking. While we never stumbled across Falco's grave, we did manage to find most of the heavy hitters. So without further ado, here's what you've all been waiting for...pictures of me with dead composers!

Be sure to click on the pictures to fully appreciate the badassitude of the headstones.


Franz Schubert


Ludwig van Beethoven


Johann Strauss (the waltz king) and Johannes Brahms