Odds and Ends

In my last post, I wrote solely about my first job opportunity, leaving out some other items which have occurred recently. On Sep. 18 and 19 we spent a night in Stoob, Austria which is where Marlene's sister, Christine, lives. It reminded me of a small Midwest town mainly inhabited by farmers, including Christine and her boyfriend's family. However in Austria, Stoob is reasonably well known for having a ceramics/pottery college. They have a small farm by American standards, there are a few cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, and further outside of town they grow some crops. We spent the majority of the time playing the board game Settlers of Catan and playing with their two kittens. We left the next afternoon and they gave me two different kinds of homemade sausage and a big slab of bacon. I ate the sausages pretty quickly but I've still got some of the bacon left. It was really a big chunk which was fantastic because I'd complained many times about how the grocery store bacon is so thinly sliced, but now I can cut it as thick as I like.

My German class ended on Tuesday this week but I've signed up for another course at the same academy which begins on Monday. I decided pretty late to sign up for another course because it's a bit expensive and I wasn't sure if it really constitutes value for cost but beyond just the learning German aspect, it's a good way to meet new people and get out of the apartment. When I went to sign up for the next course yesterday though, they told me it was already full. They said I could take a test to try and get into the next next level, so I did, and passed it! The course I did in September along with the one I tested out of, together are meant for level C1 of the European Framework for Languages. The course I'll be taking in October now is for the first half of the C2 level, which is the highest. Beyond that, there's only one more class I could take. So I'm very excited about that, and I am beginning to feel a lot more confident in speaking.

I officially registered as a member of FC Adrenalin and played in the first team match last weekend. I subbed in for the last 20 minutes and the game ended in a 2-2 draw. All the scoring happened while I was still on the bench. If you look at their website now, I'm listed in the roster and it has my stats. There's no picture yet, but I did ask the webmaster to change my flag to that of the USA, it showed me as an Austrian just a couple days ago.

Long Time No Blog

I haven't written a post for a week now but it definitely hasn't been due to a lack of things to write, more so the opposite. Last Tuesday I got a call somewhat out of the blue asking if I could do a telephone interview for the next day. It was from the company Accenture where Marlene's uncle (the one who owns our apartment actually) used to work. I had given him my résumé and he'd said he'd pass it on to a former colleague there. I did the phone interview and I thought it went pretty well. The next day they asked for my transcript and a letter of recommendation so I sent my transcript which I had handy and emailed my old boss to get a letter of recommendation. Then on Monday, I was invited to an all-day recruiting event that would take place the next day (yesterday).

On Tuesday, there were about 15 applicants, and we met at the Accenture office in downtown Wien. We took a bus to the airport where we would be spending the whole day. We were given breakfast and an intro speech by a couple higher-ups for the Germany/Austria/Switzerland region. One of the guys was actually from Switzerland so he was extremely difficult to understand in German. Then we were separated into smaller groups to do a case study. We were given a situation that we had to talk through, formulate a plan of action, then give a presentation on our results. That was definitely the most difficult part of the day, so in hindsight I'm glad it happened first. After that we were given lunch and took turns going in for individual face to face interviews. The questions asked of me weren't too difficult but I was too nervous to put together detailed, grammatically correct sentences so I was quite disappointed with my performance.

The rest of the afternoon was just meant to be fun. We got a tour of behind the scenes at the airport so we saw the plane garages where aircraft were being repaired and were almost completely disassembled. We also got to practice flying in true flight simulator used for training actual pilots. That will probably go down as one of the most unique experiences I've had in my life. We had an hour long training beforehand and then we got to try it ourselves where we were able to taxi down the runway, then takeoff and fly around a bit. Then they loaded a landing program and we tried that, but landing was a lot more difficult. We were in the simulator the whole time while the others were flying and could see the same as the pilot so it was pretty scary when one of my group members had a bad landing and the whole cabin shook and the screen was tinted red, indicating we had all died.

After the fun stuff we were taken back to the big meeting room and taken one by one to see who would be receiving job offers. I wasn't one of the lucky ones, so then I had to sit around and wait a while longer for everyone to finish so we could take the bus back to Wien. I wasn't at all surprised to not get a job offer but it was depressing nonetheless. But I'll have to try and put a positive spin on it by thinking about how it was good experience for future interviews, as well as getting to use the flight simulator and getting some Accenture swag.

Mostly Football News

The only non-soccer update I have is that on Thursday night I had to go to Neusiedl to meet with a police officer for the next step in attaining my residence permit. They didn't give us too much information beforehand, it turned it was supposed to be a surprise as it was an in-depth interview to make sure Marlene and I didn't get married just so I could emigrate to Austria. There were a lot of difficult questions and it was made harder because Marlene wasn't allowed to be there. All in all, it last about an hour and was pretty intense. Now that it's over though, it makes for a funny story and it's also a good sign that the immigration office is making progress on my residence permit.

Now, on to soccer stuff. On Friday I went and watched FC Adrenalin's first team in their first match of the season. They came from behind to win 2:1, thanks to two red cards on the opposing team. The level of play wasn't as high as I was expecting based on how serious the practices are and how organized the teams are. The location of the game was pretty amazing, right on the very end of a peninsula in the Danube. Then on Sunday the reserve team had a match which I played in. We lost 2:4 but I thought I played pretty well. After the game the guy in charge gave me my necessary paperwork to to officially join the club and said when it was filled out I can play with the first team. It was a bit expensive but I'd like to do it. The guys all seem pretty nice so it'd be a good way to make friends.

At the exact same time as our reserve team game on Sunday was the Vienna Derby. My team FK Austria was taking on our cross-city rivals Rapid. The game was in Rapid's stadium but we emerged victorious. I was very surprised because we haven't won in like six games and I was expecting to get thrashed. The reports I've read about it said Rapid dominated, but we capitalized on a defensive mistake to score midway into the second half.

Back to School

Marlene and I both started class on Monday. She's back teaching English and I began a month long German course as a refresher before trying to get a real job. My class is pretty interesting. I'm the only guy out of 8 students and everyone is from a different country. There's a Moldovan, Romanian (from Transylvania even!), Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Indian, Ukrainian, and of course me. Most of the others can already speak English along with their mother tongues so that's a bit annoying to me that everyone is there learning their third language. After I'm completely comfortable with German I think I'd like to go back to learning Spanish. I'm also glad the USA is changing in this respect due to so many Spanish-speaking immigrants. Having American children grow up bilingual is only going to make them more intelligent and give them better job opportunities in the future. It also makes learning a third, fourth, etc. language much easier.

To get back to my school, it's pretty low key. It's just 9-12, Monday-Thursday, for 4 weeks. It's very strange to have homework again after being out college for over 3 years, but I do like it. It's good that I have to work on my German at least a little bit. I try to speak with Marlene as much as I can, but if I can't figure out how to say something after a few seconds, I'll always revert to English.

I had another training session last night FC Adrenalin. Turner left some comments asking if they had a website, which they do: http://www.fc-adrenalin.at/index.php. I'm not sure what league they're in, but all the games are in Vienna. I'm pretty sure they're not in the official Austrian league system, so it's not like they could keep winning promotion and eventually get to the Austrian Bundesliga. They did however win their league and promotion last year.

The other hobby I've just taken up is creating a custom map for the board game Ticket To Ride. I'm working on a custom map using Austria and its neighboring countries. Below is a picture of the work I've done so far. I've got the full size map printed out and a smaller sheet of paper with my plan for the cities and routes.

First Time Playing Soccer in 6 Weeks = A Little Sore the Day After

Training with FC Adrenalin went very well. The guys are all about my age, in good shape, and seemed to be a similar skill level. We played on a turf field so I actually didn't even need the cleats that I went out and bought yesterday, I played with my flats instead. Thinking about it today, I haven't been on a team which practices regularly since college. We tried to organize practices for Northfield Football Club but those never really worked out and the Vandals never practiced either.

We didn't do any drills that were too complicated. We worked on passing, dribbling, shooting, then played a half field 9v9 scrimmage. I was last picked by the team captains but played pretty well. My team won 3-0 and I scored and had an assist after being put at right midfield. Afterward one of the guys asked if I wanted to play in the team's friendly match this weekend. Looking at their schedule, it's the last friendly before the real league matches begin so I hope I do well and am asked to be on the team for good!

News in Brief: Sep 2

I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but all of my documents for getting a residence permit have officially been submitted to the immigration office in Neusiedl. We decided to register myself there instead of Wien because there are far less immigrants and the office is not nearly as busy as one in Wien might have been. Now we'll just be waiting for word back from them that I've been approved. It should take at least a couple weeks.

Last night we saw the movie Babies along with Marlene's sister. It was basically a really long compilation of babies doing cute things. I think you could get the same effect by searching for cute baby clips on youtube.

Marlene cheated on her diet on Sunday. She told me she ate a schnitzel on Sunday when she was with her family. Her friends had a bet going on how long she could last being a vegetarian which I wasn't involved in (I'd have quite an unfair advantage) but I'm not sure who won. I'll look into that and report back.

Yesterday I went to the Deutsch Akademie and took a German proficiency test in order to see which class I'd be placed in if I were to enroll there. I placed into C1 which is advanced (A is beginner, B is intermediate) which is good since that's what I had on my résumé. I was happy to see it hasn't regressed since I left college although I'm sure my grammar knowledge has declined, my speaking and understanding, especially the Austrian dialect, has much improved.

Lastly, I may have found a soccer team to play for. I found them by looking through the Wien city soccer league forums, they had posted that they're looking for players for the upcoming season. I emailed the address and not long later I had a reply inviting me to come to training. The team's called FC Adrenalin and there's a training tonight at 19:30. That meant that today I had to run out quickly to get outdoor soccer shoes. I bought last year's model of the Adidas adiCORE II firm ground shoes which were originally listed at €100, then marked down to €60, then down to €50. Then when I got to the register, they scanned it and only charged me €30, so I think I got a good deal. We'll see how they perform later this evening, if I play badly, I'm definitely blaming the shoes.