Food Entry, Mmmmm

Marlene and I make bets pretty often with the normal wager being having to make the other person a delicious dinner. So normally when I lose I'll try to make her favorite meal, Maki sushi rolls. I wanted to show you guys a couple pics of my progress and give a hint if you want to make them yourself.


Above was my first attempt. Marlene said they tasted pretty good, but you can see they don't exactly look right.

---

This is a batch I just made today, and you can see they hold their shape much better thanks to the secret ingredient: sushi rice.

At the beginning, I looked up a recipe and went and got all the ingredients except I figured rice is rice is rice. I don't need any special "sushi rice". How wrong I was. The key to good looking Maki rolls is super sticky rice and normal long grain rice grown in Europe or the USA just doesn't cut it. Luckily, where we live in Vienna is the same area as most of the city's Asian immigrants. There's not a literal Chinatown but there are several Asian grocery stores within a couple blocks of our apartment so finding all the ingredients was pretty simple.

---

Here's one of my favorite meals, a Döner kebap. It's basically my substitute for Chipotle burritos in the USA, and they're probably the most popular fast food item here.

---

Finally, here's one of my favorite desserts, a Kakaoroulade. It's honestly nothing special, they're mass produced and sold at any grocery store, but they remind me of a giant Swiss Cake Roll and they only cost €1,09.

Saturday Night Blog

Hey all, it's Saturday night here and I just got back from an FK Austria Wien match where we won 4:1 against LASK Linz. It was a super fun time because we scored early and often and were up 3:0 at halftime. After that we let off the gas and Linz scored early on the second half before we scored the the fourth in about the 87th minute to put an end to the comeback.

Marlene went to Neusiedl am See tonight for an Oktoberfest revival party and I've still to hear how that went. I obviously stayed in Vienna first for the FK Austria Wien match tonight, and because FC Adrenalin has two matches tomorrow. The first team plays at 3 pm and the reserves play right afterwards at 5 pm. I'm on the first team roster and I'll hopefully play with the reserves too as long as I don't play too much with first team. If I start for the first team (which is unlikely), then I'll be super happy and won't play for the reserves. So far I haven't started for the first team, I've been playing as a sub for them and as a key player for the reserves. Last week I played the whole second half for the first team and then later in the day played 80 minutes for the reserves. Normally I wouldn't play for both teams in one day but if both teams have games on the same day and I'm only a sub for the first team, then I'll happily play for the reserves as well. Playing for the reserves is super fun because obviously the opponents aren't nearly as good so I can relax and just try to pick out dangerous passes. In my 3 games, I've played as center mid twice and both times and I've had assists, hopefully that trend will continue...

Apart from soccer, Marlene went to a cool park today I took a few pictures of her/us while we were at Wienerberg, which obviously sounds funny in English but was a fun time. It's one of the biggest green areas in all of Vienna. Here are some pictures of our day there.

News in Brief: Oct 20

Hello all, it's been a week and I never want to go a week without an entry so I just want to put together a quick post.

Since getting my residence permit, Marlene and I both registered with the authorities a second residence for our apartment in Vienna. That was a relief because it felt dishonest to be registered in Neusiedl am See since we don't actually live there. That also meant I could go register as officially unemployed at my Viennese district's employment office. I'm not entitled to receive any unemployment money but they're supposed to be search for jobs and offer different classes. I'll need to look more into what types of classes I could take from them.

Over the weekend with the FC Adrenalin reserves we played against a team of all Mexicans so that reminded me of home. We also won 6-0 so it was a fun game. Earlier in that same day I played the second half for the first team but that was disappointing as soon after I subbed in, one of our central defenders got a red card and we struggled badly. We ended up losing 1-4.

It's getting to be pretty cold here and often overcast. We actually turned on the heat in our apartment last week and we broke open the winter blankets for the bed.

Next week is the last week of my German course and it's doubtful I'll sign up for another month, unless the unemployment office would offer to pay for it, which would be a possibility. We talked about it a bit in my class today because another student has already been working with the unemployment office for a few weeks.

Residence Permit: Check

On Friday night I went with my FC Adrenalin teammates to watch the Austrian national team play against Azerbaijan which ended in a solid 3:0 victory for the Austrians. The seats weren't great, but then again, for 1 Euro they were fantastic. The stadium was about half full because the opponent wasn't too glamorous and there were noticeably more women and children than I'm used to seeing while attending FK Austria Wien matches. The crowd wasn't nearly as rowdy as at FK Austria matches either, coincidence? Maybe. One kind of funny thing about the stadium was in the men's bathroom where there were neither urinals nor troughs. Instead there were several small rooms that fit 10-12 guys standing shoulder to shoulder with a grate on the floor where the guys lined up and peed against the wall, where it went down through the grating and into a drain somewhere. It felt really strange because it resembled a locker room's public shower, where peeing against the wall would be highly inappropriate.

Then on Saturday I traveled to Neusiedl and we spent the rest of the weekend at Marlene's parents' house. It was Marlene's mom's birthday yesterday so we had a family meal to celebrate on Sunday. We also stayed overnight on Sunday because of my appointment Monday morning at the immigration office where I did officially receive my residence permit. It's the same size as an ID or credit card and I'm hoping it can be used as a photo ID in other ways around Austria. I get a bit wary needing to bring my passport to so many places because it's my only acceptable form of photo ID. On the back of the residence permit it also states "Freier Zugang zum Arbeitsmarkt," which means I'm also legally allowed to work.

To celebrate, we went to the restaurant Plachutta where we had received a gift certificate as a wedding gift. They serve pretty traditional Austrian food, I think the next time my family visits, we'll need to go there. Here are a couple pics of the food and me enjoying it.

Back to Back Blogs, Wow!

I had some trouble sleeping last night and happened to wake up at a quarter to 6 am and remembered the Twins-Yankees game and thought I'd check the score. (Un)Luckily the game wasn't over yet, so I watched from the bottom of the 8th inning to the end and fumed over the loss like all other Minnesotans. Tonight I'll try to watch the entire second game of the series since it starts at midnight my time and I don't have any class tomorrow morning. If we lose that one, the series goes back to New York and there's no point in watching because there's no way we can win.

Tomorrow night I'll join a number of my FC Adrenalin teammates and go to an Austria national team soccer game. It's somewhat important in that it's a qualifying match for the 2012 European Championships, which is the second most important soccer tournament, after the World Cup of course. The game is against Azerbaijan and I would be expecting Austria to win. Because our team falls under the umbrella organization of the Austrian Soccer Federation, there was some crazy deal on tickets and it's only 1 Euro per person. I hope we get similar deals next year when we get to play against some better teams like Germany and Turkey. Both of those matches will be very exciting as Germany has got to be our biggest rival and the largest immigrant group in Vienna are Turks. I've already suggested that my bro Turner come visit next June when we play Germany so we can go to the match together, I hope he accepts the offer!

Finally, I think my residence permit is all approved. I've got one last appointment at the immigration office in Neusiedl am See for Monday morning and I think they'll be giving it to me then. That should also entitle me to work legally. I've been applying online for a few jobs per day recently, hopefully one of them will work out.

Minnesota Sports?

At the moment all I can think about is sports back in Minnesota. It's really the first time I've been wishing I was back in St. Paul so I can enjoy what's going on at the moment. First, my Minnesota Twins are about to start the playoffs against the New York Yankees in our brand new, beautiful stadium. I have the ability to watch the game on the internet but due to the time difference the first pitch will be around 2:37 am Vienna time so I'm not sure if I'll be staying up to watch it since I have class tomorrow morning. I don't have class on Fridays so I'll more than likely be watching game 2 which starts just after midnight on Thursday night.

And in one of those "do you remember where you were when you heard?" moments, for Minnesota sports fans at least, I saw on Twitter yesterday that it was highly likely that Randy Moss would be returning to the Minnesota Vikings today and everything I'm reading today has confirmed that news, including Randy Moss' Wikipedia page. Right now I'm listening to podcasts of the local sports talk radio station and it's really getting me pumped up.

In Toby news, I started my new German class this week. So far it's not as fun as my class last month mainly due to the teacher but my German is still steadily improving. I feel pretty comfortable speaking it all day and being able to express myself which was not true a couple months ago.