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.