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.

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.

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.

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.