Waterford Crystal Story

Before the Waterford crystal story, I'll talk about a couple other things. First, on Tuesday I became an official season ticket holder for Austria Wien. There's my season ticket on the right, and a ticket to today's match which is for the Europa League competition.
We need to win by 2 or more goals to advance to the group stage. If that happens we could be drawn into a group with a big team like Man City, Liverpool, or Juventus. We'd play each team in our group twice, both home and away, and I've promised myself that I'll go to one of the away matches. If we don't win by 2 goals today (or tie, or lose) then we're out of the competition and my dreams are shattered.

Marlene is still a vegetarian, she'll be celebrating her 2 week anniversary tomorrow. Her weakest points have been the few times she's seen me eating meatballs which happened on two trips to Ikea and once during a lunch at her parents' house.

During the second trip to Ikea mentioned above, I designed a new desk for myself. They have several options there for table tops and table legs which can mixed and matched. I chose a solid wood top, it's much heavier than their normal wood-looking material, and it has one square end and one rounded end. For the legs there is one circular, metal leg for the rounded side, and a shelf for the squared end which will eventually hold a desktop PC.
Just imagine me sitting on that chair and typing on the laptop at this very moment!

Lastly, we finally received the Waterford crystal stemware that my grandma ordered for us as a wedding gift more than two months ago. My grandma's original hope was that they arrive prior to the wedding and we perform the toast at our reception with them, but unfortunately we hadn't received them in time. The sad part was that we could have if not for a few mistakes and miscommunications. The first error was that Waterford uses UPS for delivery to Austria. They are terrible here. They don't have keys to get into the apartment buildings like the normal Austrian post office, so they can't leave a shipping notice in our mailbox for us. The next error was that Waterford never provided a tracking number after their email informing us that the order was shipped. I asked them for the tracking number last week and when they sent it to us 2 days ago, we were able to figure out what happened and get the package yesterday. After submitting the tracking number to UPS's website, we found the package was marked as delivered on July 16 and had been signed for by PLANK. I ran downstairs to look at the building's doorbells but saw no PLANK listed, though about half of the bells didn't have names, including ours which wouldn't have helped the situation. So we called UPS and they told us it was signed for by the person in room 7 of our building. We went downstairs and left them a note because no one answered the door. A few hours later they called up to us and we got the package! On the delivery address it had room 8 instead of 18 which is ours, so that explained why we hadn't heard anything from our neighbor. Nevertheless, it turned out mostly okay since we did eventually receive it. We got the Dolmen champagne flutes and I did take a few pictures of the unboxing but I need one more pic of Marlene and I toasting before I upload them. Maybe we'll put our wedding attire back on for the picture so that in 50 years we can pretend they did arrive in time...

First Post, First Week in Vienna

Hello loyal readers, who at the moment are non-existent. I've been living in Wien for exactly one week now. My flight was easy, just a four hour layover in Toronto which I spent reading 'How Soccer Explains the World'. I couldn't put it down but it didn't really explain the world, rather I thought it demonstrated how everything that happens in life relates to soccer clubs and their players/fans.

So far in my first week I've started the process of becoming a legal resident. I think I'll actually be legal once the wedding is over but there's still other registering and work permit stuff to be done. Right now I'm waiting on my criminal record check to come back from the USA. When it arrives I'll include it with some other documents to apply for a residence permit. I think I'll document everything I have to do so that other Americans can use it as a resource, I wish I'd had a step-by-step process that would guide me through it...

Apart from the boring legal things, I had a welcoming party for myself in Marlene's hometown, Neusiedl am See, and attended a graduation party in Vienna for one of Marlene's best friends, Martina. Both of them were a lot of fun and affected by sudden downpours. Luckily our grilling was finished before the rain started both times.

Since Martina's party we've been laying low as Marlene has been feeling unwell and had a fever. Today she felt better so we finished building an Ikea wardrobe which is fantastic because that allowed me to finally unpack my suitcases and put my clothes somewhere. I'd also like to give credit to Marlene's youngest sister Vroni who helped me build the largest part of the wardrobe yesterday. Marlene took some pictures during the building process, I'll post them when I have a chance.

Finally, several months before leaving the USA I made an important decision. There are two major soccer teams from Vienna and I had to choose one of them to support. I'd like to outline the reasons, in no particular order, why I chose FK Austria Wien instead of Rapid Wien now:
- FK Austria has a better youth team, including better young Austrians. They're not as dependent on foreigners.
- FK Austria's stadium is closer to my apartment. I'm living in the same place Marlene has lived for nearly a year so I figured this out in advance.
- FK Austria's main color is purple while Rapid's is green which reminded me of my American football team the Minnesota Vikings (purple) and their biggest rivals the Green Bay Packers (green).
- When I studied abroad in Vienna in Spring 2006 I attended a derby match between FK Austria and Rapid, which FAK (not a typo) won 3:0. On a later visit I attended another derby match which Rapid won 1:4 but I sat in the FAK section because Marlene had a friend who got us tickets and we had a memorable time.
- Rapid seems to be the more fashionable club, supported by the majority of Viennese and especially young guys who are the stereotypical Europeans that Americans think look so silly. Faux-hawks or mullets, tight jeans, keffiyehs around their necks, etc. I attended an FAK match on Sunday and all their fans looked like normal people - jeans and a sweatshirt.
- Saw a football rivalries show about FAK/Rapid and it told how the conflict was re-ignited recently when Joey Didulica fouled Axel Lawarée. I'm not going to argue it wasn't a terrible foul. He deserved the red and eight game ban he received but Lawarée brought a lawsuit against him which is totally unnecessary.
- The greatest Austrian player ever, Matthias Sindelar, played his entire career for FAK before his unfortunate death/suicide/assassination.

I actually think I had a few more reasons but I'm sure that's enough to convince you ;-) Until next time!