I have a blog!

So I'm headed to Vienna ("Wien" in German... hence, "Wienerschnitzel") in exactly 12 days, and I'll be studying there until the end of June. I decided to do this travel blog mainly because I thought it would be pretty fun. I never thought I would be a "blogger" (a title which, at least in my mind, has certain connotations..), but I thought it would be something new and interesting to try out. And according to my sister Tara, I'm the type of person who "would have a blog." Whatever that means. Plus, I definitely want to document my time in Vienna in writing, and I think that I'll be more motivated to keep up with it if I'm writing in a more public space than a private journal. So here it is - mah blog. I hope that you will find it sufficiently informative and engrossing.

When I think about Vienna, I think about a lot of things: classical music, Mozart, the opera, the art of Gustav Klimt (hence, my choice of background - Klimt's Der Kuss.. perhaps a little tacky, but I can foresee it being replaced when I have some Viennese photos of my own), the turn of the century and the decadence of the fin de siècle period, café culture, COFFEE (let's be honest - I'm probably going to be talking about coffee A LOT on this blog [or would it be "in this blog"? I think I need to get myself better acquainted with blog lingo..], so be prepared), and, overall, class. To me, Vienna just screams "classy." I'm not sure why. I've never been there. I have a lot of these associations with Vienna, but I've been realizing that they're all pretty abstract. The truth is, I don't have very much practical knowledge about what it will actually be like to live in Vienna for 5 months. 5 whole months! Longer than I've ever been away from home. Time to pull out my Eyewitness Vienna travel guide and start reading the words (instead of just looking at the pictures). Before I travel to a new place, I form ideas about what the "vibes" of that place will be based on what I already know about it. For example, I just got back from a week-long trip to Austin, Texas, somewhere I've never been before. Before I got there, I didn't have any concrete ideas of what it was going to look or smell or taste or sound like. Instead of creating visual images of how I imagined it would look, I thought about the vibes it would have, about what it would feel like to be there. Every place has its own vibes, its own feel. And Austin's vibes were pretty much just as I had imagined they would be. In a few words (even though words can't come very close to conveying vibes): laid-back, artsy, rugged and kind of cowboy-esque (see photos below). But will my idea of Vienna's vibes line up with reality too? Will it be as beautiful as I've heard it is? Will it feel as classy and elegant and sophisticated as I imagine it will? Just under two weeks before I find out...

Allen's Boots on South Congress Street in Austin: more cowboy boots than I've seen in my entire life. In one store. Rows and rows and rows.

Doorknob in the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Very Texas.