The End of the Beginning...

...or something like that. Here is my final entry about Graz, and my last video entry for a long time.

Vienna Report, Days 3 & 4

Vienna Report, Days 1 & 2

Be ready - the images and narration fly by quickly.

Super-Special Video Entry!!!

Note: when I say "Papal supremacy" in the video, I mean "medieval papal supremacy."

Lederhosenfest, Stud Farm, usw...

I may have said that this entry was going to be about my host family, Graz, and Stattegg - I lied. I have too many extracurricular activities going on to discuss my immediate environment with satisfactory depth. SO, here are reports on Lederhosenfest and the National Stud Farm. 

Lederhosenfest - need I say more? Probably. I felt very under-dressed because I was one of the only people there without a pair of tiny, ornately designed pants, but all negative feelings soon faded when I listened to Edlseer, a very popular pop-folk group that sounds and looks like this:

Make of that what you will.

It was a pretty small event - maybe fifty yards of one street - but there was more than enough lederhosen to go around. Oddly enough, I didn't see any lederhosen-based events there, so I think the Austrians just named it that in order to justify the en masse wearing of fancy little leather pants.

There were also enormous fancy leather pants.

Last Saturday we went to a very special stud farm that breeds the most prized horses in Austria. Images:

 

They are born black or brown, and turn white after three or four years, as seen here:

 We then went to West Styrian wine country and visited a small, independent winery known here as a Buschenschank. It's amazing how the Austrians manage to preserve nature while carrying out their business - I've noticed this in both industrial and agrarian regions of Styria. Also notable was the bonus that the Buschenschank sits on the top of a mountain, so the views provided there were absolutely unbelievable.

And now I'm taking a request: Bethany Russell wants to know about the food and whether the Austrians eat anything unusual. Well, I haven't eaten anything too weird so far. The least American thing I've seen over here happened when my host-dad grilled some trout and served the whole fish (sans entrails, of course). I was encouraged to eat the gills. I did so, and found them to be quite good.

Students who have already done this study program have told stories about some kind of meat gelatin thing, but I have neither seen it nor heard about it in my time here. Either it doesn't exist or the Austrians recently realized that they were eating meat jello.

I'm tempted to say that Austrians eat lots of meat, and that wouldn't be far from the truth. From what I've seen, though, it appears that in addition to meat, they enjoy gratuitous amounts of vegetables and fruit as well.  In a typical lunch with my host family - the main meal of the day - there's a monstrous pile of everything.See fig. 1 for details.

                                 fig. 1

Coming up next is a super-special video entry about my class' latest city excursion to Leoben!

Ba-Ba!
-Jared Boze

Super Special Video Entry!

What else is going on? I attended a choir rehearsal and found that my voice is a perfect bass. Hopefully I can do it every week. We sang bits of Mozart's "Requiem," which is a mind-blowing song that I can somehow sing without much help despite never seeing or hearing the music before. I honestly think it's the greatness of the material and the profundity of the huge harmonies that keep me so focused that I can play it by ear with few errors.

I procured a trombone yesterday - it's a cheap student model, but I figure 50 Euro isn't a bad deal, even for a cheap trombone.

I also locked myself out of my house today, which was almost embarrassing.

Next entry will be a long-overdue tour of my house, my neighborhood, and Graz and Stattegg in general.

Cheers,
-Jared Boze