my first 6 days in Vienna
May. 6th, 2010 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaOk, I’ve been alternating between the excuses of being busy and not having good internet access as reasons not to post. I don’t have internet at the moment, but I’ve got a decent desk at which to sit, and my host is busy helping the downstairs neighbour girl learn to play the recorder, so I’ll type up some of my Vienna adventures thus far, and post them tomorrow when I’m back at the conference venue.
I arrived in Vienna on Friday and was met in town by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
racire1. We went back to her place for a lovely lunch, where we were joined by some of her friends. The four of us hopped into a car and drove to a fabric store in a small town to the north east of Vienna. This is a store which offers some pretty good deals. I found some nice black linen, some light weight white linen, and some decent blue linen, each of which was labelled with an asking price of €5/meter, and I tossed them into the shopping cart we were filling of things we might purchase. Then we returned to the wool isle, and I found a lovely brown/black soft wool that has a wavy weave, also marked at €5/meter. The girls explained to me once we were ready to go that it was worth waiting a bit longer for the owner to come to the measuring table, as he generally is willing to offer discounts if we take all of a bolt, or at least six meters of something. The black was labelled as having 4.6 meters left on the bolt, and the white 5.7 m, so I decided to just take all of each of those. I opted for six meters of the blue, and after hearing how much of a discount he gave for each of those, asked for 8 meters of the wool. The grand total came to an average of $3.69/meter for the lot of it! I strongly recommend shopping with racire1.
Friday evening we did a sewing night, and I tried to teach them the Finish stitch in nålbinding. To accomplish this, I first had to teach myself how to do it with the right hand, since I’d learned it left-handed. It was harder than I thought to figure it out, and while I can now do it with either hand, I like it better left handed.
Saturday and Sunday she took me to museums and coffee houses (it is Vienna after all, sitting in coffee shops is very important here). It being the first Sunday of the month, a number of the museums were free admissions. She’s uploaded lots of photos from our weekend adventures on her blog and livejournal, if anyone is interested.
Sunday evening I moved to the home of one of her friends for the week. I’ve been enjoying evenings spent with the family. Her children speak German (of course), and French because they go to French school, but they’ve picked up some English since I arrived with "Kareina, look" having been particularly well learned. I’ve gotten all of my new fabric washed, mostly dried on the line, and ironed the rest of the way dry, and I’ve started a new underdress out of the white linen.
During the days I’ve been attending the conference of the European Geosciences Union, enjoying listening to interesting talks, reading interesting posters, and making use of the free internet (while there is working internet at the house in which I’m staying, the password they think is correct doesn’t work on my computer—when we type it in it insists that it is required to be exactly 26 characters (it is!), and won’t do anything). Alas, it is rare that I’ve managed to find an electrical outlet near a table and chair, so I’ve been reduced to reading mail/LJ/blogs/etc. while holding the computer in my lap, which is fine for reading, but not so comfortable for typing.
I’ve been biking to the conference each day—my route takes me from the apartment along a lovely green belt to the Danube, and then down the bike path there to the site. It takes me just under a half an hour to get there and just over half an hour to return. Between that and all of the walking during our museum adventures, my exercise log for this month is looking pretty good.
I arrived in Vienna on Friday and was met in town by
racire1. We went back to her place for a lovely lunch, where we were joined by some of her friends. The four of us hopped into a car and drove to a fabric store in a small town to the north east of Vienna. This is a store which offers some pretty good deals. I found some nice black linen, some light weight white linen, and some decent blue linen, each of which was labelled with an asking price of €5/meter, and I tossed them into the shopping cart we were filling of things we might purchase. Then we returned to the wool isle, and I found a lovely brown/black soft wool that has a wavy weave, also marked at €5/meter. The girls explained to me once we were ready to go that it was worth waiting a bit longer for the owner to come to the measuring table, as he generally is willing to offer discounts if we take all of a bolt, or at least six meters of something. The black was labelled as having 4.6 meters left on the bolt, and the white 5.7 m, so I decided to just take all of each of those. I opted for six meters of the blue, and after hearing how much of a discount he gave for each of those, asked for 8 meters of the wool. The grand total came to an average of $3.69/meter for the lot of it! I strongly recommend shopping with racire1.Friday evening we did a sewing night, and I tried to teach them the Finish stitch in nålbinding. To accomplish this, I first had to teach myself how to do it with the right hand, since I’d learned it left-handed. It was harder than I thought to figure it out, and while I can now do it with either hand, I like it better left handed.
Saturday and Sunday she took me to museums and coffee houses (it is Vienna after all, sitting in coffee shops is very important here). It being the first Sunday of the month, a number of the museums were free admissions. She’s uploaded lots of photos from our weekend adventures on her blog and livejournal, if anyone is interested.
Sunday evening I moved to the home of one of her friends for the week. I’ve been enjoying evenings spent with the family. Her children speak German (of course), and French because they go to French school, but they’ve picked up some English since I arrived with "Kareina, look" having been particularly well learned. I’ve gotten all of my new fabric washed, mostly dried on the line, and ironed the rest of the way dry, and I’ve started a new underdress out of the white linen.
During the days I’ve been attending the conference of the European Geosciences Union, enjoying listening to interesting talks, reading interesting posters, and making use of the free internet (while there is working internet at the house in which I’m staying, the password they think is correct doesn’t work on my computer—when we type it in it insists that it is required to be exactly 26 characters (it is!), and won’t do anything). Alas, it is rare that I’ve managed to find an electrical outlet near a table and chair, so I’ve been reduced to reading mail/LJ/blogs/etc. while holding the computer in my lap, which is fine for reading, but not so comfortable for typing.
I’ve been biking to the conference each day—my route takes me from the apartment along a lovely green belt to the Danube, and then down the bike path there to the site. It takes me just under a half an hour to get there and just over half an hour to return. Between that and all of the walking during our museum adventures, my exercise log for this month is looking pretty good.
