Brett here.

We have survived our first week in Vienna. Here are our initial observations:

1) Austria is not America
2) Euros love wacky haircuts
3) Consuming alcohol in the workplace is expected

This being the second time we've left the country together, we often find ourselves comparing this adventure to the one we had in Jordan. When we do that, we can't believe how much crap we put up with when we were in Jordan.

We got in last Friday night, and Saturday we got some groceries to hold us over for the weekend. It's always interesting to me to see what kind of American food stuffs are lacking in the countries I go to. In Brazil there was no peanut butter. Jordan had mostly everything we wanted, but there were no tortillas. In Austria, there is no mustard. It was pure confusion when I found the red bottles for ketchup, and then quickly grabbed a yellow one next to it... which turned out to be mayonnaise. What kind of deceptive country is this?

Austria quickly redeemed itself with this:


That's right. When I'm out of the country, I only drink American cola.

Today we did find a store that carries things like mustard, pepperidge farms cookies, and the following Scottish Oats:


We went to bed Saturday night about, oh midnight-ish. And were surprised when we woke up the next day and the clock read 17:20. The clock was not wrong. We slept from midnight until 5:00pm the next day. THAT IS 17 HOURS OF SLEEP!

Anyhoo, today we spent some time downtown by all the museums and stuff. This city is so awesome. There is so much cool stuff to see. And there is so much to smell! Specifically, I take a train to work every morning about 7:30am, and it is IN-CREDIBLE how much peoples' breath reeks of alchohol at that time. They have truly mastered the art of substance abuse.

Slowly but surely our bodies have been getting used to the time difference. It seems like it has been a lot harder for me this time than the last. Lindsey doesn't have "regular" work hours so she can just kind of do whatever she wants to as far as sleeping goes. I myself don't have that flexible of a schedule. I'll sleep about 4 hours and then go into work pretending that I don't feel like someone has been punching me in the face all night. But I think I'm over that now - hopefully.

So we're settled in and ready for the next six months. Probably the best decision we made as far as being equipped for the long haul was bringing our imac along.



I'm not one of those "I love my apple so much, I wanna give it ikisses" kind of people. But it does have a nice big screen, with lots of our movies stored on it, and it was surprisingly easy to travel with.

Something else that will make life easier is the fact that we found a Mexican restaurant that is actually pretty good (better than the one in Tel Aviv anyway). And the owners speak perfect English. Swish!



So here is the first blog of our Austrian adventures. Feel free to leave comments even if you are technically "only Lindsey's friend." She contributed to this one, and reads the comments. Don't be stingy. You can see more photo's from today's adventures here

Also this: