A day in the life

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat...



Oh wait, that's not a day in my life. Sometimes I confuse myself with a young Paul McCartney.


Well, this is the last of the questions that I've received. I thought there might be more. But I guess you're really not that interested. Or maybe you think I just do better when I come up with stuff on my own. I seem to get more comments that way. But I digress. Here it is: "Describe a typical day." I know, it's not really in question form. But let's not judge.


Right now, there really is no such thing as a typical day. Once school starts, I imagine I will have typical days. But, I may not have so much time to post once I'm in school. So for now, I'll just tell you about some of the things I do -- although usually not all in the same day.

Grocery shopping
I've already mentioned some things about grocery shopping in previous blogs, so I won't go into detail. The actual shopping part is pretty much the same as in the U.S., but of course everything is in German. The hard part comes when you are finished shopping. Paying can be a bit intimidating. You place everything on a conveyor belt like in most stores in the U.S., but after the cashier rings up your items you have to place them back into your basket and then bag them yourself (with the bags you remembered to bring from home). It's like a race. Have you been through airport security recently? Did you feel rushed? Quick -- take off your shoes. And your belt. Empty your pockets. Take the laptop out of the case. Hurry, hurry, hurry. People are waiting. That's what I feel like every time I check out at the grocery store.

Another thing about grocery stores is the hours. They're open from some time in the morning (not sure when, but early enough) to 6:00 p.m. or maybe 7:00. They usually stay open a little later on Thursday and close a little earlier on Saturday and are closed all day on Sunday and holidays. We're lucky enough to have a 24 hour gas station nearby in the event that we need something really important -- like Diet Coke -- when the grocery store is closed.

Other shopping
Everything I wrote above applies to shopping for other things as well. We have to carry it home. Paying for things can be intimidating and stressful. Stores close early. The biggest problem with buying things is having to carry it all home. Fortunately (for me), Brian does most of the carrying.


Going into town
Brian and I head towards the inner city (i.e., the touristy side of town) at least once a week. This involves walking to a nearby u-bahn station (u-bahn = subway), then taking 20 minute trip to the city center. We may go to look around, shop or to get a bite to eat (usually pizza from Pizza Bizzi). I call it the touristy side of town, but there are a lot of locals there as well. A lot of our trips are for specific reasons -- to go to a store in search for a hard-to-find item, visit the doctor, go to church, etc. (We often stop in the inner city on our way home from church because it's the only part of town that has stuff open on Sunday because it's considered a tourist area.)


Going to church
We've visited all three of the churches of Christ in Vienna. The first one we visited is located in the far south part of the town. Getting there requires about a 25 minute u-bahn ride, 15 minute bus ride, and walking for 15 or 20 minutes. The second one we visited is more centrally-located. It takes about a 20 minute u-bahn ride, switch to a different u-bahn line for another short ride, then a short walk. The third congregation is an English-speaking group that meets at the same location as the second congregation. The u-bahn station is about a 10-minute walk from our apartment, so the first congregation takes us about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get there and the second and third congregations takes us about 40 minutes to get there.


Church services are pretty similar to what we're familiar with from the U.S. -- except of course, they're in German. Unless you're with the English-speaking congregation. :) The three congregations probably have less than 50 members between them.

----------------


Of course, my day is also filled with household chores like laundry, cooking, and cleaning -- most of which I've written about in previous posts. We don't have a television, so my free time is filled with reading and spending time on the computer -- mostly the latter. Starting next week, my free time will probably be spent studying German.

For Sharkdog, this is how he spends most of his day.... sleeping.