Sportfest

On Wednesday the other cadets and I competed in Sportfest. We ran the Schwedenstaffel, which is a relay where the first man runs 400 meters, the next 300 meters, then 200 meters, and then I ran the final leg, which was 100 meters. We did not win. In fact, we got last place in our heat (although I think we beat another team in the first heat). As it turns out, even though many of these Austrians smoke, all of them run... a lot... and fast. I felt bad for losing so badly, but none of the Austrians in our Jahrgang (class) cared, they all told us we did great and that it was at least funny for them to watch. Luckily, even though we lost our race, enough of our teams won that we were able to get second place. After the medals ceremony, the party really started and we filled the 2nd place trophy up and everybody took a drink. Somehow over the course of the night I ended up holding on to the trophy for around 45 minutes. People kept shouting "Lehmann!" (the name of our Jahrgang) and adding more to the trophy. Some of the Austrians are fallschimmspringer jäger (Airborne infantry), and since I am branching infantry and am Airborne qualified we began pumping our fists, high-fiving, and shouting "Airborne Infantry!" at the top of our lungs. All in all, it was a great night.

Gotta love the semester abroad...

Life is good. Yesterday I received my schedule for the current semester (I still haven't techincally started classes). I found out that I have between 1 and 3 academic classes a week. Even though this does not include my once a week Horse Riding class, my mandatory workouts twice a week, or my dance class once every other week in Vienna, it is quite a difference compared to my regular 20 class hours or so a week back at West Point. Let's just say that I am more than a little bit excited. I am excited about not having a curfew while here, especially because I've heard (and seen) that these Austrians like to go out during the week.
Tomorrow I am running the 100 meter dash in Sportfest, a fun yearly competition between the incoming freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and the seniors who are graduating on Friday. While I haven't run the 100 meter since high school, I've been told that it doesn't matter. The Austrians say the competition is really second place to the huge kegger that takes place immediately following it. Having helped to set up the party, I can personally say that it is going to be out of control. I think I counted 25 kegs and 50 cases of bottled beer (for approximately 360 cadets). Tomorrow should be interesting.

Oktoberfest 2010!

We arrived in Munich on Saturday after a five hour train ride from Wiener Neustadt. The Hauptbahnhof in Munich was outrageously busy. I don’t know why but I didn’t expect it to be as busy as it was, there were people everywhere. We met three other cadets in the train station, two of them, Mary and Zach, were visiting from the University and Hamburg and the other one, Steve, was studying in Munich. They were all ready for Oktoberfest, completely decked out in Lederhosen and traditional wear. We were very lucky that we could stay with Steve because all of the hostels were full and even if they had openings, they were about 100 Euros a night per person.
After meeting up with the other three, we searched for a locker to throw our stuff into so we could head right to Oktoberfest. Since the station was so busy, we had no chance of finding one so we went on a 45 minute trip back to Steve’s room on the far outskirts of Munich. Once we got there, we set our stuff down and headed off. About an hour later we got to the Oktoberfest grounds. My first impression was that it was the largest carnival or fair that I had ever seen. The busy Hauptbahnhof paled in comparison to Oktoberfest. There were carnival rides and food stands everywhere. The beer “tents” were not tents at all; they were giant buildings with extremely long lines of thirsty people waiting outside for others to leave and make space for them.
We walked around looking for the beer tent with the shortest line and after about an hour or so we decided on Augustiner Brau and finagled a seat. It was really interesting as we were walking around because almost everywhere you looked you could see sick-faced people who had clearly had too much. A few medics would walk by every five or ten minutes, blowing whistles and pushing a covered cart with a comatose drinker inside. I thought this was interesting because I found it actually kind of difficult to drink because it was so busy. It was also interesting to hear English more often than German while in Germany, due to the incredible amount of tourists.
After we eventually found our table a waitress came by, carrying about 10 liters of beer. We each got a liter, than another, and then most of another. It is truly amazing how quickly 3 liters of beer sneaks up on you. I distinctly remember walking at the New Cadet pace of 120 steps per minute to the nearest bathroom and anxiously waiting in line. I’m sure my face said exactly what everyone else’s face said, “This line needs to hurry up. NOW!”
After drinking for a while, Steve and Zach left to find a friend and the remaining four of us searched for a hookah bar. We eventually found one, smoked a mint hookah, and relaxed. We were shocked after smoking for a bit to realize that it was only 8:30 at night. At about 10 we headed back to Steve’s room and were dead asleep by 10:30.
While Oktoberfest was not life changing, it was certainly cool and a very enjoyable time. As I check “Go to Oktoberfest” off my bucket-list, I think that it was well worth the 160 Euro price of the train ticket.

The train to Munich

After getting back from the field training exercise on Friday we decided that as college students studying in Europe, it would be an abomination not to go to Oktoberfest. Thusly, we woke up at 0615 on a Saturday and headed for the Wiener Nuestadt Hauptbahnhof, where we caught a thirty minute train ride to Vienna made a train change and then caught a four hour train ride to Munich. In total the roundtrip train ticket was around 180 Euros, a little steep perhaps but after all, it’s Oktoberfest. The train is very nice. It isn’t quite the Hogwarts Express like I was hoping, with not a single Chocolate Frog to be had. However the seats are comfortable and have tray tables, there is plenty of leg room, there is an outlet for every pair of seats, reading lights if you need them, and there are even some seats that are facing each other a table in between (although those seem to be reserved for only one person who sits and spreads their bags over the other seats). Tonight we are staying with some cadets who are studying in Munich, which is incredibly lucky because we could not find any hostels with openings and even if we had they are around 100 Euros a night per person. I am extremely excited to reach our destination and see if Oktoberfest is as great as I’ve heard it is (and also drink a beer or two). Attached are some extremely exciting pictures of us on the train.

The end of a FTX

Yesterday we ended a week long field training exercise with the Austrian army at a base in Allensteig, which is in Niederösterreich. I was a little anxious about this training because all I had heard about Allensteig was that it was the coldest place in Austria and that the training was going to be incredibly difficult. So I was happily surprised to find Allensteig to be warm and nice, not at all what I had imagined (also known as Planet Hoth from Star Wars). The weather was great, in the 60’s and 70’s during the day and crisply cold during the night.
The training was… boring. I do not in any way mean that as a dig on the Austrian army, it was mostly because the training was for a battalion and we were the reserve company. Out of my entire company only my squad and a couple others received any enemy contact and I was the only one out the four American cadets to shoot my rifle. It was not that easy for the rest of the companies, especially the main effort company, who lost two out of three platoons. For us the normal day consisted of waking up around 0630, eating breakfast and taking our time getting ready, waiting around until about 0900, driving somewhere, pulling security there for an hour or so, getting back into the Pinzgauer, waiting for a while longer, driving somewhere, waiting around and snacking for about an hour, taking a nap in the sun for an hour, driving somewhere else and pulling security for an hour or so, waiting around, driving somewhere else, setting up our sleeping bags, eating dinner, going to sleep around 2100, waking up around 0100 or so and pulling guard duty, and then going back to sleep. Only on the last day did we even encounter the enemy. Even though the training was a tad boring, I had a lot of fun getting to know my squad and platoon, and working on my German.
Attached are some pictures of the training: The first is of Kopfy as we were waiting in the Pinzgauer and talking the first morning. Next is Andy, doing what we did best during the training. Then there is me pulling good security on absolutely nothing. Me after giving my “Let’s put some steel on target” speech. The last picture is of me in the Pinzgauer on the last day. As you can see, it got a little messy over four days.

Training

I spent the last week training in the Seetalalpen region of the Steiermark. We did a lot of training in Crowd and Riot Control, which to be honest, was not a lot of fun. We put a visor on our helmets that was extremely difficult to see through during the constant drizzle. We also had on a lot of pads and had a riot shield. While it wasn't so fun, it was good training. We did do some enjoyable things though. For example, we went in the mountains and shot the Sturmgewehr 77 and had a live-fire exercise that included a huge TNT explosion that was so close that dirt and sticks rained down on our helmets. We are heading out again tomorrow to do a 3 or 4 day exercise that should be interesting. The picture is of Matt and I before heading out to the live-fire exercise.

Wiener Neustadt

Yesterday morning we arrive in Wiener Neustadt and it is absolutely amazing how sharply different towns 50 kilometers apart can be. I met some old friends from my time at Austrian Alpine School earlier this summer and some new cadets as well. They come from all over Austria and even though Austria is roughly the size of Tennessee, they all have different accents. The accent in combination with the outrageous speeds at which they speak and the way they replace German words with regional Austrian words makes understanding them extremely difficult sometimes (okay, most of the time). I'm hoping to improve quickly, but for now us four American cadets have been struggling to understand, only picking out words here or phrases there. I've also gotten myself into trouble a couple times by nodding and saying "Ja" when I didn't fully know what they were saying. This has forced me to come back and say things like, "Wait, no I don't play lacrosse." or "Oh hold on, I'm not going home on vacation while I'm here."
On the bright side, I have two buddies from Austrian Alpine in my squad for a 2-week field training exercise that starts on Monday. On the even brighter side, I finished my second essay in German, and I feel like it is extremely better. In my first essay, I struggled to make statements more complex than Subject-Verb sentences with the occasional Direct Object. This time, I tried to add some complexity to my writing, and I hope it works. We had to write about a military festival that we went to a week ago. It was pretty cool, but I think the most interesting thing that I saw was the Austrians selling wine and beer out of an old tank and calling it the "Panzer Bar".

Night-Walking

Today we bid farewell to Vienna and arrived in the nearby (about 50 km) town of Wiener Neustadt, home of the Theresianische Militärakademie, where the other cadets and I will be studying/training until December. As I reflected on Vienna, I thought about one of my favorite activities there: night-walking. I loved just going out in the city at about 10 at night and just walking around, sometimes with people and sometimes alone. I feel that walking the city streets at night is a great way to see the city for what it is, and not just for all of the wonderful tourist attractions. I enjoyed it so much that I was inspired to write a poem about it, which I included below. Special thanks to my brother Joe and my fiancee Michelle for the poetic advice.

Night-walking
By Dan Kurber

I slip on my shoes and lock up my door
and wonder where my feet will take me.
It’s time for my post-dusk tradition,
It’s time to go night-walking.
Now walking the streets at night
might seem dangerous to some.
But in Vienna I’m not worried,
I feel quite safe night-walking.
I see some high school kids in the park.
Youthful screams and muffled laughter
between drags on cheap cigarettes
paying no mind to my night-walking.
Do their parents know where they are?
After all, it’s a school night.
Oh well, I’m not their dad,
plus I’m rather busy, night-walking.
I walk by an open Kebab stand.
Greasy meat and creamy cucumber sauce.
“Mit alles und scharf, bitte.”
I’ll burn the calories night-walking.
I reach a stretch of bars,
light from the doors and windows illuminating
the backs of tired people sleepily smoking.
I quicken my pace, night-walking.
Past brightly strobing discotheques,
excited twenty-somethings buzzing about girls,
shouting drunkenly over the too-loud music.
I wade through, happily night-walking.
As I hear the familiar scratch of my feet
against my driveway’s rough concrete,
I thank my shoes for the trip and wonder
where I’ll go next, night-walking.

7 Stern Bräu

Today we went to a local brewery for the second time since we arrived 12 days ago. Located about 150 meters from the Stiftkaserne (where we are staying), 7 Stern Bräu has pretty good food, and pretty great beer. While I am partial to the Wiener Helles, an excellent light beer, a couple of other cadets really enjoy the Prager Dunkles, a sweet-tasting dark beer with a smack of vanilla. There are some strange beers on the menu as well. For example, the Hanf beer has hemp in it and although the hemp does not give any narcotic addition to the beer, it does give it a nice, sweet, and herbal flavor. Also, the Bamberger Rauchbier was interesting. It is made by either adding smoked wood during the brewing process or brewing it over smoked wood (I honestly have no clue). What I do know is that the first drink tasted like I was drinking bacon. After the initial shock at this, I began to savor the flavor more and found it to be truly smoky, something that would go quite nicely with cheese and crackers (although a little heavy to drink on its own). I also tried the Chilli beer, which of course, is made with chilies. It honestly tastes like something you would use to prank an alcoholic with or something you would put on super hot buffalo wings. I initially expected it to have a little underlying heat, but I coughed after my first sip (obviously paying for my underestimation). It took a serious dare and a promise of over 6 Euros to get me to finish it. If you're interested in the brewery, check out the website... http://www.7stern.at/.

Pizza time!

We have eaten pizza a couple times since we have been in Vienna. We found a great Italian place nearby the base wear we're staying at that has personal pizzas that are too big for their plate (and my stomach). This is a Rusticana, which has pepperoni, cheese, and eggs. I recently got another one with artichokes, mushrooms, ham, and olives. I can't speak for all Viennese pizza, but these are definitely lighter on the cheese (and the calories and fat that come with it) than most American pizzas. They don't skimp on the flavor though, and the dough is fantastic.

Mehr Kaffee!

As promised, some scrumptious coffees that I ingested myself... The top comes from an Offizier Kasino (cafeteria) in a Airbase not far from Judenberg. The middle from an Unteroffizier Kasino in another base near Judenberg in the Steiermark (Styria) region of Austria. The bottom comes from the Kasino in the Stiftskaserne (my home base in Vienna)

Homework Essay One... accomplished

Today was the first real assignment of the semester, a 400-word essay in German about my first week's activities, campus, and people I've met. As per my post last night, writing is still quite difficult for me and I have never written an essay in German before. It took me about 2 hours and I don't think I'm going to win any awards, except for maybe most improved at the end of the semester (I'm guessing it was much worse than anyone else's). I'm believing that I will be improving and am working hard to improve my reading and writing by reading "Mein Leben in Kaff City" a pre-teen book about a kid who moves at the start of summer vacation. Regardless of how I did on this essay, it is finished. One more week until my next essay.

Thus far...

As I write this, I am less than 12 hours away from finishing my first week in Vienna. Most importantly, I feel that my German skills have increased dramatically. While some of the Austrian dialects remain almost unintelligible, I can, for the most part, understand what people are saying. For example, today we received a 3 hour tour of an airplane museum and I understood almost the entirety of what our tour guide said. My speaking has also improved, including my vocabulary and especially my confidence. A big factor in this improvement is trying to speak as much German as possible, regardless of the fact that almost everyone here speaks English extremely well. The improvement in this area has also come at a cost, as I felt more than a little embarrassed several times. For instance, on one of my first days here, I ventured to a coffee shop and ordered (perfectly, I might add) a macchiato. What followed was not so perfect, as the barista hammered me over and over with simple questions in German such as, "For here or to go?" I responded to all of these questions with "Wie, bitte?" ("Say again, please") But I was ultimately able to get out a few answers that seemed to satisfy her. I felt like a complete dunce, but now I know what to expect and am more prepared.
Reading and writing are still difficult, but I am trying to remedy this. I bought a book for pre-teens and have been sitting next to my computer on an online dictionary trying to decipher it. I figure that writing my 400-word homework essay in German will also help this.
I have also tried a number of beers during my stay, including: Austrian beers like Edelweiss, Ottakringer, Gösser, and my favorite so far Trumer pilsner, but also German beers such as Paulaner and Franciskaner, both excellent weißbeers. However, the group of cadets that I’m with is quite reserved, so we don't drink much.
In addition to the tasty beers, I've had some delicious food. On our first day, we went an Austrian cadet and had some amazing Wiener Schnitzel. I also had some excellent Schnitzel at a restaurant right outside the base we are staying at called Centimeter II. The Dönner Kebab here is also delicious. And of course, the coffee I mentioned in an earlier post is outstanding.
Since I've been here we have done some cool things. I've been sightseeing (although simply walking outside is sightseeing since this country has so much history and so many cool statues and monuments). I received a tour of the US embassy and a presentation of the Officer for Defense Cooperation's job from Lieutenant Colonel Chad Lemond, which has made me seriously consider becoming a Foreign Area Officer. I also was able to shoot the Sturmgewehr 77, Pistole 80, and Maschingewehr 42, which was very cool. As well as watch a few Eurofighter Jets take off. Tomorrow we are going to an art museum. I'm excited to do some military training with the Austrian army as well as visiting Slovakia and Hungary in the near future.
Overall, this first week has been totally great, although I have dealt with a few struggles. The biggest has been being away from my fiancé, family, and friends. Skype has definitely been a big help with this and I highly recommend it to anyone who goes abroad. I also recommend to all cadets to go abroad cow (junior) year if possible, as it is difficult being away from all of my buddies during our firstie (senior) year. Internet accessibility is also a bit sketchy; I suggest getting a pay as you go internet stick upon arrival. I t was 50 Euros but it is worth it to be able to access Facebook, email, and Skype. There are internet cafes, but their hours are unusual. One of the best internet cafes that I've been to is McDonald's, which is without a doubt the classiest I've ever been to due to the crown molding, chandelier, and hip feel.
I am only a week in, but I already feel as though I should suggest Vienna as a great vacation spot, and to any cadets who are undecided: be a Foreign Language major and go abroad!