Busy as a bee

The past couple days have sure been hectic. This was the graduation week for the fourth Jahrgang (or senior class) and Friday and Saturday were the big culminating events. On Friday we woke up and went to morning formation, then met up with Major Lampersberger to see the diploma ceremony at a theatre in Wiener Neustadt. After the diploma ceremony, we hustled back to watch the ring ceremony. Their ring ceremony is quite different from ours. First of all, they all get the same ring, a silver signet ring with the TherMilAk crest as the signet. The top man in the class, however, gets a gold ring. The rings are passed out in a small ballroom by the Landverteitigungs and Sport Minister (basically their Secretary of Defense, except that he is also the Secretary of Sports). Then we had some time off during the day before we went to a classical concert given by the Military Band and grabbing some dinner. After dinner we went to the balcony of the Academz and watched one of the two Ausmussterungs (graduation at the MilAk) parades. It was two hours long, which is extremely long for a military parade with people standing at the position of attention or parade rest (which for them is basically still attention). The senior class performed a joke, somewhat similar to the 100th night show, except that it was not funny at all. All of the guys in my Jahrgang said it was the worst that they had seen. After the joke, there was a great fireworks show. It was great for me because I was just chilling out on a balcony, but I'm sure it wasn't as fun for the people standing in formation. After the parade, the other cadets and I met up with the Defense Attache in Austria, Colonel Soto. We talked for a few minutes and then left to go out with the Austrians, which was great. They took us way down in the basement, which was more of a bunker than a basement, to a room that they had turned into a bar. They said that they had already been caught down there and that they were very much not allowed to be there, which we saw later when a couple of high ranking NCO's came and sternly kicked the 25 of us out.

The majority of yesterday for me was spent in Full Dress, which is not a comfortable uniform. We woke up and had a long drilling practice for the second parade, then we scarfed down some lunch. After lunch, we had the actual parade. It was cool because I got to participate in their graduation ceremony, but it was probably one of the most miserable experiences of my life. I stood basically at the position of attention for two hours while listening to two Austrian generals, the Landsverteitigungs and Sport Minister, and the President of Austria give speeches that were too long. After that we got to march down the main street in Wiener Neustadt, which was fairly awkward since the four of us stood out like a sore thumb in our Full Dress and parading hat. Once we were back from the parade, we had to clean our room really fast so that others could move in and we could move to another room further down the hallway. It's a day after moving in and so far zero of my three roommates have checked in. Another interesting thing about my room is that one of my roommates is a civilian, not really a normal thing for a military academy.

I guess I'll see how the room situation transpires, but tomorrow should be interesting since it will be my first day of school. Hmm, starting school in October... I could get used to that.