More Riding, More Schooling, and More Running

Doing balance training on Rigoletto

Walking Rigoletto into the Reithalle

Welcome!

Today was the last day of my second week of school. I rode three out of four days, and my legs (and other parts) are pretty sore. The first two times I rode a white steed named Rigoletto and today I rode a dark brown horse named Belinda. Rigoletto was definitely more enjoyable to ride, mostly because the last thing Belinda wanted was for me and Christian to ride her. When Belinda was galloping, the last thing I wanted to do was let go of the saddle and do balance exercises. Regardless, we are improving. I’m already noticing improved posture and am having an easier time balancing on the horse. We are also getting quicker and quicker at cleaning and saddling the horses.
School was… school. I can hardly understand my Austrian History teacher, and while I can understand my other teachers pretty well, it is hard to keep from drifting off to daydream land. I think the most interesting part of this school week was seeing the senior class haze the freshman class. It was pretty much like Reorgy Week at West Point, except that it was fun for the freshmen and replace push-ups with drinking. The reason behind the “haze-fest” was the seniors had to show the freshmen how they are supposed to act in the MAK Casino (the bar downstairs). It was a fun time filled with Austrian soldier song after Austrian soldier song.
Something strange has happened to me since I have been here: I’ve actually enjoyed running. Normally I run about once every week at West Point, but here I run much more frequently. In the past two weeks I have run 8 times, 4 in the last 4 days alone. I don’t know what it is, but I think it has been the great weather. It is warm here, and not hot or humid. Additionally, there are really great running trails and it is extremely flat. Everybody runs here, when out on the trail you might see a 14 year-old boy or a 65 year-old woman. I’m very happy to be finally enjoying running, because I need to get better at it, especially with Ranger School looming ahead.

Riding, Bowling, and a little bit of Schooling

As I write this, I am at the end of my first week of actual school. Scholastically, I had my 4-hour German class twice, once on Monday and once on Wednesday. This class is really great, our teacher gives us a pretty even mix of grammar, reading, speaking, and listening. One part of this class that has really helped my comprehension to improve is reading Austrian newspaper articles and then writing short summaries about them in German. I also had History of the Austrian Army, regular Austrian History, a 3.5 hour class on manners and social situations, a tour of the Military Academy, and Riding Class. For the most part in these classes, I tried to keep up for as long as I could before zoning out. History of the Austrian Army was really interesting because the teacher, a colonel, had many visual aids that helped me to understand. The other classes were a little tougher, I may have started drawing a little bit in the regular history class and the class on manners was torture due to not sleeping much the night before.
The Austrians also have Körperausbildung (PT, or KA in Austria) twice a week. KA was really great because we usually warm up by playing basketball, soccer, or doing a short body weight workout, and then we generally run a 5K or so. The running trails are quite nice around the MilAk and I ran 3 or 4 times last week, which is not normal for me.
My favorite class this week was riding. We started out by brushing and saddling the horse, basically just getting used to being around a giant animal. After familiarizing ourselves with the riding equipment we brought the horses into the giant riding hall. Chris and I rode a horse named Diana, and Seth and Matt rode a horse named Tenderness. Before riding, we warmed the horses up by holding on to a rope that was connected to the bridle and having them run around us. I volunteered to ride first, while Christian held the rope. We are learning Classical Riding, so we did not use stirrups or hold on to reins, we just were working on balance. Once on the horse, we performed several different exercises, such as moving our arms in a circle, rolling our ankles, or twisting our body. These exercises all focused on improving balance. After a while, Chris and I switched and he got a chance to ride. Both of us have pretty long legs, which made a couple of the exercises a little difficult. Overall, I think we did very well for our first time. After riding, we took the horses back, took of their saddles, brushed them, and stabled them. It is now a day later and I'm still a little sore from the saddle, I think I understand where the term "tenderloins" comes from.
Last night we went bowling with about twenty Austrians from our Jahrgang. It was a blast. We split up into four teams and then the teams played each other. I bowled probably the best game of my life, before the last game the lowest amount of pins I had knocked down in a frame was 8, with mostly spares and strikes. Towards the end, my accuracy was thrown off a little by the Oktoberfest-sized beers. It was a special night at the bowling alley, and interspersed with the normal pins were orange and yellow pins. If an orange or yellow pin was the front-most pin and you got a strike, you received either a free drink or a free game; if you failed to get the strike you still received a lollipop. The best I did with a yellow in the front was a spare, but Matt got a strike with one. After a while, the bowling alley decided that our outstanding group of guys needed sombreros, which they passed out to us.
The sombreros helped us to look classy when we headed to Rox, a rock n’ roll bar. It was pretty empty, but I enjoy talking with the Austrians and in a relaxed setting such as Rox, I don’t worry too much about making mistakes. I find that in these settings my conversational German skills increase dramatically. It was a really fun (and long) night. Tomorrow we are heading to Bratislava (formerly Preßburg) right across the border in Slovakia, which promises to be a great adventure.