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.

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.