"Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush, so early in the morning" - Children's Folk Song

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Hi again,

Deutschlandsberg is an old town (but almost every town in Europe is an old town, so that's nothing special in itself) about 45 minutes away from Graz, the capital of the province, Styria, in Austria. Deutschlandsberg has a history which in fact makes it a VERY old town, but I'll dwell more on that in another entry. Suffice it to say, there've been people living in the Deutschlandsberg area since the late stone age and early bronze age period. Dutschlandsberg in many ways is a medium sized town (aka bigger than Gettysburg), but to be able to walk it is still quite doable. There is one very long main street which is its commercial center, with several side streets branching off of it. All the houses are built in the same style as I mentioned Vienna's was (aka circa 18th Century with red clay tiled rooves), but Deutschlandsberg had a safer, more "homey" and intimate feel to it than Vienna had. When we arrived at our hostel, the bus had problems pulling into the parking lot (as the hostel is half-way up the hill which leads to the castle that overlooks the town--did I forget to mention it has an old castle on a hill?).

For a while there, I thought the bus was going to go careening rear end first down the hill (which wasn't so comfortable a thought sitting close to the back), however the bus somewhat pulled in and all was "fine". While in the 4 hour transit to Deutschlandsberg, the program leaders had handed out packets with our IES student ID numbers (which is used to determine when you sign up for housing and when you sign up for classes 1-120 was the order for housing and 120 - 1 was the order for classes, my number is 102), what rooms we'd be staying in while in Deutschlandsberg, and a nice little handout that explained more about Deutschlandsberg.

Myself and a few of my new friends (Tara, Brian, Will, and Lorena) all had to wait for another bus to come, because we'd stowed our luggage on one of the other busses. After the third bus had parked on the hill we walked up the steep hill (grumbling and muttering to ourselves all the way) to the bus and grabbed our stuff. Once we had done that we each parted to head to our different rooms.

When I had arrived, all four of my other roommates had arrived and chosen their beds, so I took the last bed left, which was up the stairs and straight ahead. The room, since it was on the top floor, was a "two floor" room. The first floor opened up to a foyee, where you could hang your coats, enter the bathroom, or work at a desk. Upon further entry you came to the lower room which had two beds on one side, a table and two chairs in front of a window, and a stairwell that led along the wall and up to the upper level. There was closet space where the traditional Harry Potter room (under the stairs) would be. The stairs were very weird, instead of being straight on and even, it looked like they'd taken stairs from a wooden spiral staircase and alternated every other one to be the same. So on oneside of the stairs was a thick side and the other was excruciatingly thin. This of course ment that for people (like me) who have size 14 sized feet, we have to follow the pattern of thick sides up the stairs in order to keep from breaking our necks (it was very fun walking down at night, let me tell you). On the upper floor there were three beds, two in the corners and one along the back side of the wall. Mine was in the left corner directly across from the stairs. On my bed is the traditional Austrian bedding that you will get here. Austrian bedding is different from American bedding because while it has a sheet on the mattress, the sheet traditionally isn't a fitted sheet (so for all of those tossers and turners out there--yeah me included--you'll probably end up pull the sheet out half-way through the night. Next there's the pillow, which is usually a feather pillow (which is nothing at all to complain about! :-) ) and then there's this quilt thing--there's a specific name for it, but it escapes me right now-- that's a heavy-duty thing that really keeps you warm, that's inside of this cotton bag that's similar to a large pillow case (taking the quilt out of its quilt case is a very bad idea, by the way, of course not that I would know that from experience *whistles innocently*). The quilt is folded at the foot of the bed, and the pillow is up at the head, and that's how an Austrian bed is made (actually it's an easier way to make a bed than fussing with all of those sheets).

After I'd unpacked, I then took my computer down to the student assistants' room (aka Bill and later I'd meet Dune) and gave them my laptop (because none of our doors would lock. Well that's not actually the truth, they did have a lock on them, its just we weren't given the key for it, so all valuable were to be locked inside of Bill and Dune's room.

Then we had dinner, which was served cafeteria style, and for the first night didn't seem like anything we'd not be able to get in the US (beef tips and noodles). After that we had a brief meeting introducing us to all of the IES staff who were staying with us at Deutschlandsberg. Professor Schier, the head of the program in Vienna, didn't like talking to us the way the chairs were facing so we had to shift our chairs to the side of the room and then shift them back whenever someone else gave a speech (it was all right the first time, but the next day shifting the chairs would get annoying because the wall he was against was lined with windows facing East). After our little introducting meeting, we were giving the Housing talk and then sent on our way. Most people hanged around the bar. I did too, and decided to try a Goesser (it has an umlaut over the o, but I'm too lazy to find the character at the moment so I wrote oe instead), which is a national type of beer. Honestly I didn't like the Goesser that much.

After a half hour, there was a little Austria quiz where we could possibly win prizes by answering questions about Austria. I ended up winning 3 or 4 little prizes, while Tara ended up with about 6. We were really the only ones to win more than one prize and answer with any confidence (and not cheat by looking the answer up in a book). I was good with the dates of things and general knowledge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's borders (like I knew that Florence was never a part of the A-H empire, and that Germany annexed Austria in 1938, etc.) Tara was good on naming people. In the end we were both pretty proud of ourselves for answering so nicely (although I wish I had been the one to get the laundry detergent, but oh well). My prizes were: Sisi chocolates, Manner wafers, three drink tickets (which gave me a free drink/ticket--low alcohol or non-alcoholic drinks only--at the bar in the hostel), and a chapstick tube.

After that I hauled myself back up to my room and decided to crash. I was the first one to get back to the room (and it was about 1, 1:30 AM). I fell asleep for an hour, then woke up when all of my roommates came back (the two I shared a floor with seemingly more drunk than the other two), and I laid there tossing and turning for the rest of the night.

That's all for now Folks,

~Chas