Russian for beginners

There are very few more amusing things than chatting in Russian :).

An unsocial day

Change of environment often comes with some interesting sequences of happenings like today, when I moved (back?) to Vienna. The 1st Oct hurray! NOT! Ok anyways, so here it goes:
1) Sleep in a night train with almost maximal lighting on - luckily got through with only vorteilscard application not having paid. Fortunately my expectations fulfilled - I was able to sleep in the train for some good 4 hours - not close to enough but anyway..
2) A walk from the Westbahnhof to my new dorm - at around 1 hour on foot. Thought that it should be smthn like refreshening my Vienna insights, but at the end appeared to be damn tiring - especially those uphills with my 20kg bag and 10kg rucksack on my shoulders. Looks like I've lost not only 6kg but percentually more strength as well.
3) Of course I wasn't able to move into the dorm at 8.30 as it should have been possible to happen, cos of course they hadn't had checked the rooms, which postponed the whole procedure till 14.00... and I was damn tired already. At least there were some buckets of internet at faculty which is luckily 15 mins on foot from the dorm.
4) As the others were browsing along in the computer lab room, I was snoozing with some intervals of conscious browsing - working on thesis of course wasn't anything viable at such a state. I hope I didn't snore at least.
5) Ok once having had patiently stood through the queue for 1 hour and having listened to czech more than I've ever needed, I got at last in my room at 15.30... So next part - gotta check whether my bike and stuff are still there at my previous dorm... 45 mins walk, of course.
6) Nice downhill walk and guess what - I ran into 2 students that were speaking in some common language... -lithuanian-? NOT! latvian. I mean Latvian is no Russian - you can't just walk in a park and meet a Latvian in Vienna, running into latvian in Vienna is less probable than running into one in Sydney (which actually happened to me), the probability is about equal to seeing a speeding Estonian driver. Anyways, I gotta know about 50 euro Semesterkarte, I hope it's not a bad joke - gotta verify this one.
7) Some hospitable (ok not at the beginning as he asked me whether I'm a Czech (Which is only a bit less offensive than being asked whether I'm a Russian :) and was asking some questions to verify if i'm not just going there to steal a bike) finnish let me in to my bicycle and sacks of stuff. Afterwards I regreted that I didn't manage to demonstrate my finnish skills (terve, uksi, kaksi etc :).
8) A fun ride - having packed all my stuff in the big bag I rode bike with one hand and with other held the bag's handle whilst the bag was rolling on the streets on its trolleys. At first I got seriously unsure about the balance, but at the end I could even correct the trajectory of the bag so that it doesn't fall down and carry me with it :). In either case suddenly I felt popular... all eyes on a guy with a big bag disturbing the cars and other cyclists. Sometimes you have to be egoist... when it matters.
9) At last home, chunks of sleep, heaps of czechs (mostly czechitas :) in the neighbourhood, maybe I'll catch up czech to the level I did with Lithuanian. Probably not. It's not Bolzano and I'm getting more and more unsocial :(. Age and mentality takes its toll.
10) Yeah and then there was a locker game - I felt like in a tv show - you have 2 keys - one for the locker in the kitchen and one for the locker in the fridge. Of course it would be completely unnecassary to enumate those dozen smthn lockers... So the variance wasn't on my side - the last locker did unlock and in the fridge I had to retry to find mine.
11) And the last but not the least - I hope my room mate will be a monolingual germanophone. Probably not gonna happen....

And now it's just a lazy sloppy coding night, which will probably once again result in a ~30% expected effort and the sole excuse will be once again - too little constraints. At least the "we are scientists" album, I found on my pc, beat my expectations - song by song nothing special, but the whole album together as a monolite energizer - smthn like power indie :D.

P.S. It's not that I'm going to write every day or even every week such stuff that completely abuses my blah's format. No resolution either. And this one doesn't make much sense as a whole either, so better stick with the sloppy conciseness as unfolding tends to roll away from the sense (of course if there's any).

The Giant Pandas at Schonbrunn Tiergarten

Schonbrunn Tiergarten is one of the few Zoos in Europe where there are Giant Pandas, so paying 14 euros to see them seems quite a bearable price (or maybe pandable khem khem). Anyway you can't postpone checking them out forever so at one of my last days in Vienna I saw Giant Pandas for the first time in my life. Even though it wasn't as amusing as watching koalas in Sydney (those in Vienna were asleep :/), it's still arguably the main reason to visit the zoo at all, especially when you know that the zoo has to pay a loan of 1M dollars a year for each Panda to the Chinese government.
Willkommen!

A lazy panda

The only panda at TU Wien at last met another one of her kind

We got lucky enough to be on time when they get fed with bamboos

And here's a video ;)

And here's the whole stuff from the Zoo ;)

Belvedere under the weather

Here it is - one of the finest parks in Vienna. Well, at least imao. The day I visited it at last, I should have been under the weather - literally - but somehow it gave that awkward emptiness of all those tourists and a great, dense background.

And a semi-panoramic view from to the city

I found an appropriately-sized bush

Being on time to skate

It didn't even take a year for Artjom to give me the skating pics... at last. So these are some hailaic.
It's not that my butt is so huge, I just move at a supersonic speed :). In any case nice shot by Artjom.

Teaching my asian coursemates the right moves is a tough task. Application for the next season's lessons has already started :).

Sveiki, te es ;) ^'

Pung, me, Nhung. And I'm standing on my knees, btw.

More panoramic views at my previous skating entry. And here are the rest of the pics.

' Use google translate in a case of a serious lack of basics in latvian :).

Spring in Wien!

Der Hundredwasseraufsprung

Der Hundredwasserabsprung

Das Riesenradsanstand

Inhaling the rain

Vienna is better when wet. Seems like the rain completes it. The rain gives it splashes, sounds, new reflections and for the inhabitants - a chance to fulfill the purpose with which they've brought the umbrella with them. Even the steep roof at the opposite side of the street twinkles in a bliss of its regained glow. And I can't await to take my umbrella and go for a 30 min walk to my university to the exam of Nonmonotonic reasoning!

Don't be late we gotta skate

Last week, I finally had a chance to tryout my skates on the Vienna ice. After the Christmas market has been removed after the new year, now there has been settled a gigantic skating place - even bigger than Lido in Riga. Fun thing about it is that there are many lanes that are connecting the main pools, so that you don't have to just go in rounds and circles but you can go on the track around the park like in a race lane or smthn. And the site is spectacular as well - on the Ratsplatz. Those pics are taken from an Austrian site that post picture from public places and events.



My course mates Natalia (in front), Oana(behind) and Nhung made me a good company.

Oh what a fun!

Rainy, early city run

On Vienna's weather

Wet snow is the worst substance that ever comes from the sky apart from birds' s... and falling bricks