Wien! (Vienna in German)

In Vienna, I really hit the ground running. Since Biggi (the friend with whom I am staying here) had classes when I arrived into Vienna, he sent his friend Andrés to come and meet me and take me into town on the train. Andrés, like Biggi, is and international student studying and the university here. He's from Colombia, so we started of speaking English and Spanish, but then moved on to German. When we got to the park near the university, where Biggi was to meet us, we bought a couple of beers and drank them there. It felt so weird to be drinking in a public park!

When Biggi arrived, no time was wasted; we took the public transit (subways, buses, and street cars) to his aunt's apartment (where he's been living since October), dropped off my things, and headed out to a "Lokal" (which my German-English dictionary tells me is a: bar, restaurant, pub, inn, meeting place) for a birthday party. It was a great setting to find out that I had enough German to attempt to express myself here except, again, for the smoking. You really can't appreciate anti-smoking laws until you've experience living without them!

The next morning, not too long after we got to bed, I had a meeting with a refugee-serving organisation in Vienna to learn a little about the situation here and the work they're doing. It was so wonderful to hear how differently things are done here. For example, this organisation provided housing for some 150 clients for the duration of their application for asylum (usually a few years) and had every kind of service (from language training to daycare service to counseling) all in that same building.

Naturally, refugee issues isn't the only way in which things are different here. Environmentally, of course, they are sooooo far ahead here. Some of the more interesting ways I found were:
- the "City Bike" system, whereby one can go to any main intersection, swipe one's credit card in a machine to unlock a bike, ride it to another station and drop it off. After less than an hour, it's free; 2 hours, 1 Euro; etc. If you don't return the bike, 600 Euros.
*1 Euro is about $1.50
- one can buy all of one's electricity from a private, green energy company!

Aside from the environment, I've also noticed a lot more trust here:
- instead of those boxes we have in Canada that one puts money into to open and get a newspaper, they simply leave them in bags with a money box above them
- throughout the whole public transit system, one can get on and off without anywhere without having to buy a ticket. Perhaps once a month, one might come across someone checking to see who has tickets and fining those who don't, but if you're a foreigner, for example, it's pretty easy to have the fine reduced to a couple of Euros since it only says in German that you need a ticket and because people often have passes, it looks like one can simply ride for free.
- in taxis, one can sit in front, beside the driver, and there aren't any "if you see this light flashing, call the police" type of security measures.

Also, how could I leave out the lengthy discussions I've had with Biggi over free (or nearly free) university in Europe? It was neat to first have discussed the pros and cons in a theoretical way and then, after attending a lecture, to discuss the actual differences between here and Canada. I definitely found that people were a lot more blasé about things here. The lecture, as usual, started 10 minutes late and people wandered in (not particularly discretely) for a half hour after that. There were no front row keeners and everyone looked pretty uninterested: a bit of chatting, laughing, crackling of candy wrappers, and people walking out throughout the lecture.

Truly, things here are simply different, not better or worse. But is it ever engaging to try to come to some conclusion about the best way to do things!