The Shadow of Fluency

Since I've been home, several people have asked me whether I'm fluent in German now. The answer: I don't know. There's no border to cross, no test to take, no magic moment in which you get your German-speaker membership card and all the Austrians welcome you as a member of the tribe.

Christmas Party at Frauentreff

Because my flights on Saturday were cancelled, I was able to attend the holiday party for workers and clients of Frauentreff, the organization for migrant women where I'm interning this semester.

Jugendzentrum Alte Trafik: A youth / community center where many of Frauentreff's social activities (including the holiday party) take place.

On Multiculturalism

I came home to a large pile of newspaper clippings on my desk. It seems that my grandma cut out every article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the past few months that had anything to do with Germany or Austria. While skimming through them, I found this op-ed from Leonard Pitts, Jr., comparing the German debate about multiculturalism to the American one. It really crystallizes a lot of the thoughts I've been having about attitudes toward migration in Austria and about my feelings toward American immigration.

One Last Adventure for 2010

The Christmas holidays have been looming in my mind as the most significant sign that my time in Austria is rapidly coming to an end. When I return from Pittsburgh in January, I'll only have three weeks left in the country, and when you've been measuring your time in months, those three weeks are going to fly by. Every reminder that Christmas is approaching has been bittersweet: I'm certainly excited to see my family again, and my friend from Kosovo has assured me that the dorm is pretty lonely and boring over the break, because most Austrians go home, but I also was not willing to come to terms with the fact that when I return, it will be only to tie up loose ends before saying goodbye forever. I've had a lot of very strong, very mixed emotions in the past few weeks as Christmas drew nearer, and it was with sadness that I pulled out my suitcase on Wednesday and started packing.

Christmas in Wien

Winter in Wien would be almost unbearable without Christkindlmärkte. The little wooden stands seemed to sprout up on every sidewalk, Hof, and otherwise empty square inch of space in the city at the end of November. 

Christkindlmarkt am Alten AKH (near the Central College Office)

Social Life

A few weeks ago, we had a midterm discussion as part of the Central College required course, in which we re-evaluated the goals we had formulated for the semester at the beginning of our time in Vienna. I was quite pleased to do this: I've participated in a lot of goal-setting sessions at the beginning of projects, but without a structured space for follow-up and adjustment, the goals become little more than words on a piece of paper that's tossed in the trash at the end of the project with a sigh of "I wish I would have done more on that." It can be easy to lose track of how micro-actions are the stuff of major movements, and that goals are achieved or neglected on the basis of day-to-day decisions.

mi è piaciuta la italia

It's no secret to anyone who's talked to me in the past few months that I am seriously in love with Austria and with my life here. I'm living like a normal student, which was my goal for the semester from the beginning. But that also means I need to remind myself that there's a lot that's special about this semester as well, and that I should take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities as much as the ordinary ones.