It has been slightly more than a month since I've moved into the city. So, I've decided to share with you how a typical day is like for me.
03 November 2011
9.00am: Woke up. Nice and beautiful day in Vienna. Not sunny though, but it's rare to get sunny days now, since we are approaching winter.
9.15am: After washing up, made myself a nice breakfast. Breakfast for me would be a hot cup of coffee, and 2 toasted semmelbrot with ham. The semmelbrot(which is the bread) is quite cheap, 10 buns for EUR0.69.
My room has a great view to the outside. There's even a river flowing right in front of the building. Waterfront estate.
Alright, moving on then,
10.00am: I've got a project meeting in school at 10.30am, so I'm leaving at 10.00am. It usually takes about 20minutes to get to school. As mentioned earlier, there's a river flowing right in front of the hostel, so I have to cross this bridge every time I want to go somewhere. It's called the Heiligenstaedter-Bruecke.
The bus stop for me is located just at the opposite end of the bridge. It takes about 5 minutes or so to reach there from my room. I'm hopping onto bus 11A. The buses here runs very frequently, usually less than 10 minutes waiting time. Many of the buses here are bendy buses, which is rather surprising given how narrow some of the roads are here. The bus drivers have amazing driving skills, seriously!
I'm just taking the bus for a single stop before alighting and transferring to tram. Vienna has an extensive tram network, and they run very frequently too. For me, I've to take Tram #D to go to school. Some of the trams here are still the old school type. They look really cool and they give a rustic feeling. I think the old trams complement the architecture of Vienna. It's just 3 stops to school.
Now, you might be wondering why would I want to take public transport since my school is quite near. Well, the simple fact is that I've already paid for it. I've bought a semester ticket, which cost EUR130, that covers all public transport in Vienna for the entire semester. Since I've already paid, might as well make full use of it! Furthermore, the public transport here is so much better than in Singapore. The buses/trams/trains are seldom full, even in peak hour. It's almost guaranteed to get a seat. On top of that, the service intervals are very frequent, I do not have to wait for more than 10 minutes for a bus/tram/train to arrive. SBS and SMRT, LEARN FROM THEM!
10.25am: I've arrived in school. I've having an exchange semester at Vienna School of Economics and Business Administration(Wirtschaftuniversitaet Wien). The people here call the school by it's abbreviation, WU (pronounced Vee.Wu). It's a modern campus, pretty much like SMU. Nothing old and ancient here.
Since I'm talking about classes, I'd tell you that I love their time-tabling here. They have irregular lessons and block lessons. It's not like the standarised structured weekly lessons we have back in NTU. So for example, I've completed one of my course here in just 3 days. It took just Thursday, Friday and Saturday for me to complete an entire course worth 6ECTs/4AUs. It frees up a lot of time for the students and the best part is that exams are all spread out too! I mean what's the point of having all your exams together at the end of each semester? Moreover, with this timetable, it is possible to complete a lot more courses than having weekly lessons. There are local students clearing up to 10 courses in a semester. I want to do that too!
Anyway, enough comparing, lets continue:
12.00am: After the project meeting, I pop into the school's library. What the hell is an exchange student doing in the library?! Well, I'm just there to copy a textbook because I do not have to buy it. Over here, we are able to scan books and study them as and when we like. Awesome right? They even have these wonderful scanning machines that makes scanning the books a breeze. NTU should consider buying these machines. But thinking about it, I think NTU doesn't want these type of machines because students (A-ahem-Ts-ahem) will simply stay there and scan the entire library and upload it online.
13.00pm: Time to head back to my hostel. Everyday when I head back, I will pass by this unique building. It looks so strange and funky. Any guesses what is it? Yes? No?...... It's actually a trash incinerator... and it's located right beside my school. No worries though, it doesn't stink at all. You can search Fernwärme Wien if you like to read more about it.
13.10pm: So I've reached the nearest U-Bahn (metro) station from the school. It's called Spittelau. My friend Jianhui aptly called it Spit-dao-lau (Spit until old). Lol. Anyway, it's just a single stop away from my destination, Heiligenstadt. The trains are clean and the U-Bahn network is very extensive too. I can go anywhere on the U-Bahn itself. The seats are cushion seats and most of them are booth types of seats. Quite good when we are travelling in a group.
Lastly, another amazing fact is that the U-Bahn runs 24 hours on fridays and saturdays. The city knows that the people like to party and stay out late, so why not have 24 hour services? Awesome right? Even on other nights, there are regular night buses running thoughout the city. It does not cost a single cent more to take those night buses, unlike the EXPENSIVE Nightrider and Nightowl buses in Singapore. Once again, SBS and SMRT, PLEASE LEARN FROM THEM!
14.00pm: As most of my lessons are already completed, I have quite an empty schedule for November. For example, I only have 1 class this week. So I'm pretty much free most of the time. As the weather does not look very good today, I'm just going to stay in and watch Friends. I'm still in season 1 though, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to finish it!
17.00pm: Daylight saving ended on 30th October, which meant that time was shifted back by an hour. Therefore, it starts to get dark around 4pm and at 5pm, it's pretty much dark outside already. I've decided to pop by the nearby supermarket to buy some groceries.
I think Vienna has one of the densest supermarket concentration in the world. I think there must be around 5 supermarkets per square kilometer. They are just everywhere (Billa, Hofer, Merkul, Zeilpunkt, Penny, DM, Spar, Lindl). Most of them have member's program, which entitles us to discounts on some products. It's pretty good, as some of the discounts are rather substantial. I've decided to pop into a Billa supermarket today. I've got their membership :)
18.00pm: So back to my room. It just happen that my ceiling lamp died on me the day before, and the handyman was not in today to help me replace the fused lightbulbs. So I've to use my bed lamp and table lamp to light up my room. Nice atmosphere though.
20.00pm: Alvin and Benjamin came over today for dinner. Alvin cooked for us some carbonara pasta, which is his favorite type of pasta. Forgot to take a picture of the pasta...
22.00pm: After dinner, we have our favorite activity: Drinking and playing games. We mostly played A**hole dai-di tonight. And also, beer is rather cheap here. A local beer brand, Ottakringer, cost EUR0.49 for a 0.5l can. It's cheaper than a bottle of coke. :) Hope none of us will get a beer belly when we return to Singapore.
03 November 2011
9.00am: Woke up. Nice and beautiful day in Vienna. Not sunny though, but it's rare to get sunny days now, since we are approaching winter.
9.15am: After washing up, made myself a nice breakfast. Breakfast for me would be a hot cup of coffee, and 2 toasted semmelbrot with ham. The semmelbrot(which is the bread) is quite cheap, 10 buns for EUR0.69.
Let me show you my hostel first before I continue. I stay in Haus Panorama, which is in the northern part of the city. This is how the building looks like from the outside:
My room is rather spacious, in my opinion. A single bed, a table, a book shelf, a desk drawer and a couple of wall shelves. 2 rooms share a single annex room which houses the closet, refrigerator and the toilet.
My room has a great view to the outside. There's even a river flowing right in front of the building. Waterfront estate.
I stay on the 7th floor in the building. Each floor has 2 kitchen and they are heavily utilized everyday by everyone. So usually by the end of the day, it will be dirty like hell. This is how it looks like along the corridor outside my room:
Alright, moving on then,
10.00am: I've got a project meeting in school at 10.30am, so I'm leaving at 10.00am. It usually takes about 20minutes to get to school. As mentioned earlier, there's a river flowing right in front of the hostel, so I have to cross this bridge every time I want to go somewhere. It's called the Heiligenstaedter-Bruecke.
I'm just taking the bus for a single stop before alighting and transferring to tram. Vienna has an extensive tram network, and they run very frequently too. For me, I've to take Tram #D to go to school. Some of the trams here are still the old school type. They look really cool and they give a rustic feeling. I think the old trams complement the architecture of Vienna. It's just 3 stops to school.
Now, you might be wondering why would I want to take public transport since my school is quite near. Well, the simple fact is that I've already paid for it. I've bought a semester ticket, which cost EUR130, that covers all public transport in Vienna for the entire semester. Since I've already paid, might as well make full use of it! Furthermore, the public transport here is so much better than in Singapore. The buses/trams/trains are seldom full, even in peak hour. It's almost guaranteed to get a seat. On top of that, the service intervals are very frequent, I do not have to wait for more than 10 minutes for a bus/tram/train to arrive. SBS and SMRT, LEARN FROM THEM!
So I'm meeting for my International Strategic Management class. I've 2 Austrian group mate and another exchange student from Canada. We only have 4 lessons for this class, and we've done 1 report and 2 presentation for it. The exams will be in mid-november.
Since I'm talking about classes, I'd tell you that I love their time-tabling here. They have irregular lessons and block lessons. It's not like the standarised structured weekly lessons we have back in NTU. So for example, I've completed one of my course here in just 3 days. It took just Thursday, Friday and Saturday for me to complete an entire course worth 6ECTs/4AUs. It frees up a lot of time for the students and the best part is that exams are all spread out too! I mean what's the point of having all your exams together at the end of each semester? Moreover, with this timetable, it is possible to complete a lot more courses than having weekly lessons. There are local students clearing up to 10 courses in a semester. I want to do that too!
Anyway, enough comparing, lets continue:
12.00am: After the project meeting, I pop into the school's library. What the hell is an exchange student doing in the library?! Well, I'm just there to copy a textbook because I do not have to buy it. Over here, we are able to scan books and study them as and when we like. Awesome right? They even have these wonderful scanning machines that makes scanning the books a breeze. NTU should consider buying these machines. But thinking about it, I think NTU doesn't want these type of machines because students (A-ahem-Ts-ahem) will simply stay there and scan the entire library and upload it online.
13.00pm: Time to head back to my hostel. Everyday when I head back, I will pass by this unique building. It looks so strange and funky. Any guesses what is it? Yes? No?...... It's actually a trash incinerator... and it's located right beside my school. No worries though, it doesn't stink at all. You can search Fernwärme Wien if you like to read more about it.
13.10pm: So I've reached the nearest U-Bahn (metro) station from the school. It's called Spittelau. My friend Jianhui aptly called it Spit-dao-lau (Spit until old). Lol. Anyway, it's just a single stop away from my destination, Heiligenstadt. The trains are clean and the U-Bahn network is very extensive too. I can go anywhere on the U-Bahn itself. The seats are cushion seats and most of them are booth types of seats. Quite good when we are travelling in a group.
It's time to complement the public transport system again! One of the first things we noticed when we arrived here is that there are no gantries at the stations. People can just simply walk into the station and board the trains without any tickets. It's an honor system here. And generally, the people here does buy tickets to travel. I simply cannot imagine Singaporeans honoring this kind of system if SMRT implemented it. I've to confessed that for the first few days, we actually did not have tickets when travelling. Luckily I weren't checked by any conductors.
Oh, did I mention that it is POSSIBLE to EAT AND DRINK in the stations and trains? Yes, that's pretty cool. I can just buy pizza or fried noodles and eat along the way home.
Lastly, another amazing fact is that the U-Bahn runs 24 hours on fridays and saturdays. The city knows that the people like to party and stay out late, so why not have 24 hour services? Awesome right? Even on other nights, there are regular night buses running thoughout the city. It does not cost a single cent more to take those night buses, unlike the EXPENSIVE Nightrider and Nightowl buses in Singapore. Once again, SBS and SMRT, PLEASE LEARN FROM THEM!
Ok, enough bitching, lets continue:
13.30pm: Arrived back in my room. Time to make lunch. I will usually cook to save money. Today, I'm making fast food. I simply pop some fries and nuggets into the oven and let them roast. After 20 minutes, my lunch is completed.
14.00pm: As most of my lessons are already completed, I have quite an empty schedule for November. For example, I only have 1 class this week. So I'm pretty much free most of the time. As the weather does not look very good today, I'm just going to stay in and watch Friends. I'm still in season 1 though, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to finish it!
17.00pm: Daylight saving ended on 30th October, which meant that time was shifted back by an hour. Therefore, it starts to get dark around 4pm and at 5pm, it's pretty much dark outside already. I've decided to pop by the nearby supermarket to buy some groceries.
I think Vienna has one of the densest supermarket concentration in the world. I think there must be around 5 supermarkets per square kilometer. They are just everywhere (Billa, Hofer, Merkul, Zeilpunkt, Penny, DM, Spar, Lindl). Most of them have member's program, which entitles us to discounts on some products. It's pretty good, as some of the discounts are rather substantial. I've decided to pop into a Billa supermarket today. I've got their membership :)
18.00pm: So back to my room. It just happen that my ceiling lamp died on me the day before, and the handyman was not in today to help me replace the fused lightbulbs. So I've to use my bed lamp and table lamp to light up my room. Nice atmosphere though.
20.00pm: Alvin and Benjamin came over today for dinner. Alvin cooked for us some carbonara pasta, which is his favorite type of pasta. Forgot to take a picture of the pasta...
22.00pm: After dinner, we have our favorite activity: Drinking and playing games. We mostly played A**hole dai-di tonight. And also, beer is rather cheap here. A local beer brand, Ottakringer, cost EUR0.49 for a 0.5l can. It's cheaper than a bottle of coke. :) Hope none of us will get a beer belly when we return to Singapore.
00.00mn: As Alvin and Benjamin stays at another hostel, they have to leave to catch one of the last trains. The ladies stay in the same hostel as me.
01.00am: After showering and wasting more time on facebook, I've decided to go to bed.
This is typically the kind of day I have in Vienna. Now you know!
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