Looking for a flat to rent in Vienna is harder than I thought it would be. For one thing, most landlords prefer to rent their properties through real estate agencies, which charge the equivalent of two months‘ rent plus tax for the service. That’s up to 1500 euros for an average flat, and it’s all payable by the tenants – the landlord doesn’t pay anything!  It seems like a lot of money to charge for taking some photos of an apartment and putting up an ad online, which is pretty much the extent of their services. On the upside, opening a real estate agency that’s not a complete rip-off sounds like a good business idea. If this whole medicine thing doesn’t work out, I’m going into real estate! :))

The language course is going really well, I feel I’m really learning a lot. I have to improve as much as possible before January, which is when I’ll start working. For the first few months, up to a year (or however long it takes me to get to C1, which right now still seems impossibly far away) I’ll be working at a hospital in Hainburg an der Donau. I haven’t been there yet, but it looks like a charming small town. According to Wikipedia it’s really small indeed – a little over 6000 people. The hospital there services a larger area though. In any case, I’m not looking forward to the morning commute. It takes an hour to get there by train and only slightly less by car. And I have to be there by 7 o’clock each morning. Waking up at 5 AM is not among my favorite things, but I’ll live. Also I’m still thinking to develop the perfect method to become a morning person which I’am not, never was. Honestly…even German feels easier than waking up at 5 AM :(. Don’t really enjoy all this growing up busyness.

Today my boyfriend and I were planning to go with some friends to Stift Melk, which is a monastery about an hour out of Vienna by car. But we woke up to the sound of rain outside, so decided to postpone the trip and instead the four of us went out to brunch. We picked the place from TripAdvisor and found a place that had solid ratings and a brunch buffet called Caffe Latte. Unimaginative name but good food and great coffee. We can definitely recommend the 15 euro all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, but make sure to call ahead of time to make a reservation, as the place is packed.

Hope you find this useful!….well…some of it 🙂