Settling In

Hi everyone! So the good news is that I finally moved into my apartment on Monday. I need to take some pictures and post them up here, but I want to wait until I've decorated a little bit! I've given a few lucky people walking tours through Skype, so let me know if you're interested! :)

This past weekend was really fun, my friend Lu & I went to a wine and cultural festival in Graz, Austria. Graz was kind of a random town for us to go to, it's a huge college town in Austria and we'd heard that it was beautiful so we decided to check it out for the weekend. Getting to Graz ended up being an almost disaster..Lu & I got on the train at the wrong train station in Bratislava and were lost in the transit system for a little while. Luckily, we met a really nice girl on our train who spoke English and helped us figure out the best way to get there. We only got to Graz about an hour after we were supposed to, so it wasn't too bad! Since Graz is a huge college town, Lu & I went out to the college bars after we finally got to our hotel & checked in, and met some really interesting people including a national hockey team and a DJ, so needless to say it was an entertaining night! 

We also were lucky that the cultural festival was going on the weekend we were there, since we didn't know anything about it beforehand! Everyone was dressed up in traditional attire (think lederhosen here), and there were a ton of vendors selling different kinds of food, drinks, and crafts. The specialty drink here was burciak which is a really young, and incredibly sweet wine it its early stages of fermentation. So Laura & I tried that, but had to water it down with soda water since it's so sweet. People there were drinking it by the liter though, I have no idea how they do it!

With my burciak at the festival!

That night Lu & I went to a local pub near the festival called "The Office", it was such a fun bar. The owners were all British which was great since they spoke English! They even put American college football on the big screen for us so we had a great time. 

This past week was mainly me settling in at work and in my apartment. I'm really enjoying my role right now and am hoping that continues throughout my rotation. Every week there's a group of us who aren't from Slovakia that go out for an "International Dinner", the goal is to try a new restaurant around Bratislava every week so that's a fun thing to look forward to during the work week! This weekend Lu & I are headed to the High Tatras which is a really beautiful mountainous region in Slovakia, I'll update next week!

Cultural Performances at the Festival

City View of Graz, Austria

Around Town

It's hard to believe my first week is almost over! I really have loved being in Bratislava so far, everyone at the Dell offices over here have been very welcoming & friendly so it's been easy to make friends and have evening plans so far. Everyone at the office calls me "Betka" which I was told is the Slovak version of Elizabeth, I made them show me proof this was true & not a terrible word in Slovak! I have to admit that Lu & I haven't been very adventurous in trying Slovak food so far...Monday night we went to a restaurant and got their special half-priced steaks which were amazing, we're definitely going back as many Mondays as we can! On Tuesday, the FDPs here organized a happy hour for me to welcome me to the Bratislava office. We went to this great restaurant and bar right by my apartment, ate ribs (so American..), drank wine, and taught the Bratislava FDP's how to play one of our favorite drinking games called "Up Chicken" (maybe I'll describe this in a later blog post). We all had a great time and it was really fun getting to know everyone outside of the office!

On Wednesday, the weather turned super cold and rainy which was a bit of a shock since it's been in the 80's since I got here. After work, I was trying to get my cab driver to drop me off at a nail salon (don't judge me!) and he ended up misunderstanding my English of course & took me to the mall instead! I did walk around for a little bit, but ended up getting lost on my way back to the restaurant I was meeting Lu at for dinner. I ended up finding it eventually, but did walk there through a torrential downpour which was pretty miserable...and cold...and wet. I guess I'll just have to get used to this weather again, I thought when I graduated from Michigan I was done with that, but apparently not!

So Lu & I did find one Slovak cuisine that we both love and have had 2 days in a row now called goulash. It's basically beef, sauce & dumplings, I of course cannot enjoy the dumplings, but it's still awesome, for those of you having trouble visualizing I've included a picture:

Looks good right?! Anyway, Thursday was definitely my most fun night of the week. The whole Slovakia pricing team went out for drinks & dinner last night, and was definitely a lot rowdier than my American work happy hours! We were out until 2 a.m. together & hence are all working from home today :) It was a really fun night & it was great meeting the whole team. Today, Lu & I are heading to Graz, Austria for the weekend which is the second largest city in Austria, a huge college town, and a great wine region. I'm really looking forward to the trip & will post pictures when I get back!

Lu & me with Marcel & Cyril (pricing team members)

More Dell Pricing team members

William & Martin passionately singing Slovak folk songs

Greetings from Bratislava!

For the next 6 months I'll be working for Dell out of their Bratislava office & will hopefully be traveling as much as possible on the weekends. Since I want to fill you all in about what's going on over here, I figured a blog would be my best bet. I got into Bratislava yesterday (Sunday, 9/9) around 4 p.m. after 19 hours of travel time and missing one suitcase that is still stuck in London (hopefully I'll be getting that today!) Needless to say, I was pretty exhausted but my friend Lu, who's been living here & working for Dell the past 6 months, wouldn't let me go to sleep until night time to adjust to the time zone change. We walked around Bratislava a little bit, and went down to check out a festival that was happening in the town square. English is pretty sparse around the city so we mainly pointed at food and wine that we wanted then sat in the square to eat, drink, and listen to live music from the festival. I did learn how to say "thank you" in Slovak (ďakujem) so that was an accomplishment! Everyone at the festival shared tables, so we ended up sitting next to two older gentlemen who were upset by our lack of Slovak language skills, but we did drink wine with them & shared our chocolate we got at the festival so we became fast friends. I'm considering this Lu's & my first double date in Bratislava!

After the festival, we headed to the Sky Lounge restaurant & bar where we ate awesome Thai food and enjoyed the view of the city. I have to say that Bratislava is a much prettier city than I imagined it, the only idea I had of Bratislava came from the movie Eurotrip which makes it look pretty ghetto & rundown. I promise it's really cute though so you should all come visit me!!!

I stayed last night at my friend Lu's apartment, I was supposed to move into an apartment a floor down from her today. However, I got an unexpected call this morning from my relocation agent saying that my lease doesn't start until October 1st but they would try to negotiate an earlier date. I don't know how anyone didn't know this until this morning, but anyway I may be staying in a hotel now for the next few weeks. Just further proof that you have to be very flexible with your plans when you move to a foreign country! I've really enjoyed the past day though and everyone at the office has been incredibly welcoming. There are a couple welcome lunches & happy hours for me that are going on this week so I'm excited to meet everyone & start traveling around this weekend. 

Lu & I at the festival

Our first double date in Slovakia :)

View of Bratislava from the sky bar