Rockaway Beach...

Hey there!

It's Saturday and I'm going to San Francisco this afternoon to do some shopping and then maybe see the Mae show. Not that I'm really into this band, I used to be some years ago when I was a nice girl, but who cares, I wanna see at least one live show while I'm here...

My Thursday was great! When I woke up, I didn't feel well at all. I had another crazy dream of me being a heroin addict and my dad kicking me out. Whatever this means, I felt weird and claustrophobic. So I sent a mail to Celia, asking what she was up for. And she proposed to go to Santa Cruz. And so at 3 p.m she picked me up and we drove over the mountains to the lovely beach town Santa Cruz! And I felt that this was the place to live for me, like with Frisco.
However, Santa Cruz reminds me a lot of a surfer town called Byron Bay in Australia where I spent 3 weeks because it was so laid back! And Santa Cruz is the American version of it! We first went to the beach and sat down in the sun for about an hour, just enjoying the sun, the wind, the ocean...
Then, we decided to head downtown to have a look. It is so lovely! Cars are banned from some streets and so there are a lot of people walking, musicians on the street, it smells like cookies and good food everywhere...we checked out some shops and I bought some hilarious stuff for my friend Corina. And I bought a shirt at Urban Outfitters, which is going to be my new favourite piece of clothing. Then we had some dinner. I had a "Strawberry Nirvana with an extra vitamin boost" shake from Jamba Juice and I think it would be great if we had juice bars like this in Vienna!! And Celia had a hardboiled egg (she's "nuts" for eggs) and a sandwich.
Well, unfortunately we had to go back early since our teacher, Dr. Fellner, had planned to screen a film noir called "The Third Man", which shows an American story in Vienna, at House Mitt in Stanford. So we went back and watched this really good movie.





Yesterday, I went to the library, finished my new abstract and worked out some interview questions for the professors I'm going to interview for my thesis next week. And I did some more reading...I think I'm up to 6000 pages in my fourth week!
And one could see that it was Friday afternoon on campus since people were inside the fountains, entertaining themselves in the water.

In the evening, I asked Till, my housemate, if he wanted to grab a beer and watch a movie. So we went to Saveway to get some beer, but the girl at the cashier would not accept my driver's licence - she said I needed to show her my passport with the visa for the US. I found this pretty strict for one goddamn bottle of beer. So Till& me walked back home, got our passports and the beer at Saveways. The second time I didn't have any troubles. The guy at the cashier asked me if I was from Russia. This happens a lot to me. I dunno if I look so Russian, I wouldn't say so. And while waiting for my receipt, I told him I was from Austria. He then asked me if we had a huge Philippino community in Austria and I was amazed and told him that he probably means Australia, not Austria. I explained where Austria was. And he said, "Well, yeah, my mum is a quarter German. Maybe we are related." Obviously, it was a joke...
Well, at home we drank some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and watched Nacho Libre with Jack Black - it was really funny. If you like really stupid movies, this is one you can go for.

Another funny thing happened to me yesterday. I had ordered 3 shirts at Machete merch, 2 Rancid (one for 15$ and one for 5$), Rancid shorts (for 5$!!) and a Die Hunns shirt. However, the customer service of Machete informed me that they didn't have the Die Hunns shirt in stock anymore. I said it is fine, I take the other one. They wrote me again, apologizing that they didn't have this one either. So I ended up taking the last one they had in stock and a Social Distortion shirt, they offered me to apologize for the trouble.
Yesterday I got the package and I was surprised by receiving 7 shirts (!!) and loads of stickers and a Rancid tour booklet...I found this so nice!! I mean I didn't get angry at all that they couldn't deliver the shirt I wanted, but they seem to care a lot...or they wanna promote Rancid since they are going to release a new album soon...However, I have now enough Rancid shirts for the rest of my life!!

Ok, enough information for today. I'll have some lunch now and then wanna get ready for leaving to SF...I can't wait...I love this city.
Cheerio!