VIENNA, JANUARY 9

January 9: Monday was a good day to start in on the bureaucratic stuff. All visitors have to complete a Meldeszettel and register with the police. They keep track of visitors a bit more than in the US. When we leave we will have to “sign out.” Got that done and visited with some of the university people. The faculty have terrible computer resources—students have it better, although I know LU students would shudder at what IU students are using. Faculty computers still use Windows 98. And the internet connection is slow. . .. Got almost everything done except shopping for a cheap international calling card. People seem to put up with my Texas German. Finally I got a call from Austrian Air and they still can’t find our luggage. So we have to remember and then itemize what was in the bags. There goes some TexMex stuff for a student party. I have one pair of levis and the sport coat I wore, but I do have 4 shirts and plenty of other stuff. My wife has some corduroy pants and a dress, but not her dress shoes. I guess we will be buying some high priced Austrian clothing to see us through—we hope they have our tall sizes. However, we have a lovely warm apartment and the food from the market is great. I did try to use my shortwave radio last night, but the only English language news casts I could get were from the People’s Republic of China and Israel. We do have a TV and so I can listen to Euronews in German, but I can’t catch all the words. It is a lot less flashy than CNN and seems to cover the Middle East better, but it is hard to say

I am teaching the History of Political Thought and have assigned the Princeton readings edited by Cohen and Ferman. I am concerned and curious how non-western students will react to the readings. It clearly has a very predominant western emphasis. I think there should be some selections from Muslim or Eastern thinkers (although it does include Gandhi).