Burgherr

This past week I was put into the rising senior class at the MilAk after the two week training with the first years. I also started a German class that I take twice a week for four hours per session. On Tuesday the other cadets and I gave a presentation about west point to our class. The catch was that it was in German. It was about 30 minutes long and we did a pretty good job. Everyone was a little tired because right before we went up a general had spoken for about an hour. Needless to say, people were not sitting on the edges of their seats.

            On Wednesday we had another German class in the morning. This one was a little harder. It consisted of reading newspaper articles and summarizing them. We also had to match up animals with the sounds they make and where you can find them. Seems easy right? It took me 30 minutes to complete with the help of a dictionary, and Dan sitting next to me. In the afternoon we had a sport festival. It was basically all of the classes against each other. The three other cadets and I ran a relay track event. Seth had the 400 meters, Christian the 300, I had the 200, and Dan the 100. It’s not that we ran slowly, but the people we ran against were incredibly fast. We came in last in our heat by about 5 seconds. However, I think we did better than the other team from our year that was in a different heat. The first years won by a lot, but the “Lehmann” group took second. Apparently our year had taken first every year before, but second was okay today. Naturally, like the end of any Austrian social event, there was lots of beer afterwards. Many a drink was drunk, and many a song was sung.

The next day I met the horse riding instructor for the academy because that’s the sport I’ll be doing here. Something interesting about Austria is that all of the horse trainers are trained to teach at the academy. The instructor, Major Pulsinger is a world champion in military horseback riding. He along with another NCO train all of the horses for the academy and Bundesheer before anyone else is allowed to ride them. This is to ensure that it is a good horse that won’t go crazy when someone else tries to ride it.

            On Friday we had a parade for the graduating class. Fortunately, the west point cadets did not have to participate in this one. We simply stood on the balcony and watched. At the end there was a very cool fire work show. Talking to some of the guys in my year, I learned that the next day (the parade I would be marching in) that the parade would last about three times as long, and would be much more boring. Joy. Because it was the sensible thing to do, we went out drinking with the Austrians. They said that if you weren’t asleep standing up during the parade then you were doing it wrong. I came back home at a decent hour…which got me about three and half hours of sleep. The next day we formed up at 8 to practice for the parade the same day. We wore our full dress uniform, which is infinitely times more uncomfortable than the Austrian parade uniform. During the actual parade, we stood at attention for two hours while a general, the Bundesminister, and the Bundespräsident spoke. The general spoke for about 40 minutes, and pretended he was done 7 times before actually stopping. The president only went for about 30 minutes, but spoke in a monotone voice while mumbling. I would have paid him to stop talking. After they finished we marched out and reformed on the street alongside the academy. There was a parade with a bunch of military vehicles along with several helicopters and two Euro-fighters. We then marched along the street, which was very crowded. We went past the minister and president and all of the graduating cadets. They were yelling “Burgherren” as we marched by, signifying that we were now the oldest class at the academy. Naturally, that night there was a celebration, which everyone partook in. It was also Seth’s 21^st birthday, so it was kind of a double celebration.