To the campus, with Tiffany

The 13A rolls up more or less on schedule, and the driver behind the wheel is, to be frank, the grumpiest man you have ever met.

He barely glances at your ticket before waving you through with the enthusiasm of a man doing you a personal favor he resents.

"Oh my god," Tiffany whispers, tapping her card and getting a look that could curdle milk for her trouble, "is it just this guy, or is everyone here like this?"

"Just him, I hope."

You find seats near the back, and the ride passes easily, Tiffany narrating the city as it slides by with the enthusiastic, slightly wild-eyed commentary of someone still deciding whether she loves a place or is simply too disoriented to hate it yet. By the time the university comes into view, sprawling and grand and faintly intimidating, you've learned more about her sorority back home than you strictly needed to know, and she's learned that you get nervous before bureaucratic errands, which she finds, for reasons she doesn't fully explain, "kind of endearing." But for the first time since you came to Vienna, you don't have eyes for the city. Your focus is on the stunning blond in her tight sundress, riding up her thighs.

"Okay, this is me," she says as you step off, nodding toward a building across the courtyard hung with orientation banners. "Registration's that way for you?"

"That way," you confirm, nodding at a squatter, less photogenic building beside it.

"Cool. Okay. Thank you again, for everything, this morning. Seriously." She says it with more sincerity than the moment strictly requires, and then, before you can respond, adds, "See you around, translator," and heads off toward her building with a wave over her shoulder.

You watch her go for a second longer than necessary, your eyes lingering on her ass, before turning toward your own building and the considerably less charming task ahead of you.

The registration office turns out to be a masterclass in a country that apparently still considers photocopiers cutting-edge technology. There's a website, technically. You'd tried to register online the night before and been met with a login portal that demanded a PIN mailed to an Austrian address you don't have, for a system that then, once you'd finally gotten in, redirected you to a PDF form you were meant to print, fill out by hand, and bring in person anyway. You've heard rumors that some faculties are better; political science, apparently, is not one of them.

And now you were experiencing your first full taste of any foreigner in central europe- Burocracy. Switzerland had given you a rose tinted view of germanic effiency, but clearly, Vienna is clearly not Geneva.

The office itself, filled with desks and fax machines, several computers that were clearly built in the last century, is small and mostly empty when you find it, a stroke of luck, given the horror stories about queues you'd braced for. Only one other student is ahead of you at the counter: a young woman with a sharp bob of red hair and the kind of unhurried, effortlessly put-together look that suggests boarding school, or at least the aesthetic of one. She's arguing, politely but firmly, with the woman behind the desk about a course code that apparently doesn't match what the (equally unhelpful) website told her, and doing it in the clipped, precise English of someone who has simply decided German isn't worth the effort today. Her voice is clearly english, and incredibly posh. She might be a side character in Downton Abbey or the Crown.

You catch a glimpse of her registration sheet over her shoulder while you wait, several of the same course codes you're here to sort out yourself. Same courses, then, another political scientist. You'll be seeing more of her, presumably, in lecture halls for the next several months, which strikes you as reason enough to at least introduce yourself before the semester swallows you both into anonymous rows of seats. She's thin, and her outfit elegant and well put together, if a bit stuffy. *After you're done here*, you decide. No sense fumbling an introduction while also trying to remember your own student ID number.

Except she finishes first, sorted, apparently, with considerably more efficiency than the system deserves and is gone, sheaf of papers in hand, before you've even reached the front of the queue. By the time the clerk finally stamps your own forms and slides them back across the desk with the enthusiasm of someone who has done this ten thousand times, several precious minutes have passed.

You hurry out into the courtyard, scanning. There, off to the left, disappearing down a path toward what you're fairly sure is the main library, red hair catching the light, unmistakable even at a distance and moving with no particular urgency, like she has all the time in the world and simply prefers not to waste it standing still.

You could catch her. You're fairly sure you could catch her.

And then, off to the right, near the fountain, you spot a familiar tangle of blond curls and an unmistakably loud laugh carrying across the courtyard, Tiffany, apparently already making friends with a cluster of other exchange students, several guys who are clearly just as interested in her cleavage as you were, and she waving enthusiastically the second she spots you looking her way.