Yesterday, I was in Vienna! I was debating not going on Friday night because I had a lot of work to do, but as it turns out I have time to spare tonight. God is good, I am so thankful I had the energy to get through my major to do list today. However, back to my Vienna trip, it started with my alarm going off at 5:25 am. I got out the door a little after 5:45 and made a tram at 6 with my friends towards the center of town with my friends.
We then proceeded to buy our extremely cheap ticket for to and from vienna. It is normally 17 euros one way. However, with this ticket it was only 7 euros per person. We ended up having to take a really slow train though, which made a normal hour 20 min ride into a 3 hour one. However, it wasn’t bad as I was traveling with friends, all of whom were Hungarian. I just keep hanging out with all the hungarians. The group consisted of David, Tamas, Fanni, Nora, and myself.
We finally arrive in Vienna at 10 am. I hadn’t realized the train was going to be 3 hours so I was really hungry and wanted something breakfast-like, so I instantly thought of tea, specifically a chai tea latte. Linz oddly enough does not have a Starbucks, however, Vienna does. I was way more excited about getting a chai tea latte than I should have been. I ended up getting one, but not from Starbucks, but from a random cafe on the street we were walking on. It was very good, and I also got a warmed blueberry muffin that was much better than any of the pastries they have at Starbucks. I ended up being extremely happy, and felt like I was being a better exchange student by picking a random cafe.
The first stop of our day was Schönbrunn. It has beautiful grounds and gardens, and the weather was a lovely 70 degrees. I shared my family’s tradition with the group of mimicking the statues you are standing in front of when you take a photo. Our group photo of trying to mimic the biggest fountain ended up being one of my favorite photos of the trip. My other favorite is the spontaneous one with Nora (you can see all of her face and like a snippet of mine being over excited). We were not allowed to take photos inside Schönbrunn, however, it was neat to see how plain Franz Joseph’s quarters were as compared with the rest of the rooms. His bed was a twin bed with an iron frame. I mean grumpy college freshman get the same thing, his mattress just might have been a bit nicer. That was really interesting to learn. I also got to see the famous Sissi’s bedchambers. For all the americans that don’t know Sissi, she was Franz Joseph’s wife.However, the last German class I was in at C of C did a whole segment on her overdramatized self. We watched the Sissi film, and created spin-off skits from it. Schönbrunn was a lot of fun and we all enjoyed ourselves.
We then went to lunch, enjoying resting our feet. Following lunch, we had decided that since we didn’t have a whole lot of time before we had to catch our train back, we would rent the city bikes.They had stations for them spread through out the city, and we thought we could ride them around town and see some famous buildings. This ended up being a mild headache to start off with as the machine to unlock/rent the bikes was extremely slow and was very particular on what credit card you could use. Also we ended up going to a different section of the city than we really wanted for the first half hour we were on the bikes. We did end up seeing some of the buildings we wanted to and just enjoyed biking on a lovely afternoon.
After the bikes were away, we got back to the train station with a half hour to spare before our 3 hour ride home. It was a good day I am glad I went, but I might revisit it as I meant to see a friend or two I have there and never got around to it. This week consists of catching up in my lab (still not caught up), preparing for a presentation for my German class for Thursday, and studying for a quiz or two next week. I still have a decent amount of reading to do and normal homework. However, it won’t be long until I am writing about my Italy trip 11 days! I will try to write between now and then though, as I would like to tell you a little more about daily living and the frustrations that come with it at times.
Abroad in Austria 