1 Liter of Milk

As stated in previous the previous post, this post will be about some of my frustrations with my living situation in Austria. My first frustration is given away by the title.

They only sell milk 1L at a time.

A gallon of milk has 3.79 liters in it. So basically a forth of a gallon is what I can pick up every single time I go to the grocery store. I therefore go to  the supermarket every two days, often my trip is just for milk. Now you might be thinking, Alexis just buy more than 1 at once. However, this presents the problem of having one mini fridge for three girls who all cook. If I have two milks in the fridge at once, one of them should normally be finished within 24 hours of putting the second one in out of courtesy to the other girls.

So with the lack of space in the fridge, I basically get to the grocery store every day, definitely every other day. Now if most people have to do this, you think the stores would have good hours. However, they have really terrible hours in my opinion.

The average store has the following hours

Monday through Friday: 8 am to 7 pm

Saturday:8 am to 6 pm

Sunday: Closed

This is really frustrating to me, and it bothers me all the time. First off I always seem to have to skimp on my milk usage on the weekend knowing I want milk for Monday morning and won’t be able to go to the store on Sunday. Second, it seems like I can never get things on a whim. For example, the other day I got off the tram (coming back from a late course) at 7:42 pm. I quickly rushed over to the supermarket that has a little better hours than the rest to see if I could just get a snack to help my late night studying. No, it had closed at 7:30 pm. In Charleston, I would often not get to go to the grocery store until 8pm after I had completed my work for the day and created a grocery list, but here putting off grocery shopping until the end of the day can never happen.

These hours are not the only thing that I dislike about the grocery stores. I also really dislike the lines. First, you must bag your own groceries (now I have way more respect for baggers at my home store), and second you are constantly getting glared at while doing it. If you are not finished packing your groceries within 10 seconds of the cashier telling you how much you owe, people start tapping their feet. Ok, I am overdramatizing it a little, however, it is true you do get glares and in general I am super stressed out in the grocery line. It makes me wish for when you get the really really slow lines in America and get frustrated because it is so slow. Also you have to pay for your grocery bags, but they are much sturdier than ours and you can always bring your own.

Back to the store hours topic, hours in general for businesses and shops in Austria are this way. The college offices are all only opened from 8am to 12 pm Monday through Friday, and the gym I can go to also closes really early Mondays and Fridays it closes by 3 and it isn’t open on the weekends. It is open later Tuesday through Thursday, but it still makes it hard to go to the gym or to get into any of the campus offices if you have classes in the morning during the week.

My next complaint has to be with the laundry. I hate that I pay a full two euros every time I do laundry. The machines are all pretty old, and you always have to complain your dryer didn’t work and get refunded to try again and again until you have dry clothes. It is nice they refund you, but it is also a pain because doing a load of laundry can take up to 4 or 5 hours.

Those are the biggest complaints that come to mind at the moment, however, I am missing a decent amount of things at this point. I am missing my car (I don’t really need it here) I just travel a half hour to go to a bible study every week and then a half hour back. In a car it would take like 8 minutes, but the public transit is much slower than that. I also think the prices of the trains here are not comparable to using a car sometimes. From linz to munich a one way discounted ticket ( as a student) costs 42 euros, it would take a little less time driving (2.5 hours) which in terms of american gas prices would mean $25 (18 euros) for gas. It might be comparable with the gas prices here, but in my mind it is practically double the cost and longer to travel the same distance with the train instead of a car. Other things I miss are silly like cheez its or the fact when you buy a pack of cookies you get at least 24 (unless there milano’s). Here when you buy a pack of cookies you always get around 12. The packaging is the same size, but they lay them on their backs instead of their sides. My first time opening a pack I felt ripped off. I also hate the fact that ziplocs are impossible to find here, and everything that comes in a handy resealable package in the U.S. doesn’t come in one here. I have come up with some very interesting ways of trying to keep things like cheese for my sandwiches and meat for my sandwiches from drying out.

I know that isn’t a very varied list, however, it is all I can think of at the moment. As I encounter more annoyances (that I wasn’t expecting, there were certain things I was expecting like tiny drinks with no ice and no refills) I will try and disperse them throughout my posts.

Here’s to cultural differences 🙂 Until next time, I should be going somewhere in Czech on Sunday with my roommate’s and one of my roommate’s boyfriend. If I have time to write about it before I leave for Italy Thursday night I will.

Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers.

 

 

Vienna!

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.

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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.

 

Family, Sölden, Zell am See

It has been two weeks since I posted, and I am sorry for that, however, next week my schedule should relax a little.
Two weeks ago, I wrote I was headed for Munich for the weekend. I went to Munich, and enjoyed a very relaxing weekend. Friday I caught up with Kristen and TJ at noon at the train station, and they both were exhausted. We then proceeded to head to the hotel so they could nap. Kristen and I got to talk some before we decided to sleep, and it was wonderful to just update her on all my classes and get her advice as she studied abroad in Germany for an entire year. While we were talking, I also got to snack on some Cheez Its (which I love and they cannot be found in Austria) and Starburst Jelly Beans (remind me of Easter time, and also can’t be found here). We then wandered around the town and had some classic German Cuisine for dinner. The next day my parents came in and this day was a bit of waiting around on them, however, we did end up going and seeing the BMW World and Museum. The museum had a lot of cars ranging all through the years BMW has been in production. It was interesting to learn that BMW actually got its start in plane production before it switched to motorcycles. Cars were the last to come along, before they attempted to produce speedboats for a couple years and stopped. It is a really interestingly structured building so I have included a photo of the building below.

BMW World basically a glorified showroom.

BMW Museum is the round one, kind of eclectic looking

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both of these are courteous of the internet because the day we were there was really cloudy, rainy, and cold.Also because I was honestly focused on enjoying my family more than taking pictures. Sunday we all got up and had breakfast together, then I went back to Linz and they went on to Sölden. I had to return to the university for monday and tuesday classes, but I reunited in Sölden with them by Tuesday evening.

On route to reuniting with them I had a very crazy five minutes. So I was waiting at the Linz Bahnhof on my platform for my train. It pulls in and it is extremely long for a train. I proceed to hop on the train when I see all the televisions on this train our not saying the destination they should be saying for my train. I then realize that there are two trains that have pulled into the platform currently attached to one another. I panic and run off the train with two other men that have done the same thing I have. I run, as the train was supposed to pull out at 48 it is now 49, and all three of us are trying to run with rather heavy suitcases (probably looking comical). The platform manager is nice enough to not let the train pull away before we scramble into the last car. I sat down in  a seat a car or two into the train breathing heavily and being thankful I made my train. I was upset that they would do that to people in the first place, but I was thankful I was on board. I then learn later at Innsbruck (20 minutes away from my final stop after 3 hours of being on that train) that the second train had stay attached to our train until this point. So there was no need for me to make the mad dash scramble that I had….. needless to say I wish I had stayed ignorant to this fact. However, I make it to my family and we enjoy a lovely dinner.

I went skiing for the next 3 days with them enjoying the very large mountain. It had 22 lifts, and it took a full 45 minutes of going from gondola to gondola to reach the highest area. The snow was really nice on the highest section of the mountain because there were two glaciers that helped keep everything cool and fresh. The mountain was flipped to what you would normally expect, the easy runs were at the top and the hard ones were more towards the bottom. The glaciers provided a pretty wide treeless base for the easy runs. I did take some photos here. It was always clear blue skies and gorgeous views. 

 

The next photo is of a ski tunnel! It was really cool, it was a tunnel through a mountain just for skiers to use! I have never seen one before in my life, and I believe I will never see another one.

Overall I think my days in Sölden with my family were really relaxing and wonderful, and I can’t wait to see them again. The next part of my week required me to be get on a train on Friday towards Zell am See!

 

I went to Zell am See because it was a ski trip I signed up for through Erasmus. I got to ski with friends of mine from the University for Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday the sun was shining and I went a full day. However, on Sunday it was practically a blizzard outside with how much snow was coming down and I only could manage a half day my legs were so tired from 5 days of skiing. However, courtesy of my friend Jacob, I have one picture to show you of the group that I roomed with and got to enjoy most my weekend with.

 It is Jacob (right), Fanni (middle right), Mathias (Middle Left), and Jay (Left). We all had a wonderful time joking around and skiing for the weekend.

This now brings me up to this week. After skipping  half a week of classes and being totally unproductive for a solid week, I have been playing catch up on a lot of things. However, for any of physics/engineers reading this I have started my Numerical Methods in Computational Fluid Dynamics  (CFD) Lab. We are using a program that runs on Linux called FLUENT. It is actually a really cool program for CFD and I don’t know if anyone needs to model fluids moving through or around any finite structure any time soon, but it would be useful to look up if you are. I spent like 5 hours playing catch up because I accidentally missed the first lab (thinking it started later in the semester), then I purposely missed the second one (with the family), and I am still not caught up. However, I have until Wednesday before we meet again. I also have a lot of other classes I need to stay on top of.

On the non-school side, I am planning on going to Vienna tomorrow and will take pictures, and am wrapping up my plans for my Easter break which is like Europe’s two week spring break. I will  be going to Italy and then meeting my parents to tour around Greece.My next post should be about Vienna, and then I am planning on writing a post about some of my frustrations coping with Austria again such as how I find Austrian supermarkets and other things.

Until next time!

 

 

School

I regret to inform you that this post will have no pictures. Classes started last Monday, and I just finished my second week of courses. I have been figuring out my schedule, trying to make sure everything will transfer back to C of C, and having some fun.

On the school side, I have 3 physics courses (all in english), 3 german as a foreign language courses, and 2 sociology courses. Now to the normal american eye it looks like I am taking 24 credit hours which would be crazy hard and impossible to do. However, they approach classes in quite a different fashion here in Austria. The classes meet once a week for 90 minutes. All of my physics courses give me no homework and no text book. They lecture over a topic, you take notes, and you take an oral exam at the end. It is a little scary due to the fact that your entire grade hangs on the one test. One of my physics courses does have a practical/lab you take with it, and in this course I will have a final project and presentation, which also determines your entire grade. During the semester it seems really relaxed until you realize you still have to do work of some sort and you have no real guidance on what that work should be doing. So as of the moment I just keep notes on everything they reference that I don’t understand or haven’t read over in awhile like certain theories or effects. I then make it a point to do some reading on those every week before class. In my German courses, it is totally different, I have homework every week, the grade comes from group projects, presentations, papers, and a single test at the end of each of them. I find the German courses here remind me of what I am used to having at home. There is better structure in what to study, do, and review when I am not in the course. My sociology courses will actually be the most challenging for me during the semester. This is because they are completely in German. One is a lecture, and one is a discussion group that reads and discusses texts associated with the topics covered in the lecture. For the lecture I have to do a group presentation, write a paper, and pass a test. For the discussion group, I have to read a text every week, write 7 response papers through the semester, have a group presentation, and do a large paper for the final. All of it is in German, which makes me a little worried. However, I believe I can accomplish it all. So that is my courses, so far I don’t have any super boring teachers, and all of the teachers seem to be fairly relaxed.

Onto the fun of my past two weeks! Last weekend I spent Thursday night in my room with 4 friends drinking a bottle of wine and playing low-cent poker. It was a really fun night with lots of laughs as 3 of us had not known the rules before hand. In total I lost 42 cents (I was really upset and had no idea how I was going to afford my next week in Austria). On Friday night I met up with an old friend of mine from C of C, he was a german major and a music major that graduated this past May. He heard from an old teacher of ours that I was here and sent me a facebook message in which we decided we would meet in Linz on Friday. He only lives 25 minutes outside of Linz and was going to be in town because a group of his friends were meeting up. This group of friends happened to turn out to be 15 or 16 people all of which were Teaching Assistants in Upper Austria for English. It was a really great night, I met people from Ireland, Britain, and more Americans, and we all did a pub crawl. I found a new favorite pub because of it. It plays american music, which is hard to find here, most places play electronic or house music, and it has guitars all over the walls. The music being played is about 8 months behind what is popular in America, but I am sure I will go there more than once later this semester. Then last night I want to a beer tasting at the school’s coffee place called Chat.I do realize that sounds odd but it is true, the coffee place was holding a beer tasting on school grounds hosted by a school group. They had a decent selection to taste for Austria, because when going to a bar in Austria, there is only one type of beer on tap. It is a pale crisp lager, so I have had a couple glasses of that in the  month I have been here, but have been able to try little else. So I got to try a total of 3 different beers last night, which was a nice change of pace. Tonight I have plans to meet my mentor to make dinner and speak German for a couple hours which should be fun, and tomorrow I get to see some of my family for the first time in over a month!

My family is coming in for a week to ski the Alps and I will get to join them for most of it. The nice side of a class only meeting once a week is if you skip half your week you only miss half your classes once. So that is what I will be doing. I will be heading to Munich for the weekend where they are arriving, and then going to classes for part of the week, then meeting back up with them in the Sölden area outside Innsbruck to ski the rest of the week. So on that note you can look forward to my next post having pictures once again.

Sorry for the delay, I will try and write another one Monday or Tuesday about my time in Munich!

Touring Linz

I will start this blog with Saturday. Saturday was my first day acting as a tourist in Linz. I met my mentor at 12 for lunch, we rode the tram about 15 minutes into the city and then got off at the Hauptplatz, which is the main square of Linz. The following photo is courtesy of the internet because I could never take such a beautiful photo. If you look at the top of my page, you will also notice that I made my banner the top of the Dreifaltigkeitssäule, or in English the Holy Trinity Column. On our ride to the main square, my mentor and I decided that we were going to have classic austria cuisine for lunch. I ended up having roast pork with knödel and sauerkraut. For those wondering what a knödel is, it is a round ball of something that reminds you of bread and potatoes at the same time (more bread than potato though). It was a good meal, not amazing but definitely not bad.I wanted to try the famous Linzer Torte (Linz cake) later that afternoon, maybe after sight seeing I would be hungry again. However, 4:30 came around and my mentor and I after sight seeing and shopping were both still full from lunch. I found that incredible as I normally am hungry every 3 hours like clockwork.However, there was more to my afternoon than food, there was also churches.

Mariendom

The first church we stopped at was the Mariendom, more commonly known as the new dome. This “new” dome was built in 1927. This dome sits in the center of it’s own square of sorts. It had beautiful stain glass inside, and as much as it is dark on the inside, it is a warm dark. I have been to Notre-Dame in Paris, and it uses a grey stone that also makes the inside of the church very dark. However, I think it is a not as “cozy” feeling of a dark with the grey stone as compared to the lighter brown of the Mariendom. The next church we stopped at was the Martin Luther Church, which was built in 1844. The story behind this church is when it was built it had to be built 50 meters from the road to avoid dominating the appearance of the street. At the time of its construction the Catholic building regulations were still in force. Today all the building to its left and right sit at the same distance back from the road, however, the sidewalk is larger on its side of the street than the other, which does allow for a little better photograph of it (however still  hard in the narrow streets).

Martin Luther Church

The next church we saw was the Karmeliten Kirche, which did have some baroque architecture inside.

We then continued our tour to the Landestheater of Linz, which is the city’s main concert hall, and on route we passed another building which I believe was the Landeskulturdirektion Building. However, I was more amused by the statue outside of it than the actual building. I still don’t know what that statue is of.  After our tour wrapped up we wandered through a couple shops and I found some cute boots. My saturday evening was then spent having a small dinner and relaxing with my roommates.

My Sunday was spent studying. Partially because I needed to and partially because basically everything shuts down on Sunday. There are no grocery stores open, there are no businesses open, and there are very few restaurants open.So on Monday I walked into my first exam of the semester. It was for the intensive German class I have been taking, and honestly it was a decently hard exam. My reaction to being finished was wanting some hot chocolate (a little comfort food) as I was not feeling that great about the test. However, Fanni also took the same level course as I did, and also found the exam hard. Her reaction to being done was getting a bottle of wine to celebrate. Kayla, Fanni, and I ended up splitting the bottle of wine and just enjoying each others company for the night. Monday and Tuesday haven’t been too exciting, but tomorrow(Thursday) I leave bright and early to catch a train at 6 am to head towards Pécs, Hungary! I am very excited about the trip, I will be visiting one of my older sister’s good friends. Hopefully my ability to take a photo will improve as the semester goes on, but I am sure I will have plenty to tell you about on Monday if not sooner.

Relaxing in Raab Heim

I got to go on a walk yesterday with Fanni (that is the correct way of spelling my roommate’s name). It was a beautiful afternoon the sun was shining and we got to just spend an hour wandering around since we did not have class.

We started down a path that ended up leading us to a major road which was not what we were looking for on this beautiful afternoon. We then backtracked and followed signs to the Linz Golf Platz. I was extremely surprised at the placement of the golf area (there wasn’t a course just an area to practice your swing, putting, and taking shots out of different terrain). It was on top of a hill and had a good view over the surrounding areas, it seemed like prime real-estate. Fanni’s father is a photographer, and she has grown up bringing a camera with her everywhere she goes. So all the pictures are courtesy of her. 

As you can see, she is a good photographer, and the city was covered in a clouds, but it was still a beautiful area to stumble upon in our area of the city.We then continued our walk, following the tracks of the golf carts and other vehicles that occasionally pass through. The tracks ended up leading us back behind the campus. We discovered cute houses and big fields that I would have never known were just five minutes behind our campus. The houses in all the areas we wandered through had completely different architecture from what I was used to and were a lot smaller too. I also found it amusing that I saw 3 or 4 homes that had chicken coops behind them and kept chickens. The university is on the edge of Linz (the second largest city in Austria with just under 200,000 people), but I still found it weird to see people technically living in the city have chickens.

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My evening yesterday wrapped up with me making “Chicken with Walnuts” for Fanni and I, and when Kayla (my south Korean roommate) came home she also had some. It was amusing for me to hear Fanni say her mouth was burning a little after she ate the meal and drink a little milk, while Kayla added more spice to the dish. Kayla loved it and told me it was the most South Korean “like” dish she has had in Linz and it made her extremely happy as she was missing food from home. The sauce for the chicken had soy sauce, sherry, red pepper flakes, ginger, a little sugar, and a little salt for those that wanted to know what was south korean about it. It obviously was not very South Korean, but Kayla was missing flavors that are not easy to find in the restaurants here. I was extremely happy by the compliment and the day.

Today has been spent in my dorm (Julius Raab (pronounced like Robb with the o sound a little more drawn out) Heim). I should have been doing a little more studying for my exam of my Intensive German Class, however, I didn’t have the motivation. I have done quite a bit of studying and I believe between tomorrow night, sunday, and monday morning I will be quite prepared for the test.

Tomorrow most students are going to a concentration camp, however, I believe those are better experienced as an individual and not in a group of 50. Therefore I have elected to stay around town, I am meeting a mentor of mine tomorrow for lunch and an afternoon exploring Linz’s big sights and maybe doing a little shopping. I hopefully will have more pictures and more positive news to post soon.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers.

10 Days In

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The first week did not go as I expected it would. When I first learned of how early I had to arrive for orientation, a full month ahead of real classes, I thought this would be an easy month. I would go to orientation which would involve receiving a student ID, registering for classes, and a campus tour. I would get that done in a day, then I would shop for a day or two for all the things I needed, and then it would be relaxing and occasionally going to a pre-semester intensive German language course. Well it turned out I was wrong.

The first week here has turned into a circus act through many bureaucratic hoops, a series of purchases and returns, of ATM runs because I didn’t have cash and didn’t realize none of my cards would be accepted, and adjusting to living without an oven or a microwave.

On Monday, I had orientation, now the first part was informative and complete within an hour. We then took a group photo which was relatively quick for a group our size, however, a half hour was spent on a photo where you probably can’t really see everyone’s faces. Following this was an hour of buying tickets for trips sponsored by Erasmus and an erasmus card which gave you a sim card (for five euros). Erasmus being a non-profit whose goal is to make studying abroad and being an international student a good experience. However, they allotted way too much time for this and it was a lot of standing around. We got a campus tour around 11 and then got promptly picked up by our mentors to join the bureaucratic circus. I also learned that Austrians our way to polite sometimes which results in some inefficient ways of getting things done. Our to do list included:

1. Get our Student ID

2. Pay our student union fee( every student has to, it is a law here in Austria that you have to join the Student Union which is really strange to me as an American. I also have no idea what it does for me as an exchange student…no one else knew the answer to that question either). We did this at a kiosk with our student ID’s. At this kiosk we also got to pick our pin, student password, and set up our ability to use the Mensa.

Just up to this step took us until 2:30…. 2 and half hours (no lunch break, much to my surprise) of a lot of standing around and waiting on people. My mentor decided we would walk around with another mentor’s group. When our group of 5 people was completely finished we waited for at least 45 minutes on the other group (which was also small). I asked my mentor why couldn’t we just go on, and she replied “Because we told the other group we would go with them.” I hope you now understand my comment earlier of Austrians being extremely polite to the point of being less efficient.

The rest of the items on the list included taking passport photos, creating our Aktiv Pass (which gives us discounts around the city and a huge discount on our monthly rate to use the tram only 10  vs 45 euros), and opening a bank account. These 3 items took us another 2 and a half hours. At five o’clock I was foot sore, hungry, and wished people were less polite.

The rest of my week continued to be interesting with trying to make my phone functional, get all things straightened out with my housing payments and bank, and trying to fine inexpensive cookware, which I have decided is impossible. The cheapest boiling pot I found was 24 euros.

That is enough with the ugly and bad though, so now I will tell you about some of the good things that have happened to me this week.

Schlierbach and Styre

This was the prettiest part of my week, I paid for one excursion through erasmus and it was this one. It was a short drive outside of Linz to a monastery, Schlierbach, and then too a small pretty town Styre. All the photos I have are from Schlierbach. Styre was also pretty but a two hour tour around the city resulted in me having freezing hands that didn’t want to come out of my coat pocket to take pictures. However, the monastery had beautiful Baroque architecture and a cheese factory that the monks and nuns use to earn their living.

Here are pictures from the inside of the church and of my roommates and I after tasting the delicious cheese.

A beautiful Monastery

I hope you enjoyed this post, sorry it was so late in coming, and know that the beginning of this week has gone more smoothly. Also I am sorry for the quality of some of the photos, but I wanted to put those in anyway so you could maybe get an idea of how detailed Schlierbach was. Hopefully you will read more good in future posts.

Arriving in Austria

After a nine and half hour flight, I finally landed in Munich at 7:05 am. I was extremely nervous, but happy that part of my trip was over. The next step took me through customs, and to my bag. My first panic attack occurred when I saw a man take a suitcase that was the same bright red and the same brand and make as mine off the baggage claim carousel. I panicked thinking I don’t know how to approach this, but I am concerned he has my bag as I didn’t see him even check the tag on it.I wait as he is with a group still waiting on bags and as the number of bags coming out dwindles I am concerned he really does have my bag. So I walk around the carousel in hopes of getting at a close enough angle to check the tag on it inconspicuously. When just about to get close enough I notice another bag exactly like mine appear on the carousel, luckily it was mine and I did not have to make a scene within my first half hour of landing. After I had my bag I rearranged my carry-ons which were rather heavy into my bag which still had room in it. I was prevented from packing more because of the weight limit.

Then it was wandering around until I found a sign for a train, mimicking the people who knew what they were doing with the automated machines for a ticket, I was shortly on route to the main train station in Munich. After a short communication with the information desk there, I had a ticket to Linz in hand and a half hour before my train arrived.

My first beverage in the Germany ended up being in not very German as I got a Venti Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks without water, however I did order and pay for it completely in German so that should count for something. Then it was a two and a half hour train ride and I was in Linz at 12:15 pm. After playing phone tag with my mentor, we finally met up. All of my mentors were extremely helpful and nice, and in return I gave them some Reese’s which they had never had before. They all enjoyed them and went for second pieces. After a tiring afternoon of grocery shopping and touring the campus. I crashed at 7:30 pm in my room:

It’s quite spacious and my only complaint is the lack of a microwave. I am living with two other young ladies who share a room next to mine, and we have a small kitchen and bathroom for ourselves as well. Kayla is from Seoul, South Korea and is here for the experience and does not know any German, but is excellent at English. I also have a roommate named Faunly (sp?) from Hungary, she is hoping to improve her German as well. We spent most the afternoon talking about our different Universities in German with one another. She was also very nice in offering me the use of her straightener and hair dryer after I ruined my converter after trying to make mine work. I am not really sure how I did it, but am grateful nothing essential of mine needs a converter. My computer and alarm clock don’t need it, and my phone, tablet, and camera can all be charged through my computer. Faunly and I are going out to get dinner, and tomorrow morning I have orientation at 9 am.

Thanks for all the prayers for my safety and please keep me in your prayers as I create my schedule tomorrow. I need 12 credit hours to transfer back to the College of Charleston.