Auf Wiedersehn, Wien!

Humongous sprinkler along the Danube where we went canoing...

Soccer bun!

What? No kangaroos in Austria - then why am I eating one for dinner?!?!

Ingrid, our house frau! She insisited we take this picture looking "just as we are." Rachel's even wearing our favorite XL white t-shirt... oh, memories....

Hallo!

Today has been a good last day in Vienna. My Art and Architecture final went pretty well, and I got a decent grade on those journals I had written - so that aspect of my trip finished well. At noon, we took a second session group picture outside the opera house, then went to our goodbye dinner, where I had an amazing lunch of a fresh green salad, mushroom soup, and this really good spinach/potato pasta. It was fun, I sad good-bye to some friends who were leaving this afternoon to travel to different parts of Europe, and Doc even got choked up when saying good bye to us all... After lunch, Rachel, Paige, and I changed into swimsuits and went down to the Danube for some afternoon canoing! That was an interesting experience. First of all, the canoe rental place was on a small hill above the Danube, so we had to figure out how to carry it down the hill and load up in it all by ourselves. Granted, this was after a junior high boy nearly destroyed Paige's and my cameras after turning that massive sprinkler at us. We weren't too happy - Rachel was about ready to take them out. Anyways, once we were in the canoe, we had to make sure we stayed enough in the center to avoid getting tipped by groups of guys sort of swimming/sort of chasing our canoe. We survived that. Then, we tried to outrun two guys in a paddle boat who decided to come out and meet us, but to no avail. It was really awkward, one of them had a cigarette, and when they finally reached us, they just looked at us - weird. We decided to use their boat as a push off and paddled (?) away. After we got the canoe back up the hill and left the Danube, we heading to CrossTails, an Australian pub by the institute. It was a cool atmosphere, and it was nice to have English be the "assumed" language spoken (I know I'm spoiled, but it was a nice change). It was there that I tried the weirdest food I've had in my life - kangaroo! It didn't taste like chicken, it was more of a lighter beef taste with a little bit more spice - not quite like anything I've tasted before - it was an experience to say the least. After dinner we grabbed our last gelato :( Rachel and I headed back to pack and ended up watching the Germany-Turkey game, which was boring for the most part, but the last fifteen minutes were really exciting! We weren't able to see all of it, because the power kept cutting out, but it was a thriller nonetheless. Now I have to hurry up and get some sleep because I head home tomorrow!

Random things I've experienced:

• Vera Bradley shoulder bags can withstand extremely high weights - I had so much stuff in there today!
• Gelato servers do a better job at flirting than random guys on paddle boats.
• Even dogs get into the Eurocup spirit - I've seen two golden retrievers with a country's flag painted on to their forehead.
• Adam and Eve like to hang out at the Danube...
• Pickpocketers are alive and well in Vienna, but you simply have to yell and growl at them and they leave your friends alone (this was not a personal experience, but I saw it happen).
• Clothing is very optional in Europe, especially on a really hot summer day.
• Australian pubs serve ice in their drinks!!! (you have no idea how exciting this is, that means the drink are actually nice and cold - so good and refreshing).

Well, I'm not done yet! Even though I come home tomorrow, I'll still do some wrap up things from my trip, so stay tuned!

Tsus,
Andi

Studying Hard

Okay, so today's post is going to be a little bit different than usual. I didn't do anything today. We had a sort of review session for class, I grabbed Billa, came back home and studied, Ingrid treated Rachel, Paige, and I to a fine dinner of wienerschnitzel, potato salad, and a dessert called "hot love" (vanilla ice cream with hot raspberries and sauce). I took a quick nap and have been studying/parousing the internet since :) So, as you can tell, my day has looked like this:


So I thought I'd give you a quick tour of my frequent stops here in Vienna - a tour of my home here as well as the places I encounter on a regular basis - enjoy!

Bathroom with one of the smallest showers I have ever seen...

The kitchen...

View looking from the dining room, through the living room, with that back room being mine and Rachel's room

the extremely weird looking key I have to use to get into our apartment...

reverse view of two pics before - looking out of our room into the living room and far dining room

View from my classroom window one way...

...and the other way.

My classroom, I usually sit in that chair right next to the projector

View from my bedroom window

From the living room, looking though the sitting room with Kristin's room (Ingrid's daughter) in the back. Kristin is 30+ and doesn't live with us

The marketplace right outside my U stop that I have to walk though everyday

The fountain in the middle of the market. I've seen it used for everything, including drinking water, place to wash your face and hands, place to wash your vegetables, place to brush your teeth, and beyond...

Our apartment complex on Landestrasse Hauptstrasse!

our apartment windows...

My favorite floral shop on the corner during our morning walk

That's all for now, tomorrow is going to be a busy day!

Liebe,
Andi

Running around town...

Life size cleats outside the MuseumQuartier - they move the two team's cleats who are facing off next to the center with a life size soccer ball

Elizabeth and I had a lot of fun trying on all the hats while shopping...

No playing soccer in the streets!

None of the windows the same size? what a weird apartment complex!

Grusse aus Wien!
(Greetings from Vienna!)

Today's weather has been all over the place. This morning it was nice and cool and breezy, then while my class was waiting for our prof outside the Leopold museum (she's normally 10-15 late everyday... I know, what fun!) it started to rain. When she finally came we spent our morning looking at various painting from Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and when we walked out of the museum it was already starting to heat up. Sarah Fetter and I picked up Billa then headed over to the University bookstore to get some sweatshirts (as gifts, not to wear right now!) By the time we left the university, it was really humid and hot! We headed back to the institute where I met up with Elizabeth, and, after deciding she wasn't going to get to use any of the three working computers anytime soon, headed off with me to Stephansplatz to do some shopping. The first store we went into had a basement FILLED with all sorts of hats - various sizes, shapes, fabrics, colors - we were having a lot of fun playing with those. After a while it was just getting too warm so we grabbed some gelato, talked with a woman from California while in line, and went our separate ways. I was then able to take a nice nap, then once the weather was more bearable, Rachel and I went to see the Hundertwasserhaus this evening. Hundertwasser is an artist who likes to play with color, and his apartment complex has several different shapes and strange columns, no two windows are the same size or in the same place, the floors are purposely uneven, the roof has a forest of trees growing on it and there are trees growing out of the apartment windows - you get the idea, it's crazy! He said he wouldn't take any money for designing it because it was worth it just so something ugly didn't go up in its place - what a guy. Now I'm slowly starting to organize my stuff and figure out how I'm going to pack it all up in just a few days!

Random things I've experienced:

• Large purple boxes can be used either for piling up and building a wall, or for sitting on.
• Not having your house frau around means running out of clean clothes and having to do your own dishes.
• It takes a very special face to pull of a patent red hat, and I don't have that face.
• Grandmas who don't like embroidered dishcloths, cuckoo clocks, or journaling are really hard to shop for in Vienna.
• Just because something says it tastes like an apple/cranberry sparkling water, doesn't mean it will, and you get stuck drinking a large bottle of grossness.
• On the other hand, Rauch ice tea is some of the best bottled tea I've ever had.
• More men wearing too short cut-off shorts... must mean it's summertime in Europe!
• The door in St. Stephans once used as the entrance for the royals is now used as the entrance to the gift shop...

I'm nearly falling asleep at the computer right now - I'm not looking forward to having jet lag again in a few days... oh well, better have fun in Vienna while it lasts!

Until next time,
Andi

My Weekend Workout Routine

On the way up the Rax Alps for the weekend...

Throwing snowballs in June

We reached the highest point - 1783 meters!

Liam! My 7 year old tour guide for the weekend - he suggested that this was the best spot to take a picture :)

Simply hiking down just seemed too boring...

Hello down there!

This weekend was a nice change of pace from the busyness of the city. We woke up really early so that we could take the bus about 1.5 hours outside Vienna to go hiking up the Rax Alps and stay the night in a lodge. The first part of the hike was the worst - it was about 1/2 hour of straight, steep uphill through muddy dirt, and I was getting annoyed that that was how it was going to be for 5 hours. Fortunately, though, after about an hour of that (the group I ended up hiking with, we took our time) we reached the first stop, and after that the hike was a nice combo of forest and rocky cliffs and meadows and beautiful scenery. Like I said, we took our time and took a lot of pictures along the way. Our second stop (about an hour and a half later) was a restaurant where I got this soup made up of thin pancakes sliced into strips in a beef broth - it sounds disgusting at first, but it's actually really good! Our group got more and more adventurous as the day went on, so we took the cliff route instead of the meadow path, and it was beautiful. Liam, the 7 year old son of one of the speakers for the Senior Seminar class this weekend, caught up with us and was leading the pack, since he's already done this trip "a hundred times." I started talking to him, and from that point on he was telling me stories and asking me questions and just wouldn't stop talking the rest of the hike - he was fun to hang out with :) Our group got to the lodge around 5, we cleaned up and had dinner at 7, then it was time for the euchre tournament! haha - it was fun, even if I did get out in the first round. I ended up watching the Holland-Russia game that Holland ended up losing in double overtime :( We went to bed, then woke up early this morning so that we could beat the hikers coming through to the lodge's breakfast, where they served some of the best hot chocolate I have ever tasted! We started heading back down around 11, and were booking it through the mountain. It had been beautiful all weekend, a little on the warm side (I definitely have burnt shoulders right now), but when we sat down for lunch, we noticed a dark cloud in the distance. We started to hear thunder rumble, but decided to pack up and keep going to the next stop. It was interesting trying to carefully climb down slippery rocks when you see lightning flashing out of the corner of your eye. My group felt a few drops of rain while we were walking through a wooded area, but then reached the stop. No later than when we sat down underneath the roof outside, it started POURING. Slowly more groups were coming in, completely soaked. The rain lasted for about a 1/2 hour, then we went down the ridiculously steep part for the last leg of our trip. Everyone boarded the bus, we turned the AC on to counteract the smell of 50+ sweaty and wet hikers, and headed back to Vienna. Overall, it was a great weekend!

Some random things I've experienced:

• 5 euro EuroCup backpacks from Billa work perfectly for weekend hiking trips!
• When you wear an orange Hope t-shirt on the night Holland is playing, all of the waiters who don't speak English get really excited and try to show you that they are rooting for Holland too.
• Knowing that if Russia and Turkey turn out to be in the EuroCup finals, most Europeans will be really ticked, a lot of them don't think they should even be allowed in the tournament.
• Walking the escalators at the U stops secretly trains you for the hiking weekend.
• When there is only one shower per floor at the lodge, you come up with other creative ways to clean up.
• Deer in the Alps are not white tailed, but black tailed.
• Snow fights are a lot of fun on 90 degree days, especially against 7 year olds.
• When they don't serve you dessert somewhere when you've become accustomed to it, you react by buying out their entire collection of magnum ice cream bars.
• The strangest goal of my life - I can't even explain it on here, you'll either have to ask me in person so I can act it out or youtube it.

I'm off to bed because I'm exhausted from this weekend but I have to take in as much as possible during my last few days here!

Liebe,
Andi

We're up and running!

Paige and Rachel eating the ORIGINAL sacher torte - world famous!

Ladies and Gentlemen - 2840 carats of pure emerald - largest in the world!

Crown from the 1000s

Almdudler - the ginger ale of Austria!

Yummy crepes and salad for lunch!

Shonbrunn Palace - summer home of the Habsburgs

The gardens of Shonbrunn

AHH!! so sorry for being just about the worst blogger ever this week - between homework and not feeling so great, it has sort of been a boring week. Nevertheless:

Wednesday my class went to the Imperial treasury - that was a lot of fun. We got to see all of the jewels of the Habsburgs that they weren't able to grab before they were exiled. We saw crowns and necklaces and ornate baptismal robes and coronation regalia and even some strange reliquaries that supposedly hold pieces such as part of the veil that Jesus used to wipe his face and another that held the nail used on Jesus' right hand. Not so sure about all of that, but it was interesting to see all the same. Paige, Rachel, and I stopped by this crepe place for lunch - I had my second salad since being here, and it tasting amazing, and the crepes were really good as well. That afternoon, the second session people took a trip out to Shonbrunn palace and took a tour of the first floor and a quick look at the gardens - it was gorgeous outside and the tour was really neat as well.

On Thursday we went to Upper Belvedere, another royal summer home turned museum. It was here that we saw this weird collection of head busts by a guy named Mezzersmidt. After he was fired from his job teaching at the art school here in Vienna, he became mentally ill, and spent most of the rest of his life secluded, purposely putting himself in different forms of pain and then sculpting what his face looked like during that pain. No one was supposed to see these heads, and right before he died he threw a bunch of them in the river, but there is still a pretty substantial amount of them left. It was kind of strange, but really interesting. I also finally got to see the Kiss by Gustav Klimt! There's about a million souvenirs with this work on it (the Viennese are VERY proud of Klimt, and this is his most popular work), so I was glad to get to see it in real life. That afternoon Rachel and I went with Ingrid to a Life tree garden then up on a hill overlooking the city - it was a really pretty view and it was fun to spend some time with our house frau. Once we got home, I had to work on all my journals, so I was in for the rest of the night.

Today was a pretty busy day as well. For class, we went to St. Charles Church, where I was able to go to the very top of the dome thanks to them restoring the church right now and having a scaffolding up for visitors to use. After class I grabbed Billa really quickly then went to the Albertina museum with Paige, Rachel, and Arin. It was interesting - I got to see some cool Monets and Picassos, but I wasn't able to find all the Klimt stuff that was supposed to be there - oh well. After that we three girls wanted to check out the Prater - a huge park in the city. Once we got there, we realized that there was no park to the Prater, it was like a weird amusement park area where there were street vendors and super-expensive rides, it was a little sketchy, so we headed back to the institute. From there, I went with a group of students to Cafe Sperl, one of the oldest and most famous coffeehouses in Europe, where we got to learn a little of the history of the coffeehouse as well as taste test some of their coffee and desserts :) Now I am just catching up on some rest and getting ready for our hiking trip in the Alps tomorrow!

Random things I've experienced:

• Seeing a 70-something year old man in cut off Daisy Dukes - absolutely disgusting.
• Running and blocking the U doors from closing with my body so that Rachel, Paige, and I wouldn't have to wait for the next one.
• Coffeehouses make suitable stables for Russian horses during wars.
• Realizing I would never want to paint the inside of a dome, and wondering how none of the artists died back in the day.
• Having a street vendor offer me a 15 euro purse for 10 and then telling me he loved me - creepy! I didn't stick around to buy the purse...
• Ham and corn pizza is actually really good, but strawberry and yogurt gelato is not!
• Cops are more than willing to wait for you to cross the street just so they can peel out afterwards to try to impress you.

Again, sorry for being so bad with this blog this week - I'll make sure to finish strong though, I have less than a week left! This is both good and sad news...

Until next time!
Andi

Gonna take on the world someday...

2 things to start out with:

1. I am sorry for all of you who were anxiously waiting my post from yesterday, I really didn't do too much yesterday, and I had a headache, so I just went to bed instead.
2. Right not my computer is being dumb and WILL NOT let me upload any pictures to this site, so I might have to backtrack a little once it starts letting me again.

All that being said....

Yesterday, as I said, I really didn't do much of anything. We looked at slides during class, I did some window shopping after, came back to the apartment, started working on my journals, accidentally fell asleep. Rachel woke me up, we got ready to meet Paige and Arin for dinner - Spar! I know, we really went all out :) After dinner Arin, Rachel, and I decided to head over to the main Fan Zone for the Austria/Germany game - that was an experience. We got there about an hour before the game and it was packed. There was no concept of personal space. Once we were finally able to get through the push and through security, we thought we'd brave it and try to go to the main area. That was a crazy idea - we spent about a 1/2 hour in there, and we were pushing and being pushed the whole time. The craziest parts were when I lost Rachel and Arin temporarily, and there was one point where my feet weren't even on the ground - everyone was so smooshed that I was actually being held up by the people around me - like I said, crazy. We only stayed for the first half, and Germany ended up winning 1-0, so now Austria is out of the Euro Cup.

Today wasn't too much more exciting. My class went to the Kunst Hinstostorhious (I have absolutely no clue how to spell it) Museum again - the museum built for the private collection of the Habsburg family. Some of the stuff was interesting, and I also was able to come to the conclusion that it is Baroque workshop art that I am the least fond of - so I guess that's good to know. Anyway, after that I went shopping with Sarah Fetter for the afternoon and was able to get an Osterrich (Austria) scarf on sale now that they're out of the running... Early this evening I met with Rachel and Paige and we went to try the world famous Hotel Sacher torte - honestly, it's overrated. Then we took the U to go see "We Will Rock You" a musical based on songs from Queen - it was amazing!! The dialogue was in German, but the plot was a little far out there anyway, but the songs were in English and the actors were incredible! I almost got kicked out during "Another One Bites the Dust" because they caught me taking pictures - in my defense, this is the first theater here in Vienna that has had a problem with it, but the guy made me delete all the pictures from the show and said that he would normally make people wait outside, but I just couldn't do it again. And it's a good thing I was able to stay - because the end was by far the best part. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun. And, after some confusion on the U, Rachel and I made it home, and now I'm off to bed. Guten Nacht!

Random things I've experienced:

• Getting a 78 euro seat for 15 euro thanks to my international student ID card!
• Discovering that I do, in fact, know every word to the song "Johnny B. Goode"
• Dried beer in your shoes feels even more disgusting than wet beer.
• German fans are nicer to you than Austrian fans, and Swedish fans tell you that it's a smart idea when you decide to leave jam-packed places.
• "We Will Rock You" is not only a musical, but also a concert and a light show.
• The U is so much busier at 8:30 than at 9:05
• According to the German fans, collecting the plastic cups @ Fan Zone and returning them for a euro is our way of getting back at Austria.
• Book illustrators make some of the best painters later in life.

Yeah, like I said, nothing super interesting, and sorry about the pictures - I'll hopefully have better stories soon!

Love, Andi

I left my heart in Salzburg

Aaron and I were really excited to see the Russian's team bus!

we accidentally ran into the Fanzone in Salzburg

Crazy Greece fans - too bad they lost :(

Riding the weird 8 person bike through downtown Salzburg

Abby and I getting ready for the Sound of Music tour!

The back porch and lake behind the von Trapp palace - the actual palace that they used was someplace else!

I am sixteen, going on seventeen...

The ridiculous looking bus we spent all afternoon on :)

Fushl - the location of my future summer home - soo beautiful!!

The hills are alive!

Mirabell gardens - gorgeous, and the location for the Do-Re-Mi song...

Mirabell rose garden, I will be back to see you again!

Skipping through the ivy archway, just like von Trapp children

The next Julie Andrews? Probably not.

I'm not even sure if words can describe Salzburg - it was absolutely amazing! I woke up at 5:45 in order to get ready and take the U3 to the train station. It was a three hour trip to Salzburg, and I was able to sleep most of the way, but it was also really nice to see all of the rolling hills outside the window. Don't get me wrong, I love the city of Vienna, but living so close to the middle of the city, you don't see fields and trees all the time. And the countryside is absolutely beautiful. Well, once we arrived in Salzburg, we headed to the old city and walked around and looked at the shops and buildings. We turned the corner to the shopping district and saw the streets lined with intricate cast iron signs. It's a city law that any shop in the old city have one - it looked really cool. I saw the house where Mozart was born and the house he grew up in. We found a Billa and grabbed some lunch and ate down by the Danube. We started walking around again, and then somehow made it into the middle of Fanzone. Greece and Russia were playing in Salzburg that night, so both team's fans were already filling the streets with chants and foghorns and even a drum... football fans are soo funny. There were some on our train in, and they were chanting on the train at 8 in the morning - they somehow do not run out of energy, because I'm sure they were still just as crazy that night. At 2, we boarded a bus with about 40 senior citizens and 6 kids under the age ten. There were 6 Hope girls on the bus, and we were the only ones between the ages of these two groups, with very few exceptions. The tour was really interesting and our tour guide was absolutely hilarious. Again, I can't describe how beautiful the alps and Salzburg were, I recommend everyone go and find out for themselves. We finally came back, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and were able to sort of see the Russian team load on to their bus as we were headed back to our train station. We caught the train and then finally made it home and to get a really good night's sleep, and now I am supposed to be working on homework, but I really wanted to finish this first :)

Some random things I've experienced:

• If you want to get married, go to Salzburg, we saw like 6 weddings somewhere in the process over the course of the day.
• If you ever drive off the end of the dock, the first thing to do is to roll down your windows (words of advice from Aaron Knighton).
• train seats in cabins recline, and even if they do make a lot of noise, you can make a bed out of them. Do this before the last 1/2 hour of the ride.
• Going through someone's ipod can tell you a lot about a person.
• If you don't have indoor plumbing for your castle because you built it in the 700s, simply have the bathroom stick out from one of the towers on the sixth floor or higher.
• According to the Sound of Music, Maria ran down the tallest point in Salzburg to the downtown with is 10km from the base of the mountain in 3 minutes - Julie Andrews was an athlete that would put most to shame :)
• I tried Almdudler, Austrian ginger ale, and I haven't decided yet if I like it better than Ale-8... but it's really good.
• In the old days, if a boy wanted to prove his love to his girlfriend, he would pick her an Edelweiss. However, the official flower of Austria only grows high in the mountains, and many lost their lives trying to get the flower :(
• Homework is nearly impossible to do in Europe.
• I discovered the German movie that has the same plot line as Little Giants, only with soccer instead of football (obviously). It's called Die Wilden Kerle, and there are 3 of them.
• When you buy a nut pretzel the width of your forearm from a guy who calls himself Honey, it tastes just like Hungarian kefli... delicious!
• Mystery meat does not always taste bad.
• Always make sure that you have more material on your body than your boots, otherwise it does not look tasteful.

Okay, I really need to get going on homework, even though I have such a hard time when there is simply so much to see here and not enough time to see it all!

Liebe,
Andi