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