I’m about to start midterms next week, so I”ve basically been staying at home studying this weekend. Kind of lame I know. I had my German midterm Saturday morning (I have no idea why on a Saturday morning), and that wasn’t too bad. After all of this is over though, I”m going to Munich, Germany with my roomate Trang. I”m so excited because most of October I”ve basically stayed in Vienna.
So far, the only other places I”ve been is to Croacow, Poland, Budapest, Hungary, and Prague, Czech Republic. It was part of my ten day field trip for IES to Eastern Europe, and it was amazing! Prague was beautiful with its architecture, and I went to a soccer game there. It wasn’t as cool as the Rapid Wien game (no one looked like they were about to jump into the soccer field and start a fight), but I love experiencing the games here when they’re not as popular in the States. Of course, I got a tour of the city and there is no way I could possibly begin to describe everything that was there. One thing I thought was really cool was this chain of locks aligning a bridge in Prague. Supposedly, once you’re married you put you and your spouse’s names on the lock because your heart has been “loced away”. A little corny, but so is our tradition of whoever you kiss on the kissing bridge at Wittenberg is the person you’ll marry.
 In Croacow, I went to a salt mine (yes, a salt mine). They showed us the underground place where they used to work, and there were whole rooms (even a ballroom) where the floors, walls, everything was made of salt. It may sound kind of stupid, but if you actually saw it was actually pretty good. The other important thing we saw was Auschwitz. It was a very sad thing to see, and you could see some clothing, hair, and other items belonging to the prisoners. I won’t go too much into it because it’s a depressing topic, but it’s one of those places that’s important for everyone to see.
In Budapest, our group had a little more free time than the other trips. We saw some of the Roman ruins in the area, and I went shopping for some souveneirs in their mall. The mall was an interesting setup. It was like one of those outdoor markets with the owner sitting behind the table of their spot/in front of their spot but packed inside. I got one of those stereotypical nesting dolls (those wooden dolls that have layers and you keep taking off the layers and it gets smaller and smaller), and a ”secret box” with a key hidden inside the wall to open it.
I”m so glad I got to go on this field trip to Eastern Europe because I know I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise and the inflation in these countries made everything so cheap. And since it was the week before classes, it was a chance to relax, travel around, and have some really fun nights before classes actually began. Munich will be the first place I’m going to since then, and next weekend I”m going to Venice, Italy. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out going to Barcelona for the second week of November, but money may be an issue. We’ll see. That’s all that’s really going on right now. And now to start studying…
Hey everyone!
Where to begin! I’ve been abroad in Vienna, Austria for the last couple of months and it’s been amazing! It really is a city where the past and the present live next to each other. There are buildings dating from hundreds of years back with beautiful architecture you just can’t see in America. There are 23 districts in Vienna, and I live in the 19th district. Each one’s got it’s own personality, and mine is supposedly the rich, posh district lol. I guess I got lucky. I live with five other girls, and we get along pretty well. Living with that many girls made me a little uneasy at first about how much space there was going to be, but our place is huge! A lot of the furniture looks like it’s been barely used, and my room is gorgeous. It’s got huge, square windows overlooking the other small flats next door, a wooden closet with several shelves, a couple other small drawers, a nice rug covering most of the floor and still PLENTY of space. I’m sure I’ll get a nice/decent apartment at Witt, but it may never be quite like this.
The only thing that sucks about living there is it’s far away from my school (I went through an international program called IES, or the International Education of Students). I miss the times at Witt when the farthest a class is is 15 minutes away. I’ve got to take a train, the u-bahn (subway), and the Strabenbahn (basically a trolley) which takes 30 minutes if I time it right. Right now, I’m taking 5 classes there: a public service internship, personality and psychopathology, cross-cultural psychology, German, and Music in Performance (basically studying classical music).
Because I don’t speak a lot of German, I’m taking classes at the Insitute here in English. People who can speak German can go to the University of Vienna, which is pretty cool because you can meet more Austrians. I’ve met some through a public service internship I’m doing for my sociology minor and hung out with them a few times. One of them is Sebastian, who works as a type of supervisor there. I’ve met some more people through him and he’s taken me to some parties at the University of Vienna that have been pretty sick.
Obviously, I can’t go into everything I’ve done over the last couple of months. I already feel like I’ve written a book (lol), but I’ll try to recap some things as I write different posts. Vienna is a huge classical music center, so I’ve been to the opera a couple of times. Last Thursday, I went to a standing opera. You can buy a ticket for 3 to 4 Euro (A Euro is $1.50), and you bring a scarf with you. When you get to your place, you have to tie on a railing around the area you’re standing and that marks your spot for the whole performance. It kind of sucks to have to stand the whole performance, but it’s cheap and the view was still pretty good.
The other thing that was pretty cool to see was an official soccer game. A bunch of people from IES and I went to a Rapid Wien (Vienna), soccer game. It’s a little shorter than an official soccer game, but it’s so intense! People were yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs, and I swear it looked like a couple of people were going to hop the wall and scream at the rep. The cheering section was AMAZING! These people were some of the biggest fans of the Viennese team, and they didn’t stop cheering for a second. Literally. I don’t know how they did it, but it would have been so awesome to have been in there.
I know this definitely doesn’t cover everything I’ve experienced in Vienna, but I’ll be sure to recap as much as I can throughout the rest of the semester.
