Dublin

Guinness Brewery!

The Albertina

Today, we decided to get our acts together and see something cultural in Vienna! It was supposed to be rainy all day, so we headed to a museum in the 1st District called The Albertina. It was a mix of both history and art. At first, we decided to skip the audio tour and just read the plaques throughout the exhibits. We quickly realized though that there was very little English, and we would get nothing out of the experience without the audio tour. It ended up being the best 3 Euro I've spent since getting here!

We started off in the Habsburg Staterooms which was the more historical aspect of the museum. From the audio tour, we gathered that this was where relatives and guests of the Habsburgs stayed for extended periods of time, with the most important being Duke Albert of Saxen Teschen, who acted as the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. He was the one who transitioned the building into an art landmark, when he transferred his personal collection of graphics and prints to the residence.

The staterooms were interestingly divided into the male section and female section, and the interior decor of each room displayed this. Every room was decorated with ornate chandeliers, wall finishings, tiles, murals, curtains, and even some of the original furniture. We learned that much of what we saw was actually replicas because of the damage done to the building during WWII. We all enjoyed the female rooms better, due to the brighter colors, fancier decor, and gaudier chandeliers.

After the staterooms, we moved on to the permanent art collection. There was a wide range of work including that of Picasso, Monet, and Matisse. Our audio tour allowed us to learn more about many of the paintings, artists, and styles we were viewing. After the permanent collection, we moved on to the final exhibit, which was a temporary exhibit on Max Ernst, and artist none of us had heard of. We did not spend much time in this exhibit - as my parents very well know, I can only look at art for so long, and the others in my group felt the same way. Ernst's art was much less classic than those we had seen earlier. Much of it was disturbing paintings of animals and industrial equipment.

After the museum, we headed to a cafe that our Professor had recommended. He claims it to be his favorite in Vienna, and I have to agree with him! It was the best latte I have had here, and everyone agreed that their coffee and pastries were delicious!

Tomorrow is going to be spent running errands and getting ready for our next big adventure. On Wednesday morning we are leaving for Bratislava, Slovakia at 6:00 AM. We are spending the day there, before flying out of the Bratislava airport at 6:00 PM en route to Dublin for the weekend!

Snowy Saturday in Vienna

This & That

I apologize for the lack of posts lately, there has been nothing very interesting to share! As I mentioned before, we have orientation now - which is actually very fun and informative, but nothing you all probably want to read about!

On Saturday, a few of us jogged to the Naschmarkt, which I previously posted a picture of. It is a fantastic market, that is open every day in Vienna! It is a combination farmer and flea market, with tons of permanent stands. They have every kind of produce, as well as meats, fish, cheese, bread, hummus, olives, honey, jams, nuts, dried fruit, spices, pastries, chocolates, coffees, and any other food product or ingredient you could imagine! We spent a while walking around and deciding what to purchase - most of us bought a combination of fruits, veggies, bread and hummus! We took the U-Bahn back, instead of running, because we couldn't carry all of our bags.

We went for a walking tour of the center district of Vienna on Saturday afternoon, led by our professor. The temperature had dropped drastically since the morning, and we were all immediately freezing. The tour helped us orient ourselves even more, and we saw many monumental sights and buildings that we hope to return to and spend more time exploring! As we now find typical on Saturday afternoons, we rushed to the grocery store to get any remaining items we would need in the following days, as the city entirely shuts down from 6pm Saturday until Monday morning.

Sunday was spent doing laundry, working out, researching what we plan to do in the countries we will be traveling to soon, and generally just hanging out at our building! A few of us went to coffee later in the afternoon, but that was the only mildly exciting part of the day!

Caffe Latte & Shokotorte 

Yesterday we had orientation in the morning (we learned to count to 100, and we also learned the days of the week and months! for homework, we had to do a word-search of the months!) After orientation we went back to the Naschmarkt to pick up a few more things, and show some of our other friends that didn't make it on Saturday. It was an even more enjoyable experience this time, because it was significantly less crowded, so we were in and out in no time!

Today we had language lessons in the morning, with a focus on food items and ordering in restaurants. This afternoon we had a guided tour of the Parliament of Austria. It was very interesting, but much of our tour was in german so we were relying on our german language students to translate for us. We were told by our professor to not bring our cameras in, and we had to check them with our coats at the entrance to the building. Once inside, we saw many other people taking pictures, so we may end up going back to take some another day. The architecture inside the building was very interesting, as it was completely based on ancient Greek architecture. Many aspects of the building were designed to exactly mimic the Parthenon and other monuments in Athens. Along many of the walls there were also large statues of many of the Greek Gods. We found it intriguing that a government building, finished in the late 19th century, would be modeled after Greece rather than utilizing Austrian influences in the architecture. We asked our guide why this was the case, but unfortunately she did not understand our questions - so we are going to try and do some research of our own and see what we can find!

We continue with orientation through the end of this week. Almost all of our group is going to Prague this weekend, but there are a few of us (including myself), staying behind in Vienna. Those of us staying have other plans to go there later in the semester, at least once, so we decided to save some money and explore Vienna some more! It will actually be nice to have only 6 of us here for the weekend, because we will actually get out and see the city in a more organized manner! When all 30 of us are here, our groups get too large and we end up not accomplishing much in terms of sightseeing. This weekend we are already planning on going to Europe's biggest "underground" lake, which is just outside of Vienna. We are also looking into going on a hike in one of the outer districts depending on the weather!

Naschmarkt - Vienna

Ice Skating at the Rathaus

Orientation & Vienna

There's not much to report from the last few days - we started orientation on Tuesday and have been otherwise exploring Vienna and booking trips! It's hard to believe we got here three weeks ago! Time is flying by. 

Orientation so far has been mostly about learning basic german phrases and getting acquainted with the University and Vienna as a whole. Today for example, we learned introductions and and "how are you" type phrases and then learned more about the 23 districts of Vienna. We also went on a scavenger hunt throughout the campus today to learn more about where certain departments and useful offices are. 

We have also spent the last few days planning our trips for the semester - I think I have all of my trips planned, with the exception of where I will go when my lovely parents come to visit in May. With everything I have booked, I will have gone to 13 countries in my 4 months! 

Yesterday, after orientation, we ventured out in the snow to see the library at one of the Habsburg palaces. It is supposedly one of the largest libraries in the world, and it was incredibly beautiful! It has a few displays where you can view different stages of printing and read about the methods of printing from different regions and eras. Otherwise it is mainly just for viewing the intricate detail of the room and taking in the fact that this was once a family's personal library. We wished we had done some more research, as there were not many signs or explanations of what we were viewing. I will definitely be taking my mom back though, so I will have to read up on it before visiting again! Nevertheless, the room itself was beautiful!

On a somewhat unrelated note, they have these wafer cookies across Austria (and maybe more of Europe?) called Manner. They are basic wafer cookies, but the cream holding the layers together is a hazelnut chocolate spread (generic Nutella). I am not a sweet person, but I am OBSESSED. You can buy them for very cheap, and they even have an Aldi (Hofer) brand which tastes the same for 1/ 3 of the price! We eat them almost everyday for a mid afternoon snack. While we were wandering yesterday, we found an entire Manner store - similar to how we have Hershey's or M&M stores in the U.S. I (jokingly) thought about buying this bulk pack of assorted Manner items, but it was 96 euro! 

This afternoon we went to a nearby cafe to grab some coffee during downtime before our nighttime festivities. I am still not used to the smoking that goes on everywhere here - we were in the cafe for 30-45 minutes and my clothes and hair now reek of smoke! We were going to stay longer and read/journal but we couldn't stand the smoke smell and left after we finished our coffee. 

Tonight we are ice skating in front of the city hall. We have heard from other students that have done this last week, that it is fun and quite beautiful to do this at night! Our whole group is going as a part of our orientation and then we are going out for pizza afterwards! 

Carnevale in Venice, Italy

What a whirlwind of a weekend! We went to Venice this weekend, for the Carnevale celebration. We took overnight trains both ways, so we only spent one full day in Venice. It was exhilarating and exhausting!

We left Vienna at 11:00pm on Friday night. The exchange program planned this trip, so there were over 200 exchange students that went - it was a great way to meet other students, from all over the world (although almost everyone I talked to was from North America..). The train ride was a little over 10 hours, and we were assigned to sleeper cars with six bunks in each car. The last car of the train was the "Disco Wagon", which was basically an empty train car that had been transformed into a bar and dance floor. The train ride was one of the most fun, yet bizarre experiences I have ever had. We were all very happy to get off the train in the morning onto stable and substantially less sticky ground after a night in the Disco Wagon.

Disco Wagon

We either had to carry our backpacks with us all day, or pay 12 euro for a locker, so all of us girls decided to stuff one backpack with everything we needed for the weekend, and split the cost of checking it. This meant we all wore the same exact clothes from Friday-Sunday, and only freshened up by brushing our teeth and combing our hair!

We pulled into the Venice station at 9:15 on Saturday morning and were off on a 14 hour sightseeing spree! The reason we were in Venice was for the Carnevale celebration, which is a Venetian festival characterized by masks and costumes. Everyone in the city was wearing elaborate masks and outfits. There are stands and shops all over selling the masks; the ones we encountered were priced in the range of 3 to 1,800 euro! We all purchased masks at the stands, in hopes of fitting in among the locals - although we quickly realized how difficult they made navigating and ended up carrying them around most of the day.

As a group, we agreed that you cannot say you've experienced Venice unless you ride a gondola, so we broke up into smaller groups and found the gondolas! Our gondolier refused to sing, but we forgave him as he provided us with a historical tour as he guided us along for nearly an hour. We were dropped off near Piazza San Marco, the main square where many of the festivities were taking place. It was unbelievably crowded, but the people watching was fantastic! There were all sorts of costumes and small street performances happening. We walked around and watched for a while, before heading off in search of lunch!

I knew I was going to be in heaven with the food, and it was actually quite challenging to get all of my Italian food dreams fulfilled in only 14 hours! We ate lunch at a small restaurant, and I went with the most basic of Italian dishes - spaghetti al pomodoro. It was delicious!! We were all freezing and hungry, so the food and atmosphere was a great break from the cold.

After lunch, we continued to walk around and again found ourselves in Piazza San Marco - this was not intentional, but those streets are just too hard to navigate! We walked all the way through the Piazza to the coast, and then walked nearly an hour down the waterfront. There were so many people out, and hundreds of stands selling various souvenirs and trinkets! Along the walk, we stopped and got gelato - my second Italian eating goal was completed.

Back to Piazza San Marco we went, and got in line to go inside St. mark's Basilica. The interior was incredible (and heated, which was a plus!), but we couldn't take any pictures. It amazes me in the cities I've been to how old everything is; our gondolier took us past a building that was nearing its 1500th anniversary! After the Basilica we headed the opposite way up the the waterfront to watch the sun set.

After the sunset, we still had 4 hours until our train so we headed back to the center of Venice. Four of us stopped at a restaurant further off the beaten path, which was necessary to get away from the crowds! A friend and I split a grilled vegetable pizza (Italian food dream number three!), which was quite possibly the best pizza I have ever had.

We continued to walk around more, and the nighttime festivities were beginning. There was an odd transition from the costumes and masks we had seen earlier in the day, to an Italian version of Halloween. Earlier in the day men and women had been in full makeup and dressed in colonial type outfits. Now we began to see everything from pirates to smurfs to army men and even multiple Lance Armstrong costumes!

On our way back to the train station, we took a longer route to see a little more of the city. It started thunder-storming, but luckily the rain was not too heavy. We joked about how we have thus far made very dramatic exits from cities - first the blizzard in Saalbach and now a February thunderstorm in Venice! We picked up our bag at the station, and boarded the Disco Wagon again.

The power was not working on our wagon, so our rooms were pitch black and freezing. The combination of being exhausted, damp from the rain, freezing from being outside all day, and now the power outage brought out a great deal of frustration and emotion in everyone. It was eventually all sorted out - and we were able to move to a different car to sleep in the heat. We left Venice at 11:20 and were back in Vienna at 6:45am this morning. We immediately all showered and got back into our beds for a majority of the day, as nothing is even open on Sundays here.

We spent the afternoon and evening researching and planning more trips for coming month, including spring break. We have orientation for the next two weeks, so we won't be travelling now until Dublin on the 27th. I am looking forward to finally settling in and getting to know Vienna!

More Later, XOXO

Graz, Austria

Last week, a small group of us took a short trip to Graz, Austria. Graz is the second largest city in Vienna, and is a 2 1/2 hour train ride away. We booked a hotel for the night, as the city only has one hostel - which was fully booked. We left at 9:30 and had to transfer trains once, getting us into Graz a little after 1. We stopped at our hotel (B&B Graz - a great place to stay!), to see if we could check in early and drop off our backpacks. The woman at the front desk was very helpful - allowing us to check in early, and giving us guidance as to what we should see in Graz.

In the center of Graz, lies a "mountain castle" which was the recommended first stop for visitors. It has great views of the entire city, so we decided to go there first. Even though Graz is the second largest city in Austria, it is easily walkable. Most of the attractions are located in Old Town, and our hotel happened to be right in the heart of Old Town. We never had to take any public transportation, and by walking nothing ever took us more than 20 minutes to get to. We set off to Schlossberg (the mountain castle), and ended up taking many detours along our way there. We looked like typical tourists, with our guide books out - but we wanted to know what we were looking at!

Schlossberg is really more of a hill than a mountain, and can easily be climbed via a winding, paved path in 10-15 minutes. We quickly came to realize, and later affirmed, that nothing is open in Graz until April. The castle itself was closed, but the surrounding area is a park, so we were still able to walk around and admire the views. At the top of the mountain, there is a clock tower which is one of the prominent icons of Graz.

After Schlossberg, we decided to head to a cafe and warm up - it was cloudy and in the low 40's and we had been outside for much of the afternoon. We had heard of Graz's "floating cafe" and decided to check it out. The cafe is advertised to be an island, but it is merely a bridge with a cafe in the center. We stopped in and had some coffee to warm up though, and planned out the rest of our evening.

The Floating Cafe

We headed back to the hotel to change and get ready for dinner. We walked back across the river to the area of Old Town that is full of restaurants and nightlife. We ended up eating at Molly Malone's, an Irish pub. After two weeks of sausage and potatoes, we all ordered (turkey) burgers and fries. They happened to be showing an Austrian soccer game, so the pub filled up quickly. The atmosphere was great, and everyone was very into the game. We ended up staying at Molly Malone's for 5 hours, hanging out and watching the game - unfortunately, Austria lost.

We got up early the next morning, to check out and get a full day of sightseeing in before our 5:30 train back to Vienna. We set out in the opposite direction of Day 1, towards the bigger castle in Graz - Schloss Eggenberg. This palace is Baroque style, and was built by the Eggenberg family during their dynasty in the 17th century. We were disappointed again, when we discovered the palace itself does not open until April. All throughout the year though, you are able to walk around the gardens and can enter the courtyards of the castle, which is what we ended up doing. I can imagine Eggenberg is very beautiful in the spring and summer, the gardens were intricate and wrapped around the entire palace.

Schloss Eggenberg

After grabbing some lunch at a deli, we continued to walk through Old Town for the remainder of the afternoon. We got to the train early, as we were all tired and cold. We departed at 5:30 and were back in Vienna by 8:30.

Overall Graz was somewhat disappointing. As a group, we had a blast but the sights would have been better in warmer weather - when they are actually open. Although it is a big city, Graz can easily be done in two days. We were happy that we went, and will now have time in the spring to go somewhere else. We were also excited that our first independent trip went smoothly, especially without any german speakers with us!

Errands and such

Today we had to go to the University to fill out paperwork for our public transportation card, and that took most of the morning. Then we ran errands around Vienna, such as groceries, laundry, etc.

Tomorrow a small group of us are off the Graz, Austria. It is the second biggest city in Austria, and seems to have a lot to see! We are spending the night, so we have two full days to explore. I'll try to post about Graz when we get back on Thursday, before I am off to Venice for the weekend (tough life, I know...!)

Ski Week Pictures

Finally in Vienna!

We have returned from our ski trip, all quite sore and tired of skiing! Our trip home began as an absolute nightmare. We had to hike up the mountain from our resort to the top gondola station in order to get down the mountain. Not only is it very difficult to climb up a mountain in such high altitude, but it was also literal blizzard conditions. We could not see five feet in front of us, the temperature was in the single digits, and the wind was unreal. It was a 30 minute trek, but felt much longer. When we got to the top, our pants were actually frozen solid. We then had to walk from the bottom of the gondola to the bus stop with all of our luggage, and then transfer from a bus to a train which we took to Salzburg. In Salzburg, we switched trains to Vienna, and finally arrived in Vienna in the late afternoon.

Mostly everything is closed on Sundays, so we all made a mad dash to the grocery store and another Ikea-like store to get some cooking utensils. Afterwards we were all exhausted, so a small group of us went out to dinner. We went to an authentic Austrian restaurant and had a great meal. I had sausage, potatoes and sauerkraut. We then hung out at the dorms for a while, and decided to make our way to an American bar we had heard about to celebrate a birthday. After wandering the streets for over an hour, we gave up on finding it and headed back to go to bed.

This morning we got up and decided it was a great day to start wandering Vienna and learning the city we will be in for the next four months. We left in two smaller groups, with the intention on eventually making it to St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the middle of the town, which is almost a 40 minute walk from the dorms. There were 6 people in my walking group, which was the perfect size. We have come to the realization that it is chaotic and loud when all 18 of us try and do anything together. We wandered for a few hours, taking small detours when we saw something of interest. We eventually stopped at a small café to grab some coffee and a bite to eat. It was a very local, small coffee shop with only a few seats. The coffee was fantastic! After we warmed up a bit (it was sunny today, but chilly and windy), we headed back out towards the center of the city. We passed through the museum quarter, which we will be revisiting later this month during orientation.

Museum Quarter

We eventually made it to the St. Stephen’s after 3-4 hours of walking, and were immediately impressed by the architecture inside. It is a gothic style building, and originates from 1147. One of the most interesting architectural aspects of the building is the colorful, mosaic, tiled roof. We spent some time walking through the inside, and reading the history on the plaques scattered throughout the main area. We decided we wanted to tour the catacombs, and had to wait 40 minutes for the next tour. We spent that time walking around, observing the architecture and intricate detail of every nook and cranny.

St. Stephen's

The tour of the catacombs was incredible. It was a 25-minute tour, and only cost 5 euro. We started by seeing the tombs of prominent Cardinals and Bishops of Vienna. There was also a room dedicated to the Habsburgs. In those times, they mummified the bodies after extracting the important organs. In the walls of the room there were urns, where their organs have been preserved in alcohol since then. The tour concluded with the mass graves of the lower classes. Each room was piles of bones and skulls that were many hundreds of years old. Each room had a different history. For example, one room was 11,000 people that had died from the bubonic plague. Another was organized and stacked by bone type. It was someone grotesque but also extremely interesting to know we were seeing actual skeletons, that were so incredibly old. Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures in the catacombs.

St. Stephen's Cathedral 

On our walk back, we stopped in another café to warm up. We all had a small pastry/cake, which were delicious! I am not normally a dessert person, but I’m afraid this trip is going to make me one.

After walking around for 5 hours today, I am already beginning to feel that I have a better understanding of the layout of Vienna. In the next few days, I am hoping to buy a Vienna tour book and read more about the history. It was neat seeing all of the beautiful buildings, but it will be even better when I know what the buildings are and the history behind each of them.

We’re now back at the dorms, getting ready to cook as a group. We are all sticking to basic foods today, as we still don’t have many utensils and groceries. Most of us will probably have pasta, sandwiches, grilled cheese type foods. After dinner we are going to make our way to a pub to hopefully watch the Super Bowl. It doesn’t even start until midnight here, so I’m not sure all of us girls will make it until the end!