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!