Lizzy in Vienna!

Venezia!!

2008-06-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

So day 3: Wake up and go to the train station. It's starting to be a theme. We were all so tired and our feet hurt so bad, I'm sure we were all a little tempted to just take a train all the way back to Vienna. But I'm SOOO glad we didn't! Venice was my favorite place of the three. Well except for the part where I forgot a cute little watercolor in the train station that I bought for Nina and Grandpa Joe. It was of Florence and I really liked it :( I almost cried on the train I was so sad.

But anyways, it's remarkable to step right off the train and be literally a few yards from the Grand Canal. It's really something. There really are no roads or cars to speak of. Everything has to be done by hand or hauled around on a boat. I really noticed it with all of the street cleaners. They had only huge bristled brooms and little hand carts. Anyways, we got out of the station and bought tickets for the Vaparettos. They're like the city bus, but on water. So therefore more expensive. But it was great to have a mini-tour of the city while just riding the boat. We motored for about 45 minutes through the city gliding by gondolas, old crumbly houses, piers, bridges, and water taxis. It was crazy when the boat stopped to let people on and off--the captain would run from the cabin and throw ropes around moors and then yank the boat over to the dock. Usually we would make it with a huge THUD and everyone would kind of topple over on each other from the impact. You could definitely tell the seasoned travelers from the newbies :)

Our main stop was St. Marco's square. It had the big cathedral and the Palace. It was so packed and full of tourists, which makes sense because it's the biggest square in all of Venice. A natural place for everyone to stand around. We waited for about an hour just walking around all of the tourist booths and small little streets and bridges waiting for the cathedral to open. When it did it was amazing. So beautiful. I was only able to snap one photo because no cameras were allowed. But the place was huge and literally covered in gold. All of the domes and everything were golden. Put a lot of other cathedrals to shame, haha.

Outside there were a TON of pigeons. Apparently they are world famous for pretty much attacking you if you had bread. So of course I borrowed some bread from Robin and smushed it in my hands. Here was the result:

Pretty sweet.

Next we ventured into the Doge Palace and toured the rooms of the ruling family of Venice. It was pretty cool, but if you've seen the Royal Palace and the Schoenbrunn in Vienna, this really isn't anything new. We eventually started jogging through the palace just trying to find the prison and the Bridge of Sighs. The Bridge of Sighs is the little bridge that connects the palace to the prison. Apparently the prisoners being led off to a life in prison would sigh as they crossed the bridge as they caught their last glimpse of Venice. Romantic :)

After the palace we milled around the square for a bit, hunting for souvenirs. I bought a cute Tshirt for Kenzie as we made our way back to the water taxi/bus thing. We decided enroute to visit the Peggy Guggenheim Modern Art Museum that was nestled right up on the Grand Canal. It was a well stocked little private collection of Pollacks, Picassos, Miro, and lots of others. I really liked it, especially the ridiculous little statues out on the porch (if you could even call it a "porch" since it opened out literally onto the canal). It was so cute even getting to the museum. We had to walk around little neighborhoods and shops and walkways that lined gorgeous little canals. It was here that I really felt like I was in Venice. Tall houses tucked against lazy little canals. Sleeping gondaliers resting in their boats with their straw hats pulled down over their faces. Faded buildings whose only occupants were bright little flower boxes. I love Venice.

Later we stopped of course by the Rialto bridge and walked over it. It was cool, but not terribly interesting to those who have no idea why its that important :) The rest of the day was spent wandering little backstreets, gawking at the stands selling inappropriate ties with naked women on the backs, and wandering in and out of churches we found. We saw the garbage collectors with their big brooms and hand carts and wondered how in the world garbage collection is done without any roads or trucks. It's done entirely by manpower I guess. I also really wanted to visit an old church that had its original Titian pieces still hanging in it, but it closed before we can find it. Oh well. I loved the little streets and the wandering anyways :)

With one last gelato and a Bellini toast to Venice on the docks of the Grand Canal, we left Venice and Italy on one of the longest, smelliest, and most cramped train ever. With 4 of us and some poor unfortunate Italian all smooshed in one tiny car trying to sleep. We ended up pulling all of the seats out and sprawling while this guy just tried to sit and sleep against the window. I'm pretty sure Anna's feet were in my face about 90% of the night. We all thought that each car was this way, but nearly every other car had only one or two occupants. And of course we found this out around dawn :)

A great ending to a great trip. Italy: 3 cities, 3 days. This was amazing.

Firenze!

2008-06-12T03:18:00.001-07:00

In the morning we dragged ourselves out of bed around 8:00am (well SOME of us, I accidentally got up at 5am because someone called the phone I was using as an alarm and I thought it was the alarm going off) and hauled our stuff to the train station. We caught the 9am bullet train to Florence which was sooo expensive, but at least we got there ok. I was the only one not traveling with a Eurrail Pass (it gets you about 10 days of travel for around $500), but since the others didn't know they had to reserve a seat it cost them nearly as much in fees when the conductor came around.

We arrived just after 10:30am in Florence! I was so excited to be here because I know how much Nina said she loved it and wanted to visit. We found our hostel, the David Inn, and actually got our own room to ourselves. It was so nice and peaceful for a change. We were also only 1/2 a block from the Accademia with Michaelangelo's David!

We started off our morning going to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It was AMAZING. The entire structure is made of this greenish type stone with all sorts of interesting designs. It was spectacular. And not only that, it was HUGE. It was an entire block all by itself. No kidding. This was the cathedral that Michaelangelo was inspired by to build St. Peter's in the Vatican. It was just amazing. We waited for about 2ominutes in line--well Robin and Myles waited while Anna, Laura, and I scampered off to find 3 Euro calzones. They were soo delicious! Definitely the best lunch so far :) Inside the cathedral was a little lack luster, not a whole lot going on. There were some beautiful windows and a neat 24-hour clock, but other than that the place just felt a little empty. The neatest part was the dome and it was blocked off from being able to walk underneath it. Oh well.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.

Inside.

Part of the golden door on the outside.

The huge line trying to get in.

When we left, Myles and I wanted to climb up the dome but no one else was really feeling like it. I think it was something like 463 steps. Yikes. So instead we opted for going to see Basilica di Santa Croce. It was only a few minutes walk away and I guess I had been appointed the fearless leader/navigator. I did pretty good too :) The church was also beautiful, with a large white facade and a long brick body. Inside were the tombs of soo many famous Italians. We saw the tombs of Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Donatello (at which point I turned to Anna and said "Wait I thought that theses guys were all turtles...haha"), Machiavelli, Dante, and a ton of others. It was neat. Not to mention the church was beautiful! There were fresco's everywhere and neat little chapels. Not to mention the floor was covered in tombs and headstones that had been worn down by centuries of church goers. They had the occasional grave roped off so no one could walk over it. All and all it was a really cool experience.

Basilica di Santi Croce.

Me in front of the huge door!

Tomb of Leonardo DaVinci.

The sweet floor with all of the tombs you can walk over.

After that we walked over to the Accademia for our 2pm appointment to see the David. We had heard that getting a reservation a few weeks ahead of time was a good idea even if it cost a little extra. We had heard that the lines to get in would sometimes be up to 2 hours long. So we played it safe and bought tickets ahead of time. Turns out the line was only about 1/2 and hour long. Oh well, I think it was the poor weather forecast that turned people away from travelling that weekend. We got inside, saw a few other works of art and then turned the corner to see the David. It was HUGE. At least 10 feet tall. I never thought it would be that big. And it was amazing. You could walk all the way around it. There were no photos allowed, but we all covered Myles while he used his iPhone to snap a picture :) Besides the David there wasn't a whole lot else to see there. There were a few other unfinished Michaelangelo statues, but that was about it. At least we got to see the David. It was worth it.

Some excellent gelato

A sneaky illegal photo of the David.

Next Anna and Laura went off to nap and Robin, Myles and I went to go climb the dome of the big cathedral. It takes you to 3 different levels. It was really funny to see people dropping back like flies. You would round the corner and someone would dart up past you, and then a minute later you would see them taking a breather a few flights up. But the first main stop was in the actual dome. There was a gang plank that you walked around and could see all the frescoes up close. They were actually really funny! Most of them depicted what would happen to you in hell. There were three-headed monsters gobbling down whole people, demon dogs chasing poor guys, and and devil casting others into fire. Just the scenes you would want to see while at mass. Oh the catholics. We walked up another big flight of stairs on the outside of the dome (between the dome and the wall) and ended up on the roof. It was gorgeous!! You could see all of Florence in every direction! The dome was the tallest building in the entire city. It was magical :)

Climbing up the crazy staircase. Me, Myles, Robin.

Yeah, we climbed up these.

The awesome damn-you-all-to-hell fresco.

The view!

Looking out at the bell tower and the city.

After the ridiculously long walk back down we took a little siesta. We set out in the pouring rain to search for food. We ended up at a terrible restaurant for dinner :( I was kinda sad that our last dinner in Italy would be so bad. Kinda like going to the Spaghetti Factory. Oh well, it kinda dampened our spirits a little.

Then we wandered around and saw a replica of the David standing where it used to be and a bunch of other statues. We wandered past the Uffizi and to the river where there was a really cool covered bridge. We all took lots and lots of pictures and Laura got semi-molested by and Italian man who made her a bracelet. She told him she wouldn't pay, so he kissed her. Urrm, awkward. We then headed back to town, got a few drinks, and headed to bed.

One of the many David copies.

The Uffizi gallery.

The sweet covered bridge that has a name I don't remember.

Silly Italy building.

Drinks!

Florence, check.

The Chelsea

2008-06-10T02:25:00.000-07:00

The other night Michy, our adorable Austrian friend, took us out! We went to near the Red Light district (haha) and had a few beers at a neat little bar under a bridge playing some crazy trance music or something. We sat and watched a few girls and the occasional guy get up and just kinda dance crazily to the music. Always eyes closed, head down, arms swirling around and around. Pretty entertaining.

We moved on after about an hour to the Chelsea. It was a fun club with lots of music, most alternative like the Killers, and definitely all American. We got up and danced for at least 2 hours. I had the time of my life! It's so much more fun to jump and dance around to this kind of music than the rap and stuff they always play at home. Around 3am I joined the first party to leave and on the way out received a rather nasty cigarette burn :( Stupid smoking in clubs people. After hunting down night buses, we made it home just as the sky was lightening.

Roma!!!

2008-06-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

We just completed a 3 day crazy adventure in Italy. It was tiring but so amazing!!! It was pretty debatable whether or not we should have just spent 3 days in one city, but I'm so glad that we didn't. I saw so many things, and you can see a lot in a city in one day. Even Rome. Anyways, here is my Roman Holiday:

Thursday night Myles and I headed to Vienna Airport and caught an evening flight to Rome. (P.S. flying is wonderful. I'm really glad that's what we do in the U.S. Trains are awful, especially when you're poor and can't afford a sleeper car. More on this to follow.) So we zipped on down to Rome in about an hour and twenty minutes give or take. Meanwhile Anna, Laura, and Robin spent 14 hours on an overnight train. Suckers.

After paying 11 Euro for a one-way airport train we found ourselves in Roma Termini train station and walked only a couple blocks to our hostel--Chianti Hostel, very fitting. We met some really nice Americans who were just beginning their summer europe trip and gave us directions to find Trevi Fountain. We walked precisely 1/2 a block before I made Myles stop so I could buy some gelato. When in Rome...

Side Note: Its amazing just how much there is to see in Rome. Within a few blocks of our hostel, which isn't even in the main part of Rome, there were so many amazing buildings and ruin-y looking things. It is so different than Vienna, which as a historical district for sure, but you can hardly say the entire city filled with important buildings.

Anyways, after many twists, turns, and flat out wrong decisions we ended up at Trevi Fountain. It was pretty neat, especially at night even considering all of the obnoxious street vendors pushing roses in your face about every 30 seconds. We sat and bought a bottle of wine to split and nearly drank it all. Not bad. It was even a Chianti, in honor of our hostel :) We chatted, laughed at the tourists posing in front of the fountain proudly displaying their dozen roses and caricatures and slice of pizza, and before we knew it it was nearly 3 am. Good first night in Rome.

We woke up early the next morning and booked it to the train station to meet Laura, Anna, and Robin. Their train was exactly on time and we were off for our day's adventure. We started at Vatican City. IT WAS AMAZING. The museum was pretty interesting, but the best part where most of the tourists were flocking to was the Sistine Chapel. That was beautiful, but not at all like I imagined it. It was a large rectangular room with only a few doors and a flat ceiling. You had to search a little to find the famous fresco of God and David. But it was worth it. It was also fun to watch everyone milling around in this gigantic room looking straight up and bumping into each other and then filtering out the back door. Hehe. We stopped and looked and I played bodyguard while Anna and Myles snapped forbidden photos and incurred the wrath of God. After that I made everyone search the museum for the Raphael Rooms. Well worth the search though :)

Next stop was St. Peter's Square and the Basilica. The square was beautiful and lined with amazing pillars in a strange circular shape with St. Peters' on one end and another piazza directly across from it on the other. We made our way to the Basilica, double checked our dress code, and funneled our way inside. Honestly, it was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen. The scale was just out of this world. The ceilings were huge and lead into at least 3 or 4 domes. There were tombs and statues literally everywhere, and all of them gorgeous. The main alter was behind the tabernacle that rose at least 3o feet and covered the sacred ground where St. Peter is supposedly entombed. I still can't believe how amazing this place was. It took at least 20 minutes to just walk around it, not to mention actually look at anything. Just amazing.

Outside we visited the catacombs of the old Popes. Said a little hi to John Paul II and stopped to look at the room under the tabernacle where St. Peter is. Pretty amazing.

Next stop: Pantheon. We took the subway back to the city center and then took the tiniest bus imaginable towards the Pantheon. It was hysterical, especially because we had NO CLUE where we were going and no clue which stop was which. The bus ride itself was pretty funny because it was just zipping along, dodging traffic and pedestrians. The door often swung closed and smushed whoever was trying to get off the bus. It happened to a woman who then gave a particularly ugly look to the driver and slowly walked off. Our driver then slowly followed her with the bus and made some particularly Italian hand gestures to her as we drove past. A funny american (?) guy helped us, but then also got us incredibly lost. We wandered through Piazza Navona and eventually made it to the Pantheon via some ridiculous winding (and at parts confetti-filled) alley ways. But it was well worth it. The Pantheon is a circular building with clusters of Roman columns out front that formed a triangle style arch. Inside is this amazing round room that was converted into a church. The most amazing part was the ceiling which came together in a large hole, that supposedly would make the dome collapse if it was filled in. Other than the structure itself, the Pantheon wasn't particularly amazing, although it did contain the tomb of Raphael.

From there we walked toward the Roman ruins and the Colosseum and grabbed some lunch. We learned the hard way that lunch costs more if you sit inside to eat it. Oh well. We did have a nice view of the ruins. We walked to the Forum, bought a dual ticket for that and the Colosseum (thanks for the tip Rick Steves) and walked straight into the Colosseum. No line. Interestingly enough, we never really ran into any of the famed gigantic 2 hour lines. In any city. Strange.

The Colosseum was so amazing. I must sound like a broken record, but everything we saw was truly amazing. No kidding. It was a little smaller than I had thought, but it doesn't matter because the interior was the crazy part. You can hardly believe that something this amazing was built that long ago. The best part was being able to look down into the maze underneath where the original floor was and see where they kept the gladiators and the lions and stuff. Pretty cool. My favorite part was walking along the top, and waaaay over on the other side we saw this guy stand up on the stone wall and shout "IS THERE NO ONE ELSE!?!" from Gladiator. It was so funny, especially since nearly everyone in Rome seemed to be American and probably knew exactly what he was talking about. Anyways, we had a good chuckle all around. We also found an old pillar and mimicked being Roman statues. It got a little creepier when an older American man walked over and said "You know, Roman statues are usually nudes..." CREEPY!

After the Colosseum we walked over to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. We walked around for quite a bit and saw lots and lots of ruins, but we never really found the forum. We followed all of the signs, but the final path was a little blocked off. Oh well, we still think that we kinda saw them. The ruins were pretty awesome though, its incredible that they're still there. As we left we visited the Mamertine Prison where Peter the Apostle (and Paul?) where supposedly imprisoned. We went down into a little tiny room underground where there was a small depicting St. Peter baptizing the prisoners. There was even the well that miraculously sprang from the floor for the baptisms. It was a pretty moving experience...even if you don't believe it, it was pretty powerful.

After that we went out in search of St. Clementine's church. Anna's monk friend told her that it was the most beautiful church that he had seen. We had to walk back through the ruins and along the colosseum, where I purchased my souvenirs and Laura (once again) got free stuff. She bought an Italia jacket and got some boxers with depicting some rather, uhh, intimate parts of the David on them. Hehehe they're really funny. Anyways, we ended up finding the church and even hearing parts of mass in Italian. Pretty neat stuff.

Also boobies.

At about this time we were pretty much dead from all of the walking. After some rest and relaxation we grabbed some delicious delicious dinner at a cute little outdoor cafe. I had white sauce pizza with prosciutto! It was soooo goood!! After that we met Anna's friends at midnight and proceeded on a 2 MILE hike through Rome to get to Campo di Fiori for drinks. It was so ridiculous. I want to say it was worth it, but I really don't think so. Especially on the walk home. SOOO far at 3 am. But I guess the 4 shot Long Island Iced Tea helped :) Definitely took the edge off.

And that friends, was Rome.

Hundertwasserhaus

2008-06-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

I love this house! It was created by Friedensreich Hundertwasser (literally means Hundred Waters) in the 3rd district. It was built in 1983-86, has 52 apartments, and 250 trees and bushes growing within it. Pretty neat huh?

Visit from the Eltern

2008-06-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Just a few pics from Dad and Sandy's visit!

Lipizzaner Stallion Arena, the most beautiful arena in Europe :)

We saw most of the show from the middle section, but snuck down to the bottom for pics.

Listening in on a concert in St. Stephen's.

Mass at St. Augustine's on Sunday morning. Music by Schubert.

Schönbrunn Palace

Getting ready to go into the mazes

Sandy led the first attempt. Didn't work out so well :)

The Gloriette

Dinner out at Ribs of Vienna

Desert at Sacher Cafe!

Drinks at a very strange Mexican Restaurant.

Haha my favorite bathroom, you can see back and forth through this fish tank.

Salzburg Day 2!

2008-06-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

Day 2 began with a visit to dear Deutschland. I found it really funny that we were going to spend the morning in Germany. I mean really, who does that? I think I'll pop over to Bavaria for a bit, be back by lunch. Haha. Anyways, we embarked to Berchtesgaden, a little Bavarian town that housed the area's most famous Salt Mines. After several bus trips and much confusion we found our little salt mine and went in to take a tour.

On the road to Germany. This will actually be my only trip to Germany! Haha 3 months in Austria, 3 hours in Germany.

Beautiful Scenery

We made it to the salt mines!

This was easily the most fun we had on the entire trip. Not only did we get to go on a guided tour of the actual mines, but they gave us these STUNNING outfits to wear. They were like one piece workmen's coveralls. We had so much fun just laughing and trying them on taking loads of pictures. Then they loaded us all on a little train and took us down the mine shafts. We got out a little while later and just walked everywhere, looking at the equipment and being guided in German. It was a lot of fun! We even got to ride a boat across a subterranean salt lake. At the end our tour guide gave us each a little salt shaker. Haha. I now take it with me everywhere, just in case :)

Putting on our super attractive salt mine suits. Ganz attracktiv, as we would say.

Group pic! Me, Anne, Anna, Winona, Laura.

Haha, Laura and I are looking sooo good!

We got to slide down these old wooden slides! You can see it on the left side of this picture. They are actually surprisingly fast and produce a considerable amount of friction.

Yes. The walls were very salty.

Salt Lake! Underground and slightly unnerving. We got to take a boat ride across it though and then drink some of the water.

Everything is cooler when there's a lazer show involved!

On the train through the mines!

Outside the mines. Soo beautiful.

When we finally got back to Salzburg we headed straight for the Modern Art Museum. It was actually pretty cool, it was on the top of this huge hill with a sheer cliff face. We took up an elevator and had a gorgeous view! The museum was really interesting. There was quite a bit of work by an amazing Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. We also had lunch at Afro Cafe. It came recommended by Rick Steves. Yeah...

View from the top of the elevator in front of the Modern Art Museum.

One of the photographs in the Museum by Sugimoto. I loved his explanations for his art. This one was to capture different shades of shadow.

I thought these were cool. He would go into a theater and keep the exposure open for the entire movie. The result is a white screen. The detail in the theater is remarkable.

View from the hike down.

Our tablecloth from the Afro Cafe.

Next we just started to walk around and hit up random churches and cathedrals. We even saw a huge wedding in one of the squares. We went into the church after everyone had left and it was so beautiful! There were still all of the wedding decorations up. There were white flowers everywhere and even entire birch trees. I couldn't even imagine how much it all must have cost. It was really something. We also went around back to the St. Peter's Cemetery. There were hundreds of graves everywhere, but it was peculiar because most of the graves were recent. Some of the older ones I saw were only from the 1950's. It was really strange. But beautiful at the same times. I was really impressed how well kept they all were. Each was like a miniature garden. Beautiful. Laura and I each paid a euro and went up into the Catacombs which were built into the cliff face above the cemetery. It was neat and even though there wasn't a lot there we still managed to find stuff to take pictures of :)

View inside the Franciscan Church.

In St. Peter's Church, where the wedding took place.

Domplatz.

St. Peter's Cemetery and the beautiful graves.

The catacombs in the cliff face.

Sneaking a peek with my camera through a door hole.

Inside the first room of the Catacombs.

By now it was getting a little late, so we decided to hit up the Mirabell Palace and Gardens. They were beautiful, but I think that the ones in Vienna are prettier. We did see the Pegasus fountain that the Von Trapps danced around in The Sound of Music :) That's us, always on the lookout for Sound of Music sights. We also watched a guy wade around in the fountains looking for loose change. That was a little troubling, especially since these gardens are one of the big attractions in the city. But at least it was entertaining! We all just kinda kept looking at each other and stifling laughs. Hey, you do what you gotta do.

Recognize this from any movie?

In front of Mirabell Gardens.

The Pegasus.

After that we found a brewery, tried some Weissbier (the local specialty), and had the most AWKWARD chinese dinner ever! It's almost too hard to explain, but the waiter kept doing the strangest things. We would ask for chopsticks instead of silverware, but instead he would take away someone's plate and bring the tiniest bowl ever. And then 5 minutes later bring some chopsticks. And then Laura was busy shredding the tabs from her water bottle and he kept trying to clean up her little pieces. But she was so embarrassed and wouldn't let him touch them! She kept hiding them in cigarette dishes and things. Maybe you just had to be there, but I literally thought I was going to pee my pants from laughing! It was like the awkward interactions in a Jane Austin novel or watching the Office. Sooo funny.

On the way back to the hostel, the craziest thing happened to us. We were waiting for the bus by Mirabell gardens and decided to go walk through the park rather than sit and wait 20 minutes for the next bus. By now it's pretty dark out and there aren't a lot of people around. We walk into the garden, and there standing in the middle is this tall cloaked figure. He's kinda far away, but it was so eerie regardless. And then all of a sudden a blindfolded girl is led up to him. They take off her blindfold and the cloaked guy (we called him "Voldemort") took off his hood and walked with her to the fountain (the same fountain we saw the guy wading in earlier). They kinda look like they were talking and then they bend over and he starts baptizing her or something! It was weird and made weirder by the circle of other people standing around the fountain holding candles/torches. A few of them were even crying. Yeah. CREEPY. So Voldemort finishes baptizing (or whatever) this girl and then just walks back to where he was. And then another blindfolded person is led out. In the meanwhile I had decided to follow him around and try to get some pictures. In retrospect, it may not have been the smartest plan, but there were some other people around so I didn't see the harm in it. So yeah, that was the time that we saw Voldemort in Salzburg. Pretty strange.

Voldemort!

Lots of people with torches. Creep? I think so.

Video of the Day

2008-05-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

The best fountain I've ever seen.

Sorry, it's kinda sideways.

Salzburg!!

2008-05-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Salzburg!! It was gorgeous and sunny, couldn't have asked for a better weekend. It was even better because we prefaced our journey Thursday night by watching The Sound of Music. It's what every trip to Salzburg requires. We left Friday morning and traveled 3 hours by train. The trip was beautiful, plus we randomly met Krsh, Liz, and Anna's friend Leslie on the train. Luckily Leslie is from a little town near Salzburg and could tell us everything cool to see. Plus we got a little German practice :)

We finally arrived and then spent an extra hour trying to figure out which bus to take in what direction. This was deifinitely complicated by the fact that the hostel was already notorious for "being hard to find." Turns out the thing is pretty much in the middle of the forest. But it worked. Got a top bunk. Can't have everything.

Me while roaming the wilderness of Salzburg trying to find our hostel.

We made our way back into town and made a bee-line for the Hohensalzburg Fortress. Salzburg is an adorable little town tucked into some very steep hills and pretty much sheer cliff-faces. The Fortress was built on the top of one of those hills/cliffs. Rick Steves highly recommended the use of the Funicular(!) up the hill. Turns out it was the shortest FUNicular ever. Hahaha it was kinda funny anyways. We at least got to hear Anna repeat "Havin FUN on the FUNicular" about 15 times :) After consulting Rick again we just kinda wandered through the fortress and through some STRANGE museums. The highlight was definitely the Marionette Museum. It was the creepiest thing ever! Sooo many creepy little puppets just sitting there. We at least got to play with one at the end. The view from the Fortress was also spectacular.

The cute little city streets.

In Kapitalplatz with the Hohensalzburg fortress behind.

Kapitalplatz again, with a giant gold ball with a man statue on top.

Excited about having FUN on the FUNicular.

View from the top.

Cool tree in the courtyard. Everyone was making fun of me for taking lots of pictures of it. Leave me alone, I thought it was cool!

Old original chapel to the Fortress, was built in 1077.

Canons still aimed ready to fire at the Turks, according to our pal Rick Steves.

Creepy marionettes!!

Practicing with this guy and doing VERY poorly :)

yeeeeeeah...

The other museum in the Fortress, something about Salzburg history. These strange little wooden pole soldiers were amusing. Especially with the weird music they were playing.

View from the other side.

A really pretty room.

We went back to the station, collected Laura, took her back to the hostel, and then made our way back to town. We wandered up and down Getreidegasse, the main cutesy touristy street, and found a little pub to have dinner. It was incredibly delicious! We all got such stereotypical Austrian-German food (brats, sauerkraut, potatoes, beer) and our waiters all wore the traditional outfits that we actually saw everywhere! High socks w/ leather capri pants, lederhosen, long dresses with blouses, crazy hats...the works. We actually saw a guy with lederhosen and a polo shirt! So strange. Anyways, the rest of the night was spent just kinda walking around and taking pretty pictures.

Looking down the Salzach River

Such an Austrian dinner: Beer, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, boiled potatoes = delicious.

Oh Anna.

River at night :)

My favorite picture.

Look at what the Salzburgers can make with bread! Oh boy!

Sweden!! Day 2

2008-05-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

On the 2nd day we went to the archipelago! Apparently there are over 24,000 islands in the archipelago around Stockholm. We caught a boat just after noon and headed out! It was a cool old steamboat, which made the trip soooo long, but it was really worth it because we had such wonderful views! The most gorgeous part were the wild swans everywhere. We counted nearly 30 around one island alone.

On the deck

On the bow things got a little crazy. We were pretty much in the splash zone.

We finally got to our little island 2 1/2 hours later. It's called Sodra Grinda and it was the most beautiful little island. It was completely rural and we really saw no signs of life anywhere apart from some tourists on the beach. We hiked a little ways inland, found some sheep, a cafe, and a beautiful beach! So we spent the day sunbathing in the Swedish isles :) Pretty great.

Unloading the steamboat :)

Our welcome :)

The little farm a cafe we stumbled upon.

Sheep!

Our little rocky beach where we lounged for the entire day.

My view.

Snacking on some lunch

So we dared each other to go swimming in the sound (or whatever the body of water was) but only Sofie and I were man enough to take the challenge. The best part was Sofie though, accidentally falling into the water. She was nimbly picking her way towards the water, and was sitting down to test the temperature, and all of a sudden she just slid right in! She had been crouching on a section of slippery sea goo and then just disappeared. She came up screaming and we were all about to die laughing. I almost peed my pants. She kept trying to climb out but would always slide back in down the oozy gooey slime. Sarah was about to die from laughing, I was doubled over on the ground and Myles was busy taking pictures of the whole thing. It was so funny. Finally we got Sofie out and I elected to walk in from the beach, not the rocks :) It was so cold, I could tell why Sofie was yelping!

Sofie trying for the second or third time to pull herself up the slime wall. I meanwhile, was laughing hysterically.

Sooo effing cold!!

Sweden!!

2008-05-16T06:16:00.001-07:00

I love RyanAir. Well kindof. As far as airlines go, it's pretty awful. But you just can't beat a $70 round-trip fare to Stockholm!! So once again we boarded a train to Bratislava, then a plane to Stockholm (kind of). We actually flew into a small airport about an hour and a half from the actual Stockholm city center. It was so funny because it looked like RyanAir was the only airline that actually used that "airport." I say "airport" because it was more like a bunch of portables that were somehow fashioned together :) Even though we were so far away, it was actually kind of nice because we got to see so much of the countryside on our trip into town. The only bad part was being incredibly hung over from Matt and Shaun's birthdays the night before.

View of the Archipelago from the plane.

the "airport"

Beautiful swedish countryside :)

On the way we kept joking about spending a day at IKEA to get the "real" Swedish experience.

We arrived in Stockholm late-ish on Friday night and sat in the bus station trying to find our hotel (to the amusement of many Swedes) by trying to read everything out loud. We eventually realized that our hotel was in a place called Älvsjö. Luckily it was only about 10min away by commuter train. We really didn't care since it meant we weren't in yet another hostel. The hotel turned out to be really nice and we got a nice private room with a shared bathroom. Not to mention it was outfitted in almost all IKEA furniture :) The price was also right since we fit 4 people in a 2 person room. Hehe.

The next morning we got up super early and went out for a day on the town, trying to do as much free stuff as we could! Sweden's an expensive place. In restaurants a soda runs about $3 for one glass. Yeah. BUT they have ice cubes!! We couldn't believe our eyes when our coke and water came to us with ice in it. You don't understand how long it's been since any of us have seen ice. Like a million years, that's how long. It was great.

Sarah being amazed to see an ice cube.

Anyhow, back to the story. Oh yeah! It was kinda exciting that Swedish is similar to German. We could actually understand quite a few of the written billboards and ads. We felt so accomplished. I think I may have gotten on some people's nerves by speaking "swedish" all the time and trying to read the boards. We would walk down the street pretending to be Swedes. Our conversations went something like this: "Hinga dinga duuurgen ikea" "Oooh yeeeaahh u betcha!" Maybe you just had to be there.

Ok. Really back to the story. We first went to Gamla Stan, which is the old town island in Stockholm with the Royal Palace, Parliament, etc. It was like London with all of the soldiers that have to keep guard without showing emotion or anything. Except these guards had bayonets. We kept our distance. We went and watched the changing of the guard! It was really cool but also really funny. We all gathered in this big square and a bunch of soldiers marched in, did some other marching drills, and then the band came in on horseback and played marching songs. It was really funny watching these big guys trying to play the tuba on the back of a horse and still trying to control their horse. Very entertaining. The soldiers also did this really funny march/running away thing that made the whole audience laugh. It was definitely entertaining although it ran nearly a 1/2 hour long. We spent the rest of the morning walking around the island, looking at the bay and the ships, and looking at some random buildings.

Sofie and I on the bridge to Gamla Stan.

Entrance to Gamla Stan

Royal Palace

Royal Swedish Guard with a mean looking bayonet.

Changing of the guard

Horseback marching band!

I love the little alleyways in Euorpe! Not sure how these cars are going to get past each other though.

Royal Cathedral

Utilizing the panorama function on my camera

Next we decided to go to Djurgården, which is the large garden island by Stockholm. We walked all the way around the harbor to get there, but it was worth it. On the way I got a bug caught in my shirt and freaked out much to the amusement of Sarah, Sofie, and Myles. I was in the street, felt it, and immediately whipped off my shirt (i had a tank top on under it) and danced around trying to shake it out! Anyways, when we walked over the bridge to the island we saw a food vendor and got some Swedish meatballs (of course!). We were tempted to sample the local specialty "Super roll" which is two boiled hot dogs with mashed potatoes and shrimp salad all rolled into a tortilla. MMMmm right? Yeah...nobody ended up getting that.

The harbor

Super Roll!! Looks good huh?

Mmmm meatballs

The island was so pretty! There were trails everywhere and we walked along this pretty little river with flowers and trees everywhere. And the weather couldn't have been more perfect. It was about 75 degrees (25 centigrad?) without a cloud in the sky. We walked almost the whole length of the island. And we saw swans!! Turns out there are wild swans everywhere in Sweden. They were beautiful but kinda scary. The last thing I wanted was to be attacked by a giant killer swan. Anyways, we spent quite a bit of the afternoon walking around, sun bathing, and finding various places to stick our feet in the water.

Beautiful Tulips in the park

The island was scattered with private homes, restaurants, and museums along the water.

Swans!

View across the water towards the Museum.

I really wish we could have rented a boat :(

Bridge to the island

Outside the Theater

A little later we ventured back into town and Myles and I decided to go to the Absolut Icebar Stockholm. It's a year-round bar made completely out of ice. For $30 you get to go into the bar for 45 min, get a drink, and they give you these huge poncho type things with gloves so you don't freeze. It was a little over price, but Myles and I had lots of fun taking pictures, licking the walls, racing to see who could eat the most of their ice glass, and lots of other obnoxious things :)

Absolut Icebar Stockholm!

Pretty sweet huh?

I got the "Winter City" or something. It was blue.

Yep. The walls are ice too.

Me and Myles in our sweet outfits.

I definitely did not win the glass eating contest.

That was pretty much day one. We went back to the hotel late-ish, grabbed some chinese food to go, watched The Last of the Mohicans in swedish and went to bed.

DUBLIN!! Day 3 : Howth

2008-05-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

We spent Day 3 in Howth! It was a beautiful little coastal city just southeast of Dublin. We took the DART train about 20 minutes out and were there. Almost immediately after getting of the train we walked into a huge harbor with big fishing rigs and sail boats! It was amazing. There were huge warf type walkways and you could go right out to the ocean and see a few islands in the distance with ruined castles and old houses. There were two older men sitting out on the rocks playing the accordion. It just made the whole moment perfect. We even saw some little harbor seals come up to the boats to look at us. We pretty much just spent an hour sitting on the rocks and walking between boats and staring out into the sea. It was so peaceful and beautiful. I could have stayed there forever.

The Howth habor.

Drive your car into the ocean?

After a while we walked into town, which was a cute little neighborhood type area with steep hills, little town houses, and a church. We grabbed some lunch at a local pub (Beef and Guinness pie = DELICIOUS) and kinda walked around. I felt a little bad, but I really wanted to see some glorious Irish hills to frolic in so I made everyone hike up the hills until we found one. I mean come on, I'm Irish, I'm in my homeland...I want some green meadows!!! We finally stumbled upon one and it was spectacular.

An old ruined church with a recent cemetary around it. There were actually Redmonds there. It was actually very moving.

When we got back we did a little souvenir hunting. Winona, Myles, and I went to St. Stephen's green and walked around. It was a neat little park at the end of the busy pedestrian street. We walked around, made Myles take pictures in front of flowers, saw some swans, went home, yelled at the English guys, and crashed.

We woke up at 3 am and caught our plane home.

All in all, a fabulous trip :D

DUBLIN!! Day 2

2008-05-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

Day 2 was spent just wandering all over Dublin. We were going to try and make it out to some countryside, but that didn't work out. So instead we all headed off to breakfast and coffee. We went to see Dublin Castle first, which was kinda disappointing. It was in the middle of the city and had a huge parking lot around it. We really didn't even go inside. The outside was pretty and it had a free Revenue Museum. There were all kinds of accounting ledgers inside, and everyone was saying "Wow, Liz you must love this!" It was pretty funny. They also had a bunch of examples of confiscated contraband items and even a toilet that they used to check if you had swallowed baggies of drugs...yeeeah. It was quite amusing :)

Dublin Castle

Museum of Revenue!? I'm SO there.

Mark and the contraband toilet.

We also saw the castle "garden" which was more like a big grass field with winding little paths that were about half a foot wide. So of course we just zoomed around it and pushed each other around king-of-the-path style. Next door was the Beatty Library which had a really great exhibit on various world religions. It had everything from Islam to Buddhism to Christianity to Hinduism. It was conspicuously missing Judaism though. But there were lots of old manuscripts and religious texts from each one. I liked it a lot.

the "Garden"

Mark and I

We ended up walking some more and ran across Christ Church Cathedral and St. Patrick's Cathedral. They were both spectacular, but we couldn't get into either one of them. Christ Church was really overpriced and St. Patrick's was closed :( But the outsides were beautiful! I also loved seeing some of the cute city apartments with colorful doors. I would want to have a bright blue one I think :)

Christ Church Cathedral

St. Patrick's Cathedral. Sadly it was under construction.

Ireland has the cutest doors!

Our next stop was the National Museum. By far my favorite part were the Bog Bodies on display. I think they had 4 or 5 bodies from all over Ireland and parts of Northern Europe. They were all preserved by the bogs and most of them still had skin and hair that was incredibly intact. Morbid, I know. But it was so cool! Although after about an hour of our 2 hour budgeted museum time Myles and I were bored out of our minds (I mean you can really only take so many displays of Viking fish hooks) so we skipped out and went to lunch.

Over lunch we conspired to make our next stop the Guinness Storehouse. So we all trooped all the way over town. It took nearly half and hour. But we finally made it only to find ourselves in 30 minute long line, Disneyland Style. 10 Euros later we made it in and it was actually pretty neat. They take you through the brewing process and let you see and even taste some of the ingredients (roasted barley, hops, water, and yeast). It was really funny because the "master brewer" would appear on a tv screen, tell you about what you were looking at and then give you a minute to make your way to the next screen and he pretends like he's "walking" there. It was a little cheesy, but hell, we get free beer at the end. The building is pretty funny too, it's shaped like a Guinness glass. Anyways, my favorite part was at the top at the "Gravity Bar" where they pour you a pint and you can see all of Dublin. It's nearly the tallest building in the entire city and this bar floor is made nearly entirely out of glass! And just to make the experience extra worth it, we took the Guinness glasses and smuggled them home with us. When we got outside, high fives were definitely exchanged :)

Guiness Factory!

Free pint?! HIGH FIVE!

Lots of bottles

Testing out the barley.

Water: A very important component as we learned.

Even more kegs

The view from the Gravity Bar.

We were basically starving by this point so we quickly found a cute little pub, got some Irish food that I don't remember, I had a second pint of Guinness and was definitely feeling pretty good. We ate, drank, and were merry all the way back to our hostel. We came back to a bunch of noisy boisterous 18 year old British guys who were already drunk (it was only 6 o clockish). We just kind of hung out and laughed to ourselves over them.

Later a bunch of us went out to Temple Bar, which is the pub district of Dublin. It was insanely fun! It was typical Ireland: drunk people passed out in the street, public urination, men fighting and breaking up fights...you know, the usual. There were just tons of people everywhere whooping and hollering and it was just so much fun. It felt like we were at some crazy festival. There were a bunch of Bachelor/Bachelorette parties and "hen" parties were women in their 40s-50s dress up in crazy costumes or colored wigs or matching shirts and go out together. It was really funny, we tried to get Mark or Myles to hit on them. No luck though. Mark did try to drink a beer in the street, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal. Oh well. Not everywhere can be as cool as Austria. The only bad part of the night was the price of alcohol. Beer was at least 4 Euro and cocktails were at least 7 Euro.

Outside Temple Bar area.

And of course, ended the night with some Twisty Fries.

DUBLIN!!

2008-05-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend in Dublin!! It was incredible, I still can't believe that I was there. My homeland! Here's just a few pictures, well actually, a lot of pictures.

We left our dorms at 6am (yikes) took a train to Bratislava and flew from there to Ireland.

RyanAir: Cheap for a reason.

We got so lost trying to find our dorm in Dublin, but eventually we found a very nice Irish man who literally walked us to the door! It is so weird to be able to speak English and be generally understood. And to meet FRIENDLY locals. The Viennese are a lot of things, but friendly really isn't one of them. Haha. But yeah, it took a while to get used to all of the English being spoken around me, I always wanted to turn and be like "I speak English too!"

Map of Dublin with some of the sights.

Anyways, after we found our hostel we set out to search Dublin for things to do. We ended up crossing the River Liffey and finding Trinity College. It was so beautiful but just packed with tourists. I felt bad for the students, they were definitely outnumbered at least 10 to 1. We got to see the Book of Kells too! It was beautiful. It is a manuscript from the 800's with the first 4 books of the Gospel written in Latin and decorated.

Book of Kells!

The entire Book is like this, it's absolutely amazing.

Trinity College Campus

We then went for a little stroll down Grafton Street, which is a large pedestrian street with lots of expensive stores and cute little coffee shops and restaurants. It was also really crowded. It was like walking down 5th Avenue in New York. I also liked how we saw kegs just lying everywhere! Anyways, we stopped and got some coffee, got pretty loopy because we were now all caffeinated and hadn't gotten more than 4ish hours of sleep. A pretty interesting combination in my opinion :)

Grafton Street

From right to left: Me, Mark, Winona, Sarah, and Sofie

It was so crowded--we literally had to fight our way everywhere.

The River Liffey

Kegs!

Grafton Street

Sugar packet mustache

Of course on our first night out we had to go and get some Guinness. I was really looking forward to it because, of course, I'm Irish and I have to have Guinness. I'm not gonna lie, it was a little difficult to get through the first pint since I'm not much of a beer drinker. The second pint was considerably easier.

My first pint of Guinness ever!

It's actually my favorite beer now

Polishing it off

I left the pub feeling considerably better and went out to my favorite international destination: McDonalds. It's pretty funny to see what they serve in each country on their "Dollar Menu." Ireland definitely takes the cake with Twisty Fries. They were delicious and only a Euro!

After twisty fries we went back to the hostel for some sleep. Unfortunately two French guys were in our 20 person room (!!) and were super drunk and obnoxious. But it was pretty fun anyways :) They kept waking me up and saying "What is your name! Wake up wake up, you should come out!" And when I would turn over to sleep, they would bop me on the head and yell "Wake up wake up American girl!" I think one was named something like Pierrerik or something, but we just called them French Guy 1 and French Guy 2.

So that was pretty much day 1! More to come :)

My Accomplishment for the Day...

2008-04-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty proud of myself! I had a full conversation in German with a ticket agent at the train station when I accidentally bought the wrong ticket from a machine! I had to explain that I bought the wrong ticket, that I would like a refund, and I would like to buy the right ticket to leave on Thursday and come back on Sunday. I felt so proud to get the right ticket by the end!

Budapest!

2008-04-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

I just spent a fantastic weekend in Budapest! I have to admit it was quite a bit different from what I was expecting. I think I had this really eastern Islamic vision of the city, but it really wasn't like that at all. Budapest is really two cities in Hungary that are divided by the Danube River, with Buda being the older side with the castles and ruins, and Pest being the more metropolitan side. Regardless of whatever delusion I was under about the history of Budapest, what I found was beautiful and amazing.

So we left after class on a Friday afternoon and jumped the train to Budapest. It was about 3 hours long, but we managed to amuse ourselves :)

We arrived in a beautiful grand old train station, Keleti Pályaudvar, tried to exchange Euros for Hungarian Florents, but we pretty much were getting screwed by the exchange places. I decided to take out 10,000 from the ATM. Don't freak out Mom, it was only like $40 :D

We found our way out of the train station, somehow managed to find an subway station and tried in vain to figure out what the hell the Hungarian signs meant. We ended up figuring out we had to head towards something like this: Deli palyaudvar. We somehow found our hostel (Jump In Hostel) which was so adorable! It was in the middle of an old apartment complex with a big walled in courtyard, peeling paint, dilapidated wooden doors and cute little dogs. I loved it.

We also met some pretty interesting people. I made friends with a girl from Las Vegas who had just finished a year of school in France. We also met Brian from Sydney. Well, we think his name is Brian. So here's the story: We were all sitting around and this strange older man, probably in his late 50's, is just kinda sitting on his bed staring at us. We wore the same baggy sweater flip flops and warm up pants all weekend. Actually, I never saw him leave the hostel room. We were all kinda cuddling on one bed, so he asks "Oh is this some kind of new game?" We were like "Uhhhh sure." Then he looks at Myles and says "Oh I bet you're winning." We just kinda sat there and looked around, being really confused, and then he starts talking again. "Is your name perhaps Brian? No? Well everytime my mind starts pondering about you, I seem to think your name is Brian. Oh, well maybe its my name that's Brian." Then he asked: "Are any of you by chance physicists? No? Well I've been having this little dialogue with myself for quite some time over a physics problem and I think I've gotten it figured out. I've been waiting for quite some time to run across a physicist." Oh. Awesome Brian. I kinda liked him, except that his favorite pastime seemed to be staring at us during odd hours and making strange burping sounds all night. Regardless, he was a great source of entertainment to us, as I believe we were to him.

Anyways, after meeting Brian we had a wonderful Goulash finding adventure, followed some scenesters to a strip club called Akropolis (we didn't go in) and then just kinda wandered back to our hostel, entertained Brian with our Americanness, watched Anna figure out her Rick Steve's Sleep Sack, and went to bed.

The next morning we got up, went to coffee and got a scone or two, and headed off to Buda. Luckily our hostel was only a few blocks from the river and we walked right over Erzsébet híd or Elizabeth Bridge, and straight into Buda. We saw a cute little hike up the hill right after the bridge so we went along, taking pictures about every 50 feet. Literally.

We wandered around, not really knowing where we were, for a little while, ended up finding a castle, the Budapest Museum, and a really cute little part of old town. There was Szentháromság tér (Matthias Church) with a cute Budapest marching band outside! The view, as well as the church was astonishing. You could see all the way up the Donau and see all the beautiful buildings on the other side in Pest.

We stopped to picnic in the worst possible weather! But it was great and we all split french bread, brie cheese, and apples and watched amusedly on while Mark tried to eat sardines. The weather magically got better and we ventured out to see a rather large fountain. I think we did a pretty good recreation of it.

After crossing the Chain Bridge, we visited the Parliament, posed with more statues, saw a lot of drunk Irish men weaving back and forth on the sidewalk (Laura and I saw a little TOO much of one of them) and found Szent István tér (St. Stephen's Church). This church was unbelievable. It literally looked covered in gold. There was also a wedding there :)

Dinner was at a place called Menza, which Sofie had read amazing reviews about, and it was probably the best meal we've all had since coming here. Delicious! We ended the night with a stop at a wine bar to sit and chat, and I think I was laughing so hard I could hardly drink my wine! We somehow got onto the subject of Myles being a large, Under-Armour-Tight-wearing-Tim's Cascade style potato chip made with peanut oil trying to chase down poor she'll-die-if-a-peanut-touches-her Sarah. Sofie obligingly sketched the scene for us. I guess you just had to be there.

The next day we pretty much just walked around Pest, had breakfast at Burger King because we were poor, and made our way to the Hungarian Baths. Now for some reason we all thought that Hungarian Baths were generally nude and separated by gender. Which would have actually been good because only Winona and I had actually brought swim suits with us. Well TURNS OUT they're not nude at all. Which was great for me, but meant everyone else had to wear they're underwear. Yay for being prepared! We had so much fun though winding around crazy halls trying to find the Thermal Baths and the Saunas and the Swimmingpools. I really think it was designed so you could never get out. It was that crazy. And none of us could afford to get towels so we're just walking around basically in our underwear amongst not only women but men as well, which proves false our other assumption about the baths being segregated by gender. Oops! We ended up just kinda running around, found the boys, and enjoyed a good hour and a half of healing thermal pools :) Not to mention the building was amazing! Literally all of the pools were surrounded by pillars and fountains and open air arched roofs. It was like swimming in a Grecian palace or something. It was also really funny watching a creepy Italian pool boy hit on Laura and tell her how he liked "giggly American women." All the creepy euro-trash guys in speedos were also really funny !

Meine Klasse!

2008-04-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here's my class, well some of them:

From left to right: Vika from Ukraine, Nikki (from US, she's in the class next door), Kristine from England, Andreas our teacher, Diana from Mexico City, Claudio from Italy, Ingrid from Guatemala, Sladana from Bellalouca (?) and Me!

We went out for lunch to McDonalds :) Since the Euro Cup is in Austria this June (when i'm still here!!!) every week they release a new country burger. This week I decided to try the McGreece. A very fitting name for a McD's burger.

Schwanensee

2008-04-18T05:30:00.000-07:00

I went to see Swan Lake last night at the Opera House! It was so beautiful. We bought standing room tickets on the ground floor and had the perfect view. I was pretty much standing right by an opera box, but probably paid at least 100 Euro less! I went with some friends from class--Yi Chen from Taiwan, Panis from Iran, and Sarah from Seattle :)

By far the best thing I've seen. So much better than the Opera. The outfits were gorgeous and the scenery was amazing! So glad I went :) The swan did 22 turns in a row!

Herbert und Elisabeth sind meine Lieblingsmenschen!

2008-04-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

Herbert and Elisabeth invited our whole program to dinner at their house. They are two of the directors at IKI. We made Wienerschnitzel, Tomatensalat, Kartoffelnsalat, und Apfelstrudel! Not to mention copious amounts of wine. Es war sehr lecker!

I was appointed as Weissweingespritzmeister for the evening.

Herbert and Elisabeth lived right across the street from a beautiful church.

Herbert!

Elisabeth!

Robin and I were on team Apfelstrudel.

Team Wienerschnitzel

They told Krsh that he was very good at beating meat.

Team Salat

I know they're cooking something here, but I have no idea what. They were also Team Liquor Store.

Bratislava!

2008-04-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

That right there is 650 Slovakian Kronies! Ballin! haha

In front of the largest Cathedral in Bratislava, which apparently warrants a high five.

In the Cathedral you could look through a glass plate in the floor, where we soon found some pretty cool skeletons. Hopefully they're vampires.

Myles and I down in the crypt. Creepy!

The whole town was a little run down, but I actually thought it was pretty cool looking that way.

A neat little courtyard that we stumbled upon while trying to figure out where we were.

Lunch time! We decided to eat outside, which may have been a bad choice because it was super windy that day, as you can see how bundled up Krsh is :)

Sooo tasty! Tomato salad, steak with Roquefort sauce, and wine all for about 350 SK.

The best hot chocolate I've ever had. I'm pretty sure they just melted a bar of chocolate and served it to you. I had mine with a little amaretto. Couldn't leave without licking it clean.

A view from the top of the castle! I think that's looking out over parts of the new city, which felt like it was still somewhat behind the Iron Curtain. Lots and lots of non-descript government housing style buildings...

Out in the ruins by the castle.

A cute little city street shot looking up to the castle on the hill.

At the castle. It was sad though because the inside of the castle was closed so we could only walk around it. It was ok though, but most of it looked kinda new, so I don't know how much of it was original.

Looking up one of the sides.

On this past saturday about 10 of us took a trip to Bratislava!! It is only about an hour away from Vienna, right across the Austrian-Slovakian border. We all had to drag ourselves out of bed at about 7am to catch the 8am train. The ride was wonderful (despite being desperately sleep deprived) and the Austrian countryside is beautiful. It's a little like the east coast in the US, especially up north, where the forests are mostly deciduous and you can see pretty far into them when the trees are bare. There were lots of cute little farms dotting the landscape and a few rolling hills every now and then. We saw quite a few big Hares hopping along side the train. And those suckers are BIG. Krsh was by far my favorite. He says the most random things. For example "Hey guys...you think those are bird nests out there? Man, what do you think it'd be like if we had to make houses out of puke and leaves? hahahaha." But yes, the ride was nice even though there were 5 of us together in a little car with one crazy looking Slovakian lady! She was so funny--we never heard her speak and occasionally she would just stare unceasingly at someone in the car.

Once we got there we all had to exchange currency for Slovakian Kronens. It was great because the exchange rate was about 33 Kronens per Euro. Shaun came back with a 1000 Kronen bill he got for about 30 Euro. It also felt kinda weird to pay 50 Kronen for a Coke. But anyways we had fun trying to figure out what the heck was going on because no one knew how to speak anything like Slovak. But we eventually got on the right bus and headed to town. We spent a lot of the morning going into random buildings and churches and just kinda walking around. One church in particular was really cool and had a glass floor with skeletons underneath. It also had a crypt you could walk down into. After that we had lunch outside in the touristy part, which we didn't feel bad about because there the tourist prices are still cheaper than anything you'd pay in the US or Austria.

Before we left we all went up to the big castle on the hill. It was kinda cool, but also not really very interesting. It was closed, which may have been the problem, but even the outside wasn't interesting. I liked the view of the city it had, but it looked fairly new, like most of the original structure had been destroyed. Oh well. There was a cool wedding though that I spied on. I also enjoyed Winona pretending to crawl out of a well like the creepy girl from The Ring. Then we pretty much finished off our day in the town, I sat in a cafe with Sarah and had some tea, and then we all met at the train station. A very good day in Bratislava :)

Corn Pizza?! WTF...

2008-04-09T08:02:00.001-07:00

So there are a bunch of little carts all over the city that all sell about the same types of food. Mostly different types of Bratwursts, Käsekrainer, Döner Kebab, and Pizza. Personally my favorite is the Käsekrainer in a bun, which you humorously have to order as "Hot Dog mit Käsekrainer." Then they stick it in this baguette type bun with Ketchup and Sempf (mustard). So the Austrians definitely have the whole sausage thing down.

But they definitely fail at pizza. First of all, all the pizza is super thin. You can pretty much see through it. And then they charge you like 3 Euro for it. Not OK. But my favorite part is the crazy toppings they try to put on it. A Viennese favorite must be what I've deemed "the Nebraska" -- similar to the Hawaiian but substitute corn for pineapple and voila! Corn and ham pizza. But it gets better!! Today I saw a vendor selling BACON AND SCRAMBLED EGG PIZZA. Now there's no way I can leave Vienna without trying it :)

Die Oper!

2008-04-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to my first opera! It was in the Staatoper which is the amazingly beautiful Opera House in Vienna. Alex is a huge opera buff and invited us all to come with him to see Der Fliegende Holländer...otherwise known as The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner.

We had to get there about and hour and a half-ish early and wait in line to get Stehplatz tickets. You pretty much have two options at the Staatoper: you can either spend a lot of money on a seat or you can stand the whole time in a "Stehplatz" for about €2. So it was Stehplatz all the way!

We were definitely the first people to get there. This is looking out and down from our Stehplatz.

The beautiful crystal chandelier.

The main stairs from the lobby.

Me!

A full house. The orchestra is in front right by the stage. I couldn't really use flash, so the picture is a little blurry.

I'm still a little undecided about whether or not I actually liked it. Sore feet aside, the venue was beautiful and the music was great. Note to self: Don't wear heels when you are in a standing only area. I loved watching the orchestra pit, almost more than I liked the story. I can't tell if all opera is like that, or if this particular one was a little on the boring side. It's kinda obnoxious when it takes 5 minutes to sing one line :)

But I will be cultured dangit! I'm hoping to see Carmen and Madame Butterfly while I'm here. I will definitely see another. Maybe I'll spring for a seat this time.

A Random Day Around the City

2008-04-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here are just some photos I took yesterday, in no particular order:

Am Wochenende...

2008-04-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun this weekend, even though I'm sure I spent half of it asleep. It's great not having very much homework. It's sooooo nice to have a break!

So lets see...on Thursday we had our first class with the famous Dr. O. She's a Ph.D. in Art History and she's teaching our art history class. It sounds like it'll be pretty fun and way more interesting than an art history class at UW. We actually get museum passes and hold class in museums and churches and stuff. Sounds good to me! We get to keep and art journal and make sketches. I'm actually really excited in a super nerdy way :D

On Saturday I woke up early and went walking/jogging along the Donaukanal. It was beautiful and I'm still amazed that I did it. Then I met up with some of the girls and my roommate and went to the Naschmarkt again. I think the Naschmarkt is becoming my favorite place. I get to practice my German with the vendors and there's always something delicious to buy. It's kinda bad news because I'm a little on the broke side. Oh well! We actually walked form our dorm straight there, which only takes about 1/2 and hour. It was cool to see where it actually was. When you only ride the U-bahn you don't really get a sense for where everything is.

When we got back I bought a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon for 1.40 Euro. God I love Europe. I sat out on the grassy roof with Anne and we just sat there doing homework, chatting, and drinking wine. It was great! Lucky for me, I can't taste the difference between good and bad wine...so cheap wine it is!!

That night we met up with Fausta, an Italian girl in Sarah's german class. She is so cute and nice and invited us over to her apartment for dinner! It was so delicious--fried eggplant backed in tomato sauce and mozzarella! She has been living in Vienna for a few months now and can already speak German, Italian (duh), French, Spanish, and English. She is also a dancer for the musicals and her little sister is on the junior Italian gymnastics team. Crazy! She also has a really cute cat.

Today I just took time out to go walk around the city. I just started at my dorm and walked down the Donaukanal right onto the main street called the Ringstrasse. Almost all of the important and famous buildings line this street. In an hour alone I saw the Votivkirche, the Universitat, the Burgtheater, the Rathaus, and Parliament. They are so beautiful!! But unfortunantely I ran out of camera batteries :( So after my camera charges back up I'm off for round two!

die Universitat

Votivkirche

Burgtheater

Rathaus (Court House)

2008-04-04T08:26:00.001-07:00

Just a few pictures of us Seattle kids

Me, Sofie, Winona

Shaun, Sofie, Me, David, Mark

Robin, Anna, Me, Winona

Mark, Sofie, Me, Liz, Shaun, Myles

Me!

Mark, Me, Winona, Sofie

Mark, Sofie, Winona, Me

Sofie and Me

Anna, Mark, Myles, Shaun, Liz, Karl, Alex, Sofie, Me, Winona

Me and Mark

Anna, Mark, Me

Anna, Mark, Sofie, Me

Schule!

2008-04-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've had 4 days of class now and I absolutely love it! It's so much more fun than school at UW because everyone here actually wants to learn and interact with everyone else. My class is about 12-13 people from nearly everywhere. I usually sit next to Yi-Chen and Kristine. Yi-Chen is from Taiwan and Kristine is from England. Haha, I think my favorite person in class is Claudio--a 33 year old Italian man who constantly makes sexual inuendos in German. Its great, we pretty much laugh all day.

I had to go to the store today, but first I went to the Naschmarkt. I bought a huge piece of bread and some Hummus for dinner tonight. It was really good! I'll definitely do it again. And then I went to the store to get some milk and pasta and some snacks. They have such weird food here! I can't find anything in the stores, especially snack foods. All the potato chips are either bacon flavored or paprika flavored! Who the hell likes bacon flavored chips?!?

30.3.2008

2008-04-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

Heute gehen wir in den Bergen wandern! This morning we all woke up and went to IKI for interviews and class placement. I was super nervous for mine and I thought that I did horribly afterward. But then I ended up placing into A2.2 which is beginning second year Deutsch! I’m kinda scared now because I don’t know if I’ll know enough but oh well. Class starts tomorrow! From my classroom I can see the Opera House and the steeple on St. Stephen’s.

After we finished the placement tests Sophie, Winona, Mark, Anna, and I went to Café Prückel and had some coffee. I had another Milange and it was good, but it’s getting a little expensive so I don’t know how much more I will go out. Then we went and walked around the Stadt Park.

At 2 we all me back at IKI and met Brigette, our IKI liaison and took a bus to the outer city. We spent like 2 hours climbing a crazy hill and by the end we were all dying and sweaty and gross. But it was so beautiful you could kinda forget about being all gross. We wandered around several vineyards and cute little country houses and ended up on the top of this huge hill that over looked all of Vienna and even parts of Slovakia. It was gorgeous. I took a lot of really gross pictures of myself all sweaty and stuff J The view was totally worth the long long long trek to get there. We all made fun of our wandern in den Bergen. We all felt really out of shape because we kept seeing old couples walking back down the steep trail we were on. We were like “if they could get up here, so can we!” It turns out you can totally drive up the other side!! On the way back down we criss-crossed through the Weinerwald (Viennese woods). It was absolutely gorgeous. All the trees were bare but somehow it felt prettier that way. The path was all dirt with large stones scattered everywhere.

Nearly at the bottom we stopped with our professors at a Heuriger with a tree branch tied to its lamp post to signify new wine. We drink liter after liter after liter of Geweislt, Riesling, and bier. Pretty much our whole table was smashed! It was great because we were all speaking drunk German and we were actually pretty good! Well everyone else is good anyways, but I was actually keeping up! Some of the old ladies with us kept telling me stories in German, so I just had to laugh and say “Ah, ja!” and laugh a lot. There was a cute older man with us who taught us lots of drinking songs! I remember there being a cat that Sofie and I kept trying to pet. It was cute.

We had to pretty much stumble our way down the rest of the mountain. I’m sure we were really annoying to all of the old Austrian men we passed on the way down, but we were having lots of fun. I pretty much clung to Anna and Mark to get all the way down. Which reminds me, Myles promised me a piggy back ride that I never got. Lame. Well tomorrow is my first day of class. Gute Nacht!

29.3.2008

2008-04-02T05:56:00.001-07:00

Today we did some more sightseeing stuffs. We saw the Secession Building, which was designed and built in the late 1800's as part of an art revolution in Vienna. We saw St. Stephan’s church and went to part of a mass. It was really cool to hear everything in German but I was a little too afraid to take communion in a gigantic throng of people. So instead we left and got Käsekrainer (yummy yummy cheesy sausage in a bun!) and walked through the Hofburg. Es war sehr schön!

Me and my Käsekrainer

The Secession Building

St. Stephan's Church

Heldenplatz -- Hero's Square

Hofburg Courtyard

We also went to the Naschmarkt and walked around looking at all the vendors’ booth. It’s basically an enormous Farmer’s market that is there every day of the week!

We spent the rest of the day being really tired and just kinda lounged around the hostel. We walked around Mariahilfe Gasse and went into a crazy hip hop shop and got invited to the Maria Carey CD release party downtown!! Haha, but I’m pretty sure nobody went. We finished off the evening by sitting in a random stairwell stealing wireless form a local business. All in all a good day of laziness.

28.3.2008

2008-04-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

The flight to Vienna was sehr schön. I was on the craziest plane ever, it looked like it came straight from the 60’s or an Austin Powers movie. The seats were bright purple with blue headrests and lime green pillows. The carpet was some weird shade of grass green and the walls and curtains were sky blue. It was hysterical. I passed the 8 and a half hour trip easily enough. It was easy to relax after a five-course meal served to you by attractive Austrian men, followed by 3 glasses of wine and Bailey’s on the rocks.

After I landed, I met Winona, Sofie, and Myles at the airport. I had to smile my way through customs (I realize that smiling and being a nice young American woman can speed the process up quite a bit), collect my bags, and catch a bus to the city. I was so glad that they all came to get me because I don’t think I could have done this by myself. Just knowing where to leave the bus was a challenge. We found our hostel , but I couldn’t check in for another few hours, so we killed time by walking up and down the main street of the district we were in (Westend?). I felt a little disappointed with what I was seeing. I mean the buildings looked old, but it was so commercial I probably couldn’t have told the difference between this street and any other street in any other big city in Europe or the US, except everything was in German. Where was the beautiful city I was expecting?

In the mood to feel a little bit more Austrian, we searched for a good 20 minutes or so to find the perfect coffeehouse to try the famous Viennese kafe. Three of us ordered the “Melange” which is steamed milk, foamed milk, and espresso. Myles ordered one with a shot of Baileys, even though we reminded him that it was only 11am. The Viennese have their own names for all of their coffee drinks, no “Cappucino” or “Latte” or “Mocha.” You have to order it either by color depending on how much cream you like in it (“schwarzer” for black, “brauner” for a little cream to turn the coffee brown, or “goldener” for a lot of cream) or by the traditional Viennese names that all the coffeehouses use.

Either way, we finished our coffee and feeling a little bit perkier we set off back down the street to buy prepaid cell phones, scarves (EVERYONE had scarves! Men, women, boys, girls..i had never seen so many scarves in my life) and stop at the grocery store for snacks and checked me into the hostel. We then decided to go to a café at the end of the block for lunch. It was a very traditional café where all the waiters wore suits with bowties. It was really hard to sit there and eat through the sheer amount of smoke. Everyone here smokes and everyone here does it indoors. It’s pretty overwhelming for those of us who like clean air. Anyways, I ordered Hunherschnitzel and got basically a big chicken strip that filled up my whole plate. It was great! Basically a dream come true for me. But it got to be a little ridiculous when the waiter charged us €0.75 for each ketchup packet we used. At least we were smart enough to not eat the bread at the table or ask for water like the other poor table of American schmucks sitting across from us. That was easily another €15 they added to their bill.

After lunch we headed over to Sofie’s hostel to take advantage of some free internet service. We used the U-Bahn (Vienna’s subway) for the first time. That thing is really convenient! We got there in no time flat and then decided we wanted to see the famous Ring-Strasse and the historic 1^st district. We were looking around for another good coffee shop and found ourselves in a beautiful place. It looked just like Europe should—there were windy little streets with horse-drawn carriages driving by. The buildings stood at least 4 or 5 stories high and were all very old and ornate.

We followed Herrengasse and suddenly found ourselves at the Hofburg -- the Imperial Palace for the oldest ruling family in Austria. The building was monstrous and had a huge round-a-bout in front of it decorated with large white statutes. There were gold statutes scattered along its green roof. We spent quite a while playing tourist and snapping pictures of each other. It seemed like down any street we traveled there were more and more beautiful statues and buildings. It was absolutely amazing. This was the Vienna that I was hoping for; the twisted little streets filled with people and surrounded by old Baroque buildings and gaudy statues. There were little shops everywhere you looked and everyone sat out and ate at outdoor cafes. It was so perfect J You’ll just have to see the pictures! I am so happy that I chose to come to Vienna.

Well its getting kinda late (almost 9pm) and I’m just impressed that I was able to stay awake all day. So its ins bett gehen for me!

PDX

2008-03-27T05:45:00.001-07:00

The airport this morning was absolutely chaotic. I figured that 4:45am at Portland International Airport was a pretty slow hour...TOTALLY wrong. It was pretty much spring break central. But I got to skip most of the lines for check in (which was a good 45min to hour long) and security so that was good :) Although me and mom did see a girl in hysterics because she was going to miss her flight to her sister's wedding. There was a guy being a real jerk to her in line and wasn't going to let the agents take her to the front. I saw him again by where the bags get checked and I gave him the stink eye. Yeah...he deserved it. You don't want to be on the receiving end of the Liz stink eye.

Well my flight should leave any minute. I'm just kinda hanging out at the gate. It's going to suck having to recheck in at Chicago, but at least my baggage should make it. I have a 5 hour wait anyways, might as well do something :)

I'm really going!!!

Leavin on a Jet Plane

2008-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

6:30am tomorrow I'm heading to Vienna!! I'll be sure to start taking pictures the moment I step off the plane! Miss you all!!

< 2 weeks!!!!1!!!

2008-03-15T19:54:00.000-07:00

less than 2 weeks!! woooo! I've got my maps. I've got my plane tickets. I've got my hostel booked. This is actually going to happen!!

woefully unprepared

2008-03-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

I feel woefully unprepared to go to Vienna. At least german-speaking-proficiency-wise. I went down to a cafe to practice what little I could remember with some friends (who both knew a hell of a lot more than I did) which made me discouraged. I'm just afraid that when I get to Vienna I will test into the lowest class level. And I'm afraid that if that happens then I won't get credit when I come back to UW. So until I leave for Vienna, I'm going to try and learn a chapter each night. Maybe in a few weeks I won't make quite a fool of myself :)

On that note, I can't wait to be 8 time zones away!!! ...but then again I have a pretty compelling reason to want to stay here. He's pretty cute.

Dorms, hooray!

2008-02-26T20:43:00.001-08:00

We all finally received our dorm assignments for Vienna! I will be living in the Schiffgasse dormitory along with 9 other girls and 4 guys. It's the dorm where most of the UW group will be.

I still don't know a whole lot yet, but we will be in 2 person rooms with communal kitchens, laundry, etc.

The two other dorms are Schäffergasse (3 guys) and Sensengasse (1 girl, 1 guy).

Schiffgasse should be amazing!! I know two of the girls living there pretty well already, so hopefully this will help us keep in touch and plan fun adventures. The dorm is about 1/2 a block from the Danube (Donau in German) River and a short bridge from downtown!! Supposedly its a 20 minute walk to class, but we'll see :)

Here's the map of what should be my morning walk from the Dorm (B) to class (A): http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=opernring+7,+1010+Vienna&daddr=Gro%C3%9Fe+Schiffgasse+12,+1020+Vienna&sll=48.210032,16.377182&sspn=0.026826,0.078964&ie=UTF8&ll=48.209117,16.368685&spn=0.026826,0.078964&z=14>

Also, here's the website for Schiffgasse: http://www.home4students.at/english/heim_grosse-schiffgasse.php?menuID=20

Fun Fact

2008-01-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

Contrary to popular belief, Vienna is not an Italian city known for its waterways. In fact, it is here:

yay!

Hi!

2008-01-28T21:02:00.000-08:00

So this is the official post of my official Lizzy in Vienna blog! Let's hope this actually works when I get there!

So here's the scoop:

I'll be leaving Portland, OR on March 27th for Vienna, Austria AND I will be flying business class (thanks Dad and Sandy!). I will be living in student housing somewhere in the city and commute to class at the Internationales Kulturinstitut, which we all lovingly call IKI. I have no idea who my roommate will be, most likely a studentin at the University of Vienna.

Hopefully this will work as my way to document my preparation, travels in Vienna, around Austria, and across Europe. (so far I'm envisioning a trip to Prague and/or Budapest, Seville, France, and Sweden.) We'll see how that works out :) Hopefully I'll find a good way to get all my pictures on here, or at least some of the good ones!

Tschuss!