Servus meine Freunde! Happy Thanksgiving! Classes are starting to pick up here at IES Vienna as the semester is starting to wrap up – I have 2 weeks of class left and then finals week and then it’s all over! Which makes me think I should probably start working on the 3 10-page papers I have to write (whoops).
Last time I wrote was the day that I went to the Austria vs. USA soccer game. It was SO MUCH FUN! I bought tickets with a few of my friends and we were in the second row pretty close to mid field. The tickets were all the same price when we bought them, we just happened to buy early enough to get fantastic seats. Unfortunately neither team played very well, but the US team played worse so we lost 0-1. It was still fun, though! And I got a nifty flag with an Austrian beer logo on it for free, so it was all good.
Saturday was a very exciting day for me – I went to see Catching Fire! I was blown away, I thought it was so good. I loved the first Hunger Games, but I thought the sequel was amazing – it very well done, and I couldn’t think of anything they left out of the movie. It was also the first time that I had been to an English movie theater in Vienna (or any movie theater, for that matter). I really don’t know why I haven’t been before! Tickets are usually cheaper than they are in the US (depending on the movie/showtime) and this one was only 4 block from my apartment, and it was super nice!
On Sunday I decided to make use of my Eurail pass one last time, so I made a day trip to Munich. It was fun, but 1) Munich was freezing and 2) Munich is kind of far from Vienna. I spent probably a total of 11 hours on the train that day, but I was only in Munich for 3 hours. It was nice to actually see the city this time around, though, and not just Oktoberfest.
Karls Tor – one of the old gates into Munich
Frauenkirche – the cathedral in Munich. It was built in only 20 years in the late fifteenth century, and was built from brick because there were no stone quarries nearby.
After wandering Munich for a few hours I decided to check out the fairgrounds where they hold Oktoberfest, just to see it outside of the festival, and it was BLEAK. The fairgrounds are completely fenced off, but everything was still there in a kind of deconstructed state! I would really hate to live around there because you have to deal with Oktoberfest traffic/chaos and when that’s not happening you would have to look at all the ugly!
The interior of the Frauenkirche. The hall was HUGE but surprisingly plain.
The New City Hall! This is where they have the HUGE Christmas market in Munich. Too bad it didn’t open for another 2 days when I was there 😦
My way back from Munich should have been much less eventful than it was. Apparently they’re doing a bunch of construction on the railroads between Munich and Salzburg on the weekends, so a lot of the train schedules are messed up or they reroute trains without updating timetables. I got on a train that was supposed to go straight to Salzburg, where I could easily catch a train to Vienna. Turns out the train I got on actually stops at a town 3 stops from Salzburg on the weekends, near the German border. It was about 5:30 on a Sunday night in this teeny town, so everything was closed (including the ticket office). They had made an announcement on the train about how to reach Salzburg by bus from there, but it was in German so I obviously couldn’t understand and by the time I realized I needed to go everyone had already disappeared, so I couldn’t even follow!
I was starting to panic – I went to the bus terminal outside to try to find a bus that went to Salzburg directly, but there weren’t any. So I went back in the station where there were about 20 people waiting and started asking people if they spoke English. Luckily, the first person was a girl my age who spoke English and she helped me out by introducing me to another girl who was headed for Salzburg (she spoke English and Spanish, which was kind of fun) and she let me tag along with her. Also lucky – the next train that would stop in Salzburg was leaving in 2 minutes, so I was only “stranded” in this town for maybe 25 minutes. Still stressful, though!
Cheney’s girlfriend Perry is visiting this week, which is fun! She’s at Whitman this semester, but came for Thanksgiving break. Last night we went out to dinner with a bunch of people.
Tonight IES organized a Thanksgiving dinner in Baden – about an hour from Vienna. It was a really great! The food was perfect (traditional American thanksgiving) and a ton of people were there, including a lot of faculty and even some students’ parents. Some people performed too! I took a million pictures, so I’ll upload those next time. And tomorrow I’m going on my last trip of the semester – the ski trip organized by my program! Super stoked.
Auf Wiedersehen!
Grant in Österreich 