City Walk Day

Sorry I missed a day. I was pretty tired, and I took a lot of pictures. Hopefully you can forgive me, haha.

   We started at 9:15 that morning, because we had take a short walk and turn in our forms to register with the city. It pretty much just said that we were living here for a while, and this is where. No big. On the walk, we passed some of the locations that “The Third Reich” was filmed, but I had not seen it so it was rather lost on me.

 After turning in our forms, some of us went to get some food at happy noodles. It’s this stand near the Institute, and it looks fantastic. Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told that the noodles aren’t sold until an hour later, and we were pretty hungry. Fortunately, it also doubled as a hot dog stand, so we all purchased these cheese hot dogs. Käsekuche or something to that effect. I keep forgetting.

It was in a baguette! Tell me that's not cool, I dare you.

We got back and had our German class, which was more grammar review and learning about Kaiser Franz Joseph I. It was pretty interesting, learning the Austrian history and how this end of the world was pre WWI. It’s still crazy to think that that wasn’t thousands of years ago. Hell, not even 100 years. 

I laughed. I know you did, too. 

Our second class is the Culture class. It’s taught in English, and is mostly tours that we go on, and write a paper about it later. Today’s required no report, but we did go on a city walk. (Mass of pictures below!) It was a really nice thing for the first event of the class, since it gave us many hints at things we could do. For instance, Saint Michael’s Church with the preserved bodies inside sounds really cool. 

St. Michael's Church

The entrance to St. Michael's. 

 I'm not sure how much detail I should go into. We took notes as we went, so there are some pretty awesome facts about each of these places. For instance, in the picture below, Joseph  (Marie Antionette's Brother!) is dressed in Roman garb because that was a symbol of power during his time period. He also was too modern for his people and wanted to be more of an enlighten-er to them than anything. As a result, he gave Jews, non-Christians more rights, and did a whole bunch of medical reforms. They...weren't entirely too fond of him. 

Joseph on horseback in Josephs Platz. Part of the imperial palace. Behind the statue is the Riding Hall!  

The Hapsburg Palace

Closer view of left side's statues. 

Closer view of...okay, I really wanted a picture of the horses. 

Pidgin. They're really cute....

The Wedding Fountain

Die Ankle Uhr

A neat story that goes with the pictures below. Augustine, the bagpipe player, was really depressed. All his friends were dead because of the Black Death, and he drank a whole lot. One night, he was too tired to even bother going home, so he laid in the street and slept there. Well, during this time, it wasn't uncommon for people to just drop dead in the streets from the Black Death, and Augustine was thought dead when they came to clean the streets and taken outside the city. When he woke up among the corpses, he realized what had happened and shouted for help. Luckily someone heard him and came to his rescue. This gave the people hope that you can persist and even survive the Black Death. 

The gold letters say "Die Liebe Augustine", in remembrance of the story. 

The Greek Orthodox, "Holy Trinity Church". 

Closer view of the Holy Trinity Church

Memorial of the people form the hotel-turned-torture-building.

San Ruprecht is argued to be the oldest church in Vienna. It dates back to the 8th century. It's named after the patron saint of sailors.

San Ruprecht in the distance. 

The Saint himself. Holding salt.

 One thing that they did mention to us was a section called ‘the Bermuda Triangle’. It’s a bunch of bars where these roads connect, and people end up missing there all the time. They even have police stationed very close by. Scary.

A view of one of the streets in the Triangle. 

  To end out city walk, we were taken to the mind blowing-ly good ice cream shop. Before I go on, I should inform those that don’t know that Erdbeere is “Strawberry” auf Deutsch. Also, I learned yesterday that many places shorten ‘Erdbeere’ to ‘Erdbeer’. Now, I know that “Beer” here is spelled B-i-e-r; however, that was not going through my mind. What was, was that I had been in Vienna almost a week and still haven’t had anything alcoholic yet (crazy, I know). So why not try it with ice cream? So, I got a double scoop of “Vanilla und Erdbeer” and pay for my cone. Not able to contain my excitement, I go outside to wait for my friends and take a lick of this pinkish ice cream scoop. It wasn’t even then that I realized my mistake. Instead, I thought, “oh! This tastes just like Strawberries”. It wasn’t until another girl in the group asked that it hit me-this is strawberry ice cream! If that wasn’t a strong enough give away, then the bits of strawberries in there should have been. Oh well, live and learn, yeah?

Also at the ice cream, shop was another lesson. This girl comes up to us—maybe 13 or so—and gives me, Bashan, and Morgan a rose. Like, puts it in our hands gives it to us, and we think, “Oh she’s so nice”, and tell her thank you. WELL, after we all said our thanks, she goes, and “that’ll be 2 Euro, please”. I happened to have a coin in my pocket, so I got it. It smelled good, and why not, I was happy off ice cream. I did learn, though, that nothing here is free.

At this point, I was pretty tired, so I made my way back to the UBahn to head home. All went well until I saw police lined up along one section. Of course, I had to get through there, and I knew exactly what it was. I pulled out my Pass, and showed it, and went on my way.

To explain:

               We are allowed to ride the subway (UBahn), SBahn, and Buses as much as we want because we have a pass. You can get one-day passes, week passes, and so forth. Ours are given to use by the institute, and were paid for with the program. Right now, I have a week pass that will end next Monday. Vienna runs on an honor system. That is, they won’t demand to see your pass every time you get on. Many people will go weeks or even months without being asked to check it. HOWEVER, if they do a check, much like this one, and you’re caught without a pass (even if you have one at home or wherever) you have to pay something close to an 100 Euro fine. I’m sure many people ride the public transportation without them, too.  It’s just so much faster and easier this way.

My final stop was a grocery store, Billa , right next door to where I live. I feel like everyone back home will get the wrong idea when I say right next door. The grocery store is in the same building as the place where I live. Right next door is literally walked out of the front door area, and (staying in the same building), walk into the door over. There’s not a way over to the store from the inside of the apartment part. It’s crazy, though. I like it.

In there I bought two packs of cherries (they were on sale), some cheese, juice, grapes, conditioner, and candy-vitamin things.

My haul.

Story time: When I was at ASMS, our teacher gave us some super awesome sugar candy thing before our final. It was amazing and I have wanted more ever since. Of course, I don’t remember it well enough to find it by name, and it’s not sold in American stores, but now that I’m here, there’s a chance I can find it. In Billa, I went to the candy/medicine aisle (yes, right next to each other), and found this sort of in the middle. It said that it was made of sugar, and was cheep so I tried it. In addition, it had pictures of animals on it—super cute. After the hectic ‘hurry and shove my backpack full of the groceries I got while the people behind me are getting checked out’, I go upstairs and settle in. After a few of the candies, I start to wonder if maybe they were vitamins or something. I look at the packaging and see where it gives a pretty long list of vitamins—Vitamin E, C, B6, Calcium, Phosphorus, Niacin, etc.—and start second-guessing myself. The next day, I asked and it turns out that it’s sort of candy. It’s tablets that you can use for quick energy that goes straight to the blood (since they’re made with grape sugar), and helps people whose blood sugar gets too low. It spikes it up. My host-mother also said to be careful taking too many, because it can be bad. Now I know.

BONUS: Picture of a super cute doggie holding an umbrella. I love how many dogs are over here!

I tried not to look creepy walking by and taking pictures of this person's dog.