That's sort of the way I feel about Vienna. First off, the city itself is beautiful in an odd way. Most all the buildings are huge decorated buildings that just seem to be sitting at random angles, and a lot of them don't have pointed corners. Instead they have curved ends like a bubble got pinched, and then in some places they look like they've been abruptly sliced in half.
But part of it is completely beautiful, like the facades, the main streets, etc., and if you go further you realize there are some parts that look pretty decrepit, and then parts that are completely being reconstructed. It's just such a weird amalgamation but it's also really neat. I suppose half of it looks ancient, and then you've got random McDonald's and Burger Kings and Claire's and H&M and Forever21 and Armani and Rolex and a store called Marc O'Polo's, which I started laughing at, and Maria and David and Kakha didn't get why I thought it was so funny.
It's hard to believe people live in the apartments over the stores. Speaking of which, there are an amazing amount of expensive stores in Vienna. I hadn't realized that it's a central shopping center of the surrounding countries. So a lot of the people we saw weren't necessarily tourists, but rather people visiting from the next "county" over, so to speak.
We arrived in Vienna and immediately went to Mass in Kapuzinerkloster, a beautiful Capuchin church. It was very small and very crowded - there were a lot of people standing or sitting on the steps on the side, and I was falling out of my pew. The church stands over a large crypt in which is buried the Hapsburg family of Austria.
They told us about a ritual which was done for the death of anyone in the Royal family - the mourners would process up to the church carrying the coffin and would knock.
The monk would answer: "Who comes here?" And the mourners would answer giving the deceased's full list of lengthy and official titles, but the door wouldn't open. So they would ask for entrance again, giving this time only the most important titles of the deceased. Once more the monks would refuse them. Finally upon the mourners saying, "It is ____, a poor sinner," the gates would open and the mourners would then hold the funeral for the deceased royal.
That in particular struck me. I guess the more I'm here the more I think about death and dying and what I leave behind and how insignificant it might be. Maybe those aren't such great thoughts for someone my age going on the adventure of their lifetime, but I already thought about death a lot before that anyway.
We then went on a walking tour of Vienna. I know this panorama is kind of broken, but my Wifi is bad, I'm impatient, the better pictures take longer to upload, and it gives you a good idea of the kind of thing we saw throughout the city.
This was the first thing we saw upon the start of our walking tour. I'm not really sure why it's even here.
Veronika and Monika, enjoying the tour.
I'm not sure what this statue commemorates because I was too far away from the tour group trying to get a good picture at the time. You win some, you lose some.
St. Stephens on Stephensplatz is AMAZING. Okay, I couldn't even get pictures that were good enough to detail how gorgeous this church is. It's so. Beautiful . Its art style is Gothic, and out of the Rococo, Baroque and Gothic styles I've figured that I definitely like Gothic the best.
I can't seem to get the lighting just right in any of my photos with my camera.
The inside of St. Stephen's, although I visited the inside on the second day, not the first day.
The tour was really quick and then we all went to eat in the Zwolf-Apostelkeller, which I'm guessing is the Twelve Apostles Restaurant. It was about two or three floors underground - the main room aboveground was small with a reception area, and then it led down several flights of stairs into a large room with a lot of tables and Christmas lights strung around the ceiling to create a very Hobbit-ish atmosphere.
Something I've noticed about European restaurants, that they point out in tourbooks - they tend to have different notions of private space. All the tables are rather close together, almost elbow to elbow, with small aisles, so that you'll almost certainly be seated close to someone else, and frequently if there isn't enough room, they'll seat someone at the same table as you. It's just the culture.
There were a lot of other pictures I took during the tour, but my internet is really slow and I'm not sure how long it'll last since I let Kakha use my login; he couldn't get his to work. Kakha is an exchange student from Georgia who is new as of Friday. He couldn't get his visa (just like several other students) on time so just showed up for the semester. Unfortunately he doesn't speak a lot of English, and seems very quiet, shy and lost, although he does have a good sense of dry humor at our antics.
It seems like our little group seems to have absorbed him - David was apparently talking with Maria yesterday about figuring out how to draw him out of his shell and teach him a little. For instance, some people just came into the lobby to ask if it was alright if they watched a movie at the same time as us studying, and I asked him if it was all right if they watched a movie, and he nodded and said yes and immediately went over to the couch where they're going to watch a movie... I think he uh, thinks I meant he should go watch the movie. I feel bad...
Anyway the tour was nice, and then we ended up going to check in at the hostel. The hostel was really nice and clean, and had a separate bathroom for a toilet and a separate one for a shower, two bunk bed sets and two ground level beds. It was very clean, had a nice view, and was really surprisingly roomy. I'm going to guess that if I don't spend a lot of money in the future, we won't be seeing a nice hostel like that again.
Finally we ended up getting to have some free time. This was about from 3 to whenever we decided to get back to the hostel to sleep.
Monika and Irina were very tired and decided to stay at the hostel, so the group that got together ended up being Clare and I, David, Maria, John King (one of David's roommates), Jamie Leatherby (a friend who happens to be in Maria's household), Veronika and Kakha. That's a pretty big group.
Something I've realized about me being out in a group wandering around - I feel like I'm everyone's mom. Jamie ended up calling me Mom once. I try to check as much as I can to make sure that everyone is there. So whenever we were in a crowded place or getting on or off a subway, I would count to 8. I also tend to walk right in the front next to David who is our designated GPS/navigator, and I try to figure out who in the group is tired from David's lightning fast pace, and try to slow David down a bit so that we can take some time to sit, eat, find water, bathrooms, etc. I really do feel like Mom.
Funny thing is, Patrick Grace my boss at Steubenville's PR last semester, totally called it. He told me before I left that I would probably end up feeling responsible for the wellbeing of people, and he was kind of right, I guess.
We ended up spending nearly the entire day traipsing all over Vienna. My feet actually have blisters from the amount of walking we did.
We visited a couple of palaces, the Austrian parliament, and zillions of Vienna streets up and down the town centre and through the crappy side that's in shambles and under construction, several gardens, and monuments. Don't worry, I took a lot of pictures.
My favorite place was the Austrian summer palace - up behind it there's a huge grassy space where you're actually allowed to walk, sit, or lie down on the grass, just below a man-made lake and a large fountain and monument, and there's a spectacular view of the city below.
(We walked up to the top of that grassy hill.)
We spent quite a while just lying on the grass taking in the view, talking; it was really nice. We eventually walked back down to the city and wandered around looking for food, and after that we all decided that we'd keep going and explore the city at night. So we took a tram and went down to visit the Austrian parliament and council buildings, which are large and very impressive. (Pictures later.)
We got back to the hostel at about eleven o'clock, and by that time everyone was getting tired.
By the time we got back, a bunch of other people were starting to go out for parties or pubs or whatever, and all of our group were exhausted - we grabbed showers and hit the hay almost immediately.
The next day we had mass in Minoritenkirche. It was another really beautiful Gothic church. Clare doesn't like the Gothic style, but I love how all the lines and decorations lead the eye upwards. Everything is so tall and my immediate urge is to start grabbing onto the curliques or lines and start climbing up until I get to the very top. So far I haven't been to the top of any churches, though; hopefully I find some, even if I have to pay a small fee to get up there.
After that, we ended up separating - Clare started with the main group (which had shrunk to Maria, David, Kakha, Clare and I), but then quickly decided that she didn't really want to deal with David's rapid-fire pace, as soon as we got off the subway to St. Stephen's. We went into the adoration chapel and spent some time, and then Clare decided she would hang out with Scott, one of the Residential Directors, and so they stayed in the adoration chapel while the rest of our group took off to go explore a castle that somebody had recommended to us.
We had a really nice walk, and we actually got David to slow down. I don't know if it was just because David was tired from yesterday or because Maria and I made a point of walking more slowly and stopping to point things out and talk about them (and encouraging his behavior when he did so too), but we actually took a decent respectable amount of time to get from point A to point B.
We stopped and looked at fancy cars... at tall buildings... at people dressed weirdly... at expensive shops... we stopped to talk about languages in random spots. It's really fun talking to them about their language differences, because I can imitate their accents. They're very interested in having me repeat how they sound talking in English so they would say something and then have me imitate their sounds back to them. They also wanted to teach me different words in their language and in German, because they think it's hilarious that I can repeat the sounds back to them almost exactly, but I have no clue what I'm saying.
(David, Maria, and Kakha)
... Weird.
Anyway, that was fun. We visited the castle, the gardens around the castle, and then David and Kakha ended up going off on their own to do a tram tour throughout the city. Maria and I were a little reluctant since I had left my train pass in yesterday's shirt and if you get caught on the subways without your pass, you get fined upwards of 100 euro.
I don't think Kakha knew what was going on when David decided to leave, so we shooed him off the subway to go with David, since we figured they should have some bonding time and Kakha wouldn't really want to go wandering with both of us.
Maria and I then spent the rest of the day walking through Vienna, in and out of shops, down to the Nachenmarket, and we spent a lot of time talking about languages and cultural differences again. There's so much to learn and comprehend. I'm starting to understand German if I listen to it hard or long enough - I can pick out the general context of the conversation by picking up individual words. Maria and David keep
telling me I should seriously learn German, so I'm thinking about trying to pick it up on my own.
Overall it's hard to sum up my experience in Vienna by simple "I went here", "I did this". Most of my experiences have just been spending time with the people in my group, talking to them, learning new words and new traditions, and seeing beautiful sights in Europe. I have really enjoyed getting to know them individually.
David is very quirky - he has hair that stands up all over the place and he looks a little bit distracted a lot of the time, but in a nice philosophical way. He also has a very funny habit of getting on trains, sitting down, and producing a newspaper out of thin air and reading with the most serious expression in the world. He sounds like a tourist when he says "Come come, this a way, ladies let us go now," and frankly I don't understand how he always knows exactly which direction we're going. He also has a sense of the sarcastic humor even though he's speaking a different language, which is kind of unusual, and since he and I both walk pretty quickly we end up chumming around a lot of the time and teaching each other new words.
One instance that I thought was particularly funny to explain about cultural differences - I got in the way of a biker and I didn't see them coming. David grabbed me by the back of my backpack and dragged me out of the way and said, "ATTENTION!"
I figured out later that that's essentially what is said in German or Hungarian when you mean "get out of the way!" or "watch out!" But the way he said it he sounded so much like a drill sergeant that I cracked up, tripped, and the only reason I am not in the hospital due to a crash with a bike is because David managed to haul me off the street in time.
Maria is incredibly talkative and has a stigma against selfies - I almost feel tempted to take lots of pictures of myself and of her just to make her slightly uncomfortable with how weird us Americans are, because she'll look at us and give us these hilarious half-disgusted, half-amused looks. She speaks several languages fluently and I am just so jealous; why can't the American culture do the same thing and teach their children lots of useful languages?
She's super energetic, loves to move her hands when she talks, and says "Very" like "Wery". She has some interestingly deep insights about friendship, morals and faith, and also says that some Americans tend to show their emotions so much or to be so very loud and outgoing that it comes off as very fake and like a show, and it kind of puts her off. Spending the day with her was super fun - we grabbed chili and coffee in a little cafe away from the buzz and tourism in the Nachmarkt (Maria loosely translates this as "The market where you can nibble things"...I taught her the word 'nibble', so due to language disconnect, this might be completely and entirely wrong).
It was really nice actually to get away near the end of the day. There are always people shoving things in your face like concert programs or food menus or alms cups, but once you get away from the heavily populated areas, you get a bunch of solid, patient Austrians with dry humor who are willing to bumble along with an idiot tourist like me.
Veronika and Irina I know less just because they are quieter, but we all agree that they are very cute and very shy and nice. Their Russian accents are just the sweetest thing. I think I'd love to learn Russian; it sounds very musical. Both Veronika and Irina have the same delicate manners and gentle ways of speaking and their shy laughs. I watched this guy wink at Veronika on a subway train and her blush was frankly just adorable.
Monika seems to be a little less confident with her English, but it's nice rooming with her because she puts up with Clare and my craziness. She also laughs at our jokes, and if we coax her she'll tell us about her boyfriend and her home town. She reminds me of me trying to learn another language - if we tell her a new word and how to pronounce it, she laughs awkwardly after she says it, probably because she's embarrassed she's not saying it right. I totally get the feeling, but it helps me feel more confident about learning other languages just because when Monika does it, it's really cute and doesn't bug me at all.
I haven't talked to John or Jamie much in the last little while - I didn't talk to a lot of people over the last semester really, but it's been nice reconnecting with them, too. Both of them have very distinct personalities. Jamie's extremely extroverted and loves to ask people to say stuff in their own language or to sing for her, and occasionally has insights into things that surprise me with their accuracy. She is an education major and I'm guessing she'll get to work with some of the schools in Gaming pretty soon, which I think will be awesome.
John takes a lot of time to think before he speaks, but is really good-hearted and kind. I overheard him the other day saying that he doesn't think he would want to be in an movie unless he was in an interesting part. I'm not sure why I thought that was really funny, but it was. He's a psychology major, and I can see him taking a lot of time to slow down and think about people individually. Because he's quiet, I wonder what he thinks some of the time about other people....
Like I said, summarizing it is hard.
Y'all should know the last couple of days were pretty dang good.
David, John, Veronika, Jamie, me, Maria
Kakha, Veronika, Jamie
St. Stephen's
Clare, Veronika, John, Maria, me
(David: "I crouched down to take this picture to make you look taller than something, finally!")
Omg! It sounds like your trip to Vienna was amazing!!! All the pictures are beautiful why does the tricities have to be so dull and Americanized? We need to work on our architecture here:) Although some of those statues there I'm like what the heck were they thinking when they made that? But they are still beautiful in their own way! Love that last picture and caption! I would have totally done the same thing!!!!
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