Vienna from the top of St. Stephens

THIS IS WHY I LOVE VIENNA. the end.

Hallstatt

This is beautiful Hallstatt. We spent last weekend here and it was gorgeous. The water is a chilly 13 degrees Farenheit. We ate at a cute little restaurant on the lakeside. Saturday we toured the salt mines and oh did we have fun. The group of us wore matching oversized baboon scrubs to slide down the two sides inside. So much fun! They even gave out the cutest little cans of salt at the end. Krystle and I thought we were pretty rugged in our matching chacos and salt suits. The bone house was incredible, too. Skulls stacked and stacked.

No dogs live here...

I was talking with Frau the other day and somehow our conversation got around to pets and I told her that I have a black poodle named Harley. She said, "Ich habe keinen Hund. Ich habe nur Studentin." (I do not have a dog. I only have students.)

Woof! Woof!

Dell stinks......

Happy Fourth of July!

Today was the day of 100% American. The Plumer's hung up American flags in their apartment, we ate juicy watermelon, had ice in our drinks, put on red lipstick, and listened to swing music. It felt like a BBQ....well, almost. Whitney and Louise acted out being fireworks for us since we couldn't get any.

Ride on the Donau

Trained to Krems to see the Melk Monastery. So huge! Their library is incredible. All the walls are covered in rows & rows of old books. It looks that library on Beauty and the Beast. After listening to the noon day prayer we had lunch in this really cute place in the park. The room looked like a garden.

The boat down the Donau to Krems was something out of a fairytale. Castle ruins were literally tucked up on the hillside.

Donau Wednesday

We've dubbed Wednesday "Donau Wednesday" and we go and swim and enjoy the sunshine in between classes. Unfortunately, topless women, men in speedos, and random dogs also enjoy the banks of the Danube and sometimes get a little too close for our liking.

Zentral Friedhof

The biggest cemetery in Europe is in Vienna (over 2.5 million graves apparently). This is one of my favorite places! It's so quiet and peaceful and stretches on and on. Some sections are for certain groups--the "Mormonen" section is 57C. You know it when you get to it because there's the typical temple-squarish statue inside the graves. Just before the big church is the "Musiker" section. Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss....they're all buried right in the same horseshoe.

Natural History Museum

The Naturhistoriches is basically a giant Bean Museum--most famous for Venus of Villendorf.

Shocking discovery: they have Maria Theresia's stuffed dog.

Journal Parties

The main project of our travel writing class this summer is our journals....well messy scrapbooks. We save tickets from everything, steal restaurant place mats, and are always on the hunt for pamphlets with cool pictures to glue in our journals. Sometimes the "glue-in" parties explode in our room and look like this.

Miscellaneous Vienna

Finally went to see the famed Lipizanner Stallions of the Spanish Horse School....sorry to anybody who really likes them but it was so boring! Maybe my problem was that I only went to morning exercises, but I don't understand how they didn't practice the routines or even jump once during "morning exercises with music." The picture up top is about as exciting as it got...and I paid six euros to get in. uugh...wasted. It was more exciting watching the jockeys flirt with the girls three boxes down from me.

The Leopold Art Museum was on the list to see for the summer. I really liked the top two floors--especially when there were photos of old Vienna. I wasn't that impressed by the bottom two floors. The art was definitely not my style.

Kate is gone :(

Me and Mika's housemate finished her German program here and Austria and flew home. Our personal translator is gone and we're a little worried about how we're going to communicate with Frau now. Time to really learn German---FAST!

Hundertwasser Haus

The Hundertwasser is really not as exciting as it seems. What Klimt is to art is kind of like what these buildings are to the architecture of Vienna. Basically you just walk around, but I guess it is more exciting than the average bland street.

Kunsthistoriches

The Kunsthistoriches is the big art museum in Vienna. Love it, love it, love it. I think after the mummified crocodile, this giant foot in the ancient Egytian section is probably my favorite thing.

Back in Vienna

I LOVE THE STATE OPERA HOUSE! Finally toured it and loved seeing the tech crew back stage setting up for that night's show. They perfom a different opera every night September - June. The hall with the chandeliers is an intermission hall, but it's also an audition hall for the Phil!

Day eight: Gimmelwald

On Father's Day we took a long hike....let's just say it was too long and the cow-poo sign was definitely foreshadowing what was to come and we did NOT catch on to that until it was too late.

The Swiss Alps are beautiful and we were right in the middle of snow-capped peaks, waterfalls, and glaciers. Breathtaking country.

Long story short: Jess and I got sick of being lost in the Alps and turned around the way we had come because we were freezing. We found refuge in this cheese-making house where we got warm. I had to leave my camera as collateral for the warm boots and coats they gave us (don't worry...I got it back that night) and the bottom two pictures are courtesy of our cheese house friends. Oh, did I mention that the Swiss do not speak English. They don't even speak German, just some Swiss dialect. That made our situation all the more embarrassing and humiliating as they laughed and made fun of us in a language we couldn't understand.

Day seven: Lauterbrunnen

When we got into our hostel the day before, all of us had to take off our shoes in the entryway and wear these slipper-flip-flop things. The Valley Hostel prides itself on cleanliness. We walked into our hostel room and were greeted by our retired British roommate:

"Hello. My name's Peter. We've all got matchin' flips!"

That afternoon we took a cable car into Gimmelwald higher up the mountain. Cable car is the only way to get up there and there are no cars up there! We met the cheese and egg lady who was more than happy to have so many customers from the Mountain Hostel. We actually bought her out! When Jess and I bought eggs and cheese for the next morning she had to go out into the chicken house and get fresh eggs!

1 egg = .40 Swiss francs

Eating fresh food from a real egg lady who stores cheese in her 200 year old cabin = priceless

We hiked around in the morning. The best part was finding mountain strawberries. Snack, anyone??