First weekend in Vienna

Hah, and I though Vienna would take my mind off Ryan...








Vienna is beautiful! I haven't had the chance to escape the city, but what I have seen has been amazing. Every single building is detailed with such perfection, and every part that is not covered with a building or some kind of cement is green. We were picked up from the airport in vans (I love th cars here! Even the vans are good looking!) and taken straight to our school. The school is incredible, right in the middle of Vienna.
These are the front doors to enter into my school, right across from the oper, or opera house.



When you walk into the school, there is a long hallway, and then it opens up again to this...











We waited at the school for about an hour for each of our host families to pick us up. We slowly, one-by-one faded away into sleep, face down on the table. When a woke up, about 16 of the 21 of us were asleep on the desks! My body was definitely telling me that it was supposed to be 4 in the morning, not noon.

My roommate and I live on the third floor of the Reif's home which is about 30 minutes from the center of Vienna traveling on the U baun (the subway). Our host family is very kind, they have us call them Oma and Opa (grandma and grandpa), and are actually old enough to be my great-grandparents! Oma speaks english pretty well, but Opa struggles a little. We have dinner once a week with them, and we were supposed to tell them what day of the week we wanted to have thedinners. My roommate went downstairs to tell them we wanted it on Tuesdays, but Oma was in the shower. She told Opa a couple of times that we wanted to have it on tuesday, and then began trying to carry on a conversation. When she was leaving to go back upstairs, he told her he wanted to make sure he was clear. He said, "Let me make sure i got you right to tell my wife. For dinner you want two steaks?" She came up laughing pretty hard.

Saturday was a lot of fun. Karly (my roommate) and I got up early and went to the flea market in the city. Then we went to the secession building, which is was a building from the secession movement. We randomly met up with two of our friends there and then took a random Ubaun and got off at a random place. We walked around, found a neat church, ate lunch, and went to get some amazing chocolate. We then ventured over to the Stephansdome and spent awhile just sitting, admiring the beauty. To end the day, we went to the Opera house at 4:00, waited in line, and got standing room seats for 3.50 euros instead of 120! It started at 7 and lasted until 10:30, my feet and legs about died. It might be awhile until I go on that adventure again.


Opera House













Stephansdome