Vienna

Firstly, here are some pictures from St. Polten, the monastery in Gottweig, and the Danube Valley.

This last weekend, our school traveled to Vienna. It was beautiful! We were blessed with a bright, sunny day, warm weather, and Mass to start the day. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the church we were in, but it Franciscan. Apparently, Franciscan churches are very common in Europe.

After Mass, we started our tour of Vienna, making our way to the restaurant where we ate lunch. They gave us a buffet in the downstairs room that was reserved just for our school. I ordered a Radler to go with my meal because the school pays for our first drink, and I remembered that was the beer Kristin ordered when the other Smits family went to Germany haha. It was pretty good and the meal was awesome! I filled my plate with random meats, pastas, breads, and desserts that I had no idea what they were. Yum :).

The tour continued after lunch, but my group decided we didn't want to go on it. Instead, we walked around Vienna by ourselves and mingled with the Austrians, trying to look the least American possible. We went into a few shops and just relaxed. After a few hours, we went to a small coffee shop called Aida - we were told Viennese coffee is one of the best. It was very good and very relaxing. Then we walked around St. Stephen's Cathedral and looked at the amazing art and sculptures inside.

We ran into a group of guys from Franciscan inside, and they told us they were going to "the summer house" and invited us along. We thought they were referring to a place which we quickly visited earlier, so we agreed to go along. It turns out they meant the summer house of the Hapsburgs, former rulers of Austria, which just so happened to be on the other side of Vienna. Fortunately for the group of guys, they were all wearing tennis shoes. Unfortunately for us, we were mostly girls and wearing sandals or flats. It took at least an hour and a half to get there and by then our feet were killing us. The guys barely even talked to us or waited for us to catch up...long story short, we ended up ditching them and just tried to find our way back to the buses. We got lost in the side streets of Vienna, spending the next hour and a half getting back. The upside? We probably saw most of Vienna that way haha and we had some really good conversations during the long period of time. The downside? Once we found the buses, the group of guys that we originally followed to the summer house was sitting there, relaxing and hanging out, as if they hadn't just walked across Vienna and back. We were only slightly bitter.

But in the end, the trip was amazing! My feet were swollen and I didn't squish my feet back into those shoes for two days, but I figure it's always a good experience getting lost in a country you've never been in and knowing only how to say "hello" and "thank you" in their language.