My stomach will probably never recover

I don't really think I will ever really recover either. It's not like Europe has been some huge culture shock, it's actually been pretty much the opposite really, it is just so odd to find out that somewhere, thousands of miles across the globe, people are getting along just fine. Vienna was so similar and so different from anything I had ever experienced.

I am now going to attempt, perhaps unsuccessfully to chronicle absolutely everything that happened in Vienna starting with the night beforehand. This will probably take more than a few posts. I have a remarkable talent for sleeping through alarms no matter how many I set on my phone, or the 3 other devices I can use to wake me up in the morning. Seeing as how I had to meet the bus at 5 am I decided that I should just stay up all night, it was a good decision in as much as I managed to catch the bus, but for the rest of the day I felt like I was going to pass out in the street, which probably had something to do with being terribly sick as well. When I didn't feel like I was about to pass out I had a great time though. The plane ride itself was remarkably pleasant as well. The Germans aren't as obsessed with security, so I managed to keep my shoes on through security, they also let us walk on the tarmac a la Casablanca, so that was fun.

One of the themes that kind of spanned the whole trip, other than overeating of course, was architecture. I took an architecture history course this summer never thinking that I

would use anything I had learned in the class, but now I see buildings I thought would only ever be in a power point in person, heck, I can reach out and touch them. One of the first buildings we walked into on our tour was a Baroque church which, naturally, was incredibly beautiful, if only slightly gaudy. Then there was the university building, the Karlkirche, which I barely managed to get a picture of, even though it is a very important building as far as architects are concerned, and various others that I will show you instead of just talking about, here you go.

Then of course there was the concert we attended, which is not really something I can put into words, you go to a rock concert and everyone already knows who will be playing what, how they will play it, and what it will sound like. That's not quite how this went down. I can't really

describe the various subtleties of the music that were different at this concert, I certainly can't describe the virtuoso trumpet player that was there that night, and all in all words fail me when it comes to that concert, it was

truly incredible.

Another thing that was incredible was the food, I haven't really been dissatisfied with the taste of anything I have had over here, but I have been kind of miffed about portions on occasion, and I really hate having to pay so much for drinks. In Vienna however, I didn't really have anything to complain about, the portions of schnitzel and everything else were simply enormous, here are some pictures to prove my point.