"The Hills are Alive"

"The hills are alive with the sound of music, with songs they have sung for a thousand years"

So turns out, Vienna doesn't have quite the same charm as the hills from one of my favorite movies, but it does have a beauty of its own and we did get in some great music with a classical concert!

There's not a whole lot to say about Vienna. Even though we were there for 5 days a lot of the time was filled up with tours of medical museums, lectures, and facility tours (the main hospital, the red cross, etc.) and i'll spare you the less than exciting details of most of those.

Day One: 
Tour of Wein (Vienna): This was a pretty tour but a little cold

The Plague Tower: One of the past kings of Austria made a promise to God that if he took away the plague from Vienna that he would replace the old wooden commemoration with a new more beautiful one.

Tour of St. Stephen's Cathedral and the clock tower: The cathedral was cool but not too much different from the other cathedrals we've seen. The star of this tour though were the catacombs underneath the cathedral. They were pretty neat if you ask me! Creepy and a little disgusting but neat! The catacombs contained 1000's of bodies of plague victims along with past cardinals and even royalty!

St. Stephens Cathedral

One of many rooms full of bones! Only disgusting when you realize you're breathing in stuff from Black plague victims. But don't worry, they made sure to stress to us that we would NOT get the plague from going down there!

Traditional Vienesse Dinner: Weinerschnitzel and Spatzl payed by AIB. Another highlight of the night!

Day Two: 

Medical History Tour of Vienna: It was interesting but the best part was that our professor dressed up in the traditional plague doctor costume, very entertaining!

The Josefinum: Pictures weren't allowed BUT imagine rooms on rooms of anatomical wax models and you'll get an idea of what it was like. They used to use these to teach medical students since they couldn't use real cadavers year round because of the corrosion of the body in summer with the heat.

 Day 3:
Spanish Riding School: If you've ever heard of the Lipizzaner horses, these are them! We went to go see the morning exercises and both the horses and the hall were amazing! Again, no pictures allowed but I got a few anyway!

Yeah thats right, they have glass chandeliers in their "exercise room" Just imagine the show room...

Concert at Schonbrunn Castle: This was one of the coolest things of the trip. It was a mix of a concert, opera, and ballet and the music was wayyy better than the last concert in Bonn!

All the girls dressed up for the concert!

 Day 4:

Tour of the Narrenturm: Okay, so the concert was towards the top of the list, but this was #1! The Narrenturm ("madhouse tower") is the oldest building for mental patients and was designed in a circle so any patients that went wondering around would eventually wind up back at their room (neat fact). Anyway, its not an asylum anymore, now it's another wax museum but instead of basic anatomy it had a bunch of pathology stuff. They used to take the patients that had the diseases and dip the diseased specimen in wax. Then an artist would sit down with the mold and the patient and paint it to make it look realistic. Not a tour for a weak stomached person but I loved it! To get a taste of it look up Harlequin Icthyosis. One of the specimen was a stuffed doll child with that disease.No picture again, sorry!

(A couple of us also snuck in a visit to the world famous Ferris wheel in Vienna AKA the one in James Bond)

Austrian Red Cross Headquarters: I promised you I'd spare you the more boring details so yeah...

Dinner at the Goulasch Museum: Also on AIB which was very nice! So it turns out Goulasch isn't my thing, but luckily I got a steak instead and let me tell you, steak is definitely my thing! I haven't had that good of a meal in sooo long! and to top it off we also got dessert, another raspberry thing, I almost died of happiness :D It was called " HeiBe Liebe" (Hot love). Vanilla ice cream and hot raspberries, can it get any better? I mean really...

Day 5:

Tour of the Sigmund Freud House: We got a lecture and a tour on Sigmund Freud, he was an interesting man indeed!

A recreation of the famous couch! The original one is in the Freud museum in London but the replica was just as cool!

Probably the most famous address in all of Vienna

Back to Bonn!

So that's Vienna! The next day I left for Paris and that weekend was amazing but I've had/have a pretty jam packed week with tests and presentations so that will have to wait for the next Blog!


Side not: my host dad informed me this week that this has been a record winter for lack of sunlight, Only 90 hours compared to the normal 160. The only thing I could say was "yeah, I've noticed". I think the know how I feel about it haha But spring is just around the corner! This week we're supposed to have 2 days of sun and 50 degree weather so we're planning an afternoon in the park. If this doesn't happen I may have to migrate to a sunny place for awhile!

Upcoming stuff:

Spring Break! : London and Scotland (Getting excited just thinking about it, ONE WEEK!!!)