Wunderbar Wien

Wow! This week was so crazy! Really, a weekend in Amsterdam followed by a week in Vienna? Follow that up with the promise of a surgery on Monday, and my life is storybook material right now. I'm so happy to be a part of the great things happening around me.

My favorite thing that I did as part of the program was definitely the Natural history museum. However, that could just be due to the fact it was the most recent thing that I took part in because the pickled organs and the Josephinum were both super cool. I can't believe how many rooms there were at the museum that were just filled with different animals and minerals. Our guide was really nice and brought us to all the cool things like the ginormous leg bone of a dinosaur and the animals we wanted to see. Even after she left us, there were so many things to see there. I stayed at the museum, walking through the extinct animal exhibit (I got depressed) before finding my way to the anthropology portion that documented the way that humans became the beings that we are today. I watched a simulation of how the different species of human spread around the world, and wow did we explode once we came into being. Seriously, within about 10 thousand years, Homo sapiens had pushed out all the rest of our cousins that had made a life for the previous hundreds of thousands of years.

 You can't see the feet, but it's there

 This giant turtle was super cool

Even beyond the program-led activities, Vienna held so many things to see and experience. of course there were the Gothic churches (so beautiful!), but my absolute favorite memory of the trip was when our med-student guide Nina palled around with Kelsey and I and showed us the absolute best cafe/bakery in Vienna. It turns out that we had already been to the shop to get meringue sweets, but hadn't tried any of the cakes. We all bought a small sweet and sat on the bench outside and proceeded to just talk to each other for a few hours about anything that we thought to talk about. It was a lot of fun, and hopefully I'll actually keep in touch with her.

 Sorry, obligatory church picture. But it's so GORGEOUS!!

 Nina with her sweet

Just hanging out with our sweets from the best bakery in town

And that about sums up my favorite things. Of course there was much more, and if anyone cares to see it and other pictures, they're welcome to go to my personal daily blog at erinzstravels.blogspot.com (yes, shameless self promotion). It's really awesome all the experiences that are happening and I'm excited for everything that's next.

Erin Z