After the
rather uneventful week of studying in Bonn, it was time for our first big
program excursion to Vienna. That day before leaving for Vienna was one of the
more busy days. I don’t think I got back home until 11PM, which is actually one
of the earlier times that I’ve been home. In the perfect world, I would have
gotten home, taken a shower and immediately gone to bed to get those 8 hours of
sleep. Of course, none of that happened as it was supposed to. In fact, I,
along with the rest of the students in the Biosciences Program, hadn’t packed
yet or even done laundry for that matter. It was going to be a long night, and
our taxi was supposed to come pick us up from our house at 4:20AM. Do I hear an
all-nighter coming around?? 3 hours later, I finally finished packing. It took
a while to figure out which set of clothes to bring and which not to bring. OH.
And trying to guess what 17 pounds feels like is actually quite the challenge! Anyways,
I ended up going to bed at about 2:30..2 hours of sleep is plenty right!? I
also set 15 alarms ranging from 3:30 to 4:00 so that I would be able to wake up
and catch the 4:20 taxi. I laid down and immediately passed out. Well, the next
thing I know is that Kyle walks into my room and goes “Hey Kendrick. It’s 4:40.” My immediate response was “You mean 3:40 right?” And then
it dawned on me that my cell phone had a thousand notifications, the alarms
were going off on it, my German phone was ringing..OH, and it was 4:40 Apple
time. JOY. We were 20 minutes late and missed our taxi. One of the missed calls
I had was from another student who was on the same taxi with us. I called her
back and asked, “What do I do? Is it too late to make it to the bus stop?” She
told me no; the taxi just arrived at her house and that they would be back
outside of our house in 3 minutes. So I hung up, and we immediately changed
clothes and just grabbed what we had packed and ran outside. Yeah, I’m kind of
freaking out at this point and just extremely embarrassed that this had
happened. It turns out that the taxi had actually waited outside of our house
for 20 minutes, and finally, he decided to pick the other students up. I guess
we got lucky that he hadn’t been too far away when we finally woke up? The
whole ride over to the bus stop, I just kept thinking to myself..oh my
goodness; are we still going to make it? Do we need to meet them at the airport
instead? And worst of all, I thought to myself….I hope that I didn’t make the
other students in the taxi with Kyle and I miss the flight because they didn’t
do anything wrong. Well, we got to the bus stop, and fortunately, the bus was
still there. So that was an extremely eventful way to start off the Vienna
excursion…hopefully this situation doesn’t happen again later in the semester! I
slept through most of the hour-long flight. We got to Vienna and went straight
to the hotel. After we dropped our stuff off, we got breakfast downstairs and
proceeded to meet Dr. Schnabel for the city tour. It was a cold day in Vienna,
and after 30 minutes of standing outside in the cold, I realized “YUP. I’m
wearing at least 2 layers everywhere. I’m even going to double layer my socks
(apparently that’s a thing that everyone but me has been doing this trip……….).”
Finally, Dr. Schnabel showed up; he was wearing what a traditional physician
during the Black Plague would wear: black robes, a black hat, and a black mask
that resembled a crow. I’m not sure if it was just me who thought this, but
oddly, Dr. Schnabel reminded a lot of Dr. Wasser by his mannerisms and actions……maybe
they’re related? He showed us around the central city area of Vienna. We saw
St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the center of the plaza, Hofburg Palace, and several
monuments/statues and learned about the history behind many of the buildings in
the area. I enjoyed the tour, but by the end of the 2 hours, I think that I can
speak for almost everyone else…we couldn’t feel our toes or our fingers
whatsoever. I kind of felt like if I tried to move my fingers/toes too much,
they would just pop off like they did in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie…yeah
it’s just one of those things that crosses my mind haha! We finished the tour
of the city, and we were let loose for a few hours to look around. Just about
everyone rushed to the nearest coffee shop to find warmth. I tried the highly
recommended Viennese hot chocolate drink; it was pretty good! When we came out
of the coffee shop, the most magical thing happened. IT
SNOWED!!!!!!! To my non-Texan readers, you’re probably thinking “and so
what?” but to the Texans, we all know how often Texas snows, and by often, I
mean once in 7 years, we see slush. It was still cold, but all of us made
exceptions and took photos with the snow. Later that day, we went to the
catacombs below St. Michael’s Church. It was spooky and jaw dropping at the
same time. Never before had I seen catacombs, so this was very neat, but at the
same time, it was quite spooky to walk so close and see skeletons of the
deceased. After that, we went to dinner! We ate at the Gulashmuseum. I ordered
a meal that had goulash from beef filet with potatoes served in a copper pot.
My oh my, it tasted so good!! The next day, we went to the Narrentum, which is
continental Europe’s oldest building for mentally ill patients. It was a neat
circular building; apparently, the idea was that if a patient got loose,
regardless of where he or she ran, they would eventually just end up back to
where they started. ß
NEATO! After we finished the tour of the Narrentum, the biggest, baddest,
craziest, most legen……..WAIT FOR IT…….dary
snowball fight in the world took place. I mean, come on; we’re Texans who have
seen snow only a few times in our life. It was bound to happen! We all reverted
back to being 5 years old for those 15 minutes; I’m sure every person that
walked by thought it was odd to see 19-20 year olds throwing snow at each
other. Soon after, we split ways with the rest of the group. For lunch, we went
to Der Wiener Deewan, which was a “pay-as-you-wish” Pakistani buffet. Yes, you
heard that right. Pay as you wish. I know what
buffet is, but I didn’t know how much the price was. I kept asking
everyone..soo is this buffet like 7 Euro? 15 Euro? Soon, I found out that it
was literally what it sounded like. You pay the amount that you feel the
restaurant deserves. It’s actually quite a neat concept; I have yet to see one
of these in America! After that, we went to the Hofburg Palace museum. There
were tons and tons of plates at the exhibit. I think they devoted about 30
rooms to just plates. Plates. Plates. Plates. Just when we were about to leave,
we saw another part of the museum, which was about the life of Empress
Elisabeth of Austria (otherwise known as Sisi), so that made the museum a lot more
interesting! That evening, we went ice skating, which was tons of fun even
though none of us knew how to ice skate for 5 feet without falling on our
booties. However, at the end of the night, there was a casualty. Our good
friend, Alexa, fell wrongly on her ankle; she laughed the entire night, but she
could not put any weight on it whatsoever. We thought that maybe it just
rolled; a week from then, we found out that she had broken a bone in her leg.
Even after finding this out, her composure never changed. She stayed cheerful as
always and remained the life of the party! Prayers to Alexa; we hope you get
well soon!!! The next day, we stopped by the Josephinum. Emperor Joseph II
founded it to educated physicians and midwives for civil and military service. It
was a very neat museum with over 1,100 wax models of the human anatomy! Then,
we went and had a group lunch at Unibräu; I got the Cordon Bleu. Guess what? IT
WAS ALSO SO VERY GOOD! Soup and dessert were also ordered, so afterwards, all
of us were just exhausted and ready for a nap haha! Next stop: Sigmund Freud’s
House! Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture about Sigmund Freud; based on the amount of
information that Dr. Wasser knew about Sigmund Freud, I wouldn’t be surprised
if someone had told me that he had found a time machine and relived every
moment of Sigmund Freud’s life. Later that night, we went to a classical quartet
consisting of a 2 violins, a viola, and a cello in St. Anne’s Church. I was in
band in high school, so I had played classical music, but other than that, I
was never extremely fond of classical music. However, this concert was quite
relaxing and nice to listen to! Last day in Vienna! L We went to the Spanish riding
school. The horses there are extremely disciplined, so I understood why
everyone held such high respect for this riding school! Afterwards, we stopped
by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which was one of the art museums in Vienna.
There were so many things to look at; an entire day in the museum wouldn’t have
been enough! Because we were on a time crunch, we spent an hour there and
headed out for lunch. Because of my perpetual craving for sushi, we went to
Natsu the Japanese restaurant (known for having the cheapest sushi in town)
that Dr. Wasser had told us about. We had to get it to go, and we literally ate
sushi with our hands/chopsticks while walking through the streets of Vienna.
Yes. We are truly Americans haha! Our last stop was the Museum of Natural
History, which was extremely large and filled with artifacts of all sorts. AND
THAT’S A WRAP FOR VIENNA! What an eventful few days that I’ll never ever
forget! Next stop: Prague, Czech Republic!
"Snow other day to spend my first day in Vienna!"
In reality ^^^
Hofburg Palace
Dr. Schnabel (reminds of Dr. Wasser...hmm)
"Pay-as-you-wish" Pakistani Buffet
I slipped and fell.
LEGEN...WAIT FOR IT...DARY!
Hofburg Palace
Pano 4 dayz
One of many photos in Kunsthistorisches Museum
Post Concert Dinner!
The Epitome of Face-Swap
