Vienna, Austria

This past week we traveled to Vienna and got to take a week off from classes. We left on Tuesday morning at the crack of dawn. I had to be outside of my house ready to go at 4:30 AM; anyone who knows me knows how difficult this must have been for me. I had to set multiple alarms to be sure I was ready on time. We flew from Bonn to Vienna and landed around 9 AM. Our first stop was at the hotel to check in and enjoy the complimentary breakfast. Our day had already lasted about 5 hours and we were just now eating breakfast so I was a little concerned but staying positive.

The first activity of the day was a walking tour with Dr. Schnabel. We walked to the main city area to meet him for the tour. When he arrived we discovered he was actually just our program leader, Dr. Wasser, pretending to be a medieval Viennese plague doctor. (If you don't know what that looks like please google it). It was very entertaining but we got a lot of strange looks as we walked around Vienna.  After the tour we went to a cafe and got some lunch. Vienna is the first place I've been that will give you free water, but only if you order another drink as well like coffee or wine.  After lunch we went on a tour of a crypt underneath one of the churches. And then ended the day at a goulash museum. This wasn't actually a museum but an amazing goulash restaurant, which is now one of my favorite foods.

While we were in Vienna it snowed which was so exciting. We kept stopping to play in the snow and have snow ball fights. Other people would stare at us as they walked by until someone explained we were from Texas, which always made them laugh. We got to visit the Josephinum and the Narrentum which both had really interesting wax models of the human anatomy and abnormal diseases. As medical students we all really enjoyed this.

Some of the highlights of the trip included going to the Spanish Horse Riding School, the Schonbrun Palace and the zoo. At the horse riding school we saw the Lipizzaner horses and got to watch them practice for their performances. I especially liked this because I used to ride horses. We also took a tour of the palace which was amazingly beautiful and went to the nearby zoo. Another major highlight was going ice skating. To be honest, I really don't like ice skating at all. But the rink was in the middle of downtown and was multiple rinks connected by pathways you could skate down. They played fun music and had lights and it was so pretty I almost didn't notice how bad I was at actually skating.

 


While skipping a week of school to travel in Europe was probably the greatest thing ever, having to get up early every morning then walk around all day and stay up late was exhausting. At one point I told my friend I was actually looking forward to going back to school so I could just sit some. Besides the exhaustion though, Vienna is by far my favorite city I've been to so far!