Vienna- week 3

This week was spent in beautiful Vienna. The trip started off with a tour of the city by Dr. Schnabel. I really enjoyed this tour because I am now protected against the plague. This tour was awesome, but was way too cold for me. During lunch it began to snow like I have never seen before. Of course being a girl from Texas who has only seen like snow flurries I was totally in love. I think we took around three hundred pictures of just us playing in the snow. After the tour and snow fun we had the opportunity to visit an old catacomb. This was very different for me and definitely put me outside of my comfort zone. I did however find it super interesting and cool to see the hand painted caskets. For dinner that night we ate the goulash museum, which was quite delicious. The next day we got to visit the Narrenturm, which was one of the very first mental hospitals in Europe. This tour was not what I was expecting. I thought the tour would just be of the hospital and looking into the rooms and seeing how they use to operate this hospital. However, inside this building they had a huge collections of specimens, models, and even a stuffed body. This was such an awesome experience to see models that doctors in older times learned on. I just think it is incredible how inventive they were back in time to come up with models such as the ones we saw so that doctors in training would know what a certain disease looked like. That evening we went ice skating as group which sadly ended up in Alexa breaking her fibula. I feel terrible that this happened, but I got a first hand look into a Austria hospital. Thanks Alexa haha. The emergency room was different from ones that I have seen in America for sure. The emergency room just had a glass wall and on the other side was all the patients in their beds. There was no curtains separating patients or curtains hiding patients from the people in the waiting room. I found that privacy policies do differ from those in America, which nothing is wrong with that just found it interesting to see how they do it differently. The next day we got to attend the Josephinum where we were able to see wax models, which was also fascinating. I was blown away by the artistic skills used to produce these models. That afternoon we were able to see Sigmund Freud house. This was one of the highlights of my trip. I love Freud so to me it was almost a dream to be able to be in the room where he actually saw patients and to be in the room where he would study and write on his findings. That evening we had the opportunity to see a classical concert in a beautiful church. This concert was awesome and the music was incredible. That was something I have never done before so it will be awesome to say that I saw my first classical concert in Vienna. Now it was Friday and our last day in Vienna. We got to attend the spanish horse riding school. I of course found this interesting as I was raised riding horses and being around them. I was honestly amazed at how well the riders handled the horses and how beautiful all of the horses were. That afternoon we attended the national history museum. This was hands down my favorite part of the trip. I am a total history nerd and loved every minute. I especially loved the rock collection because that was one of passions growing up as a child. Vienna was one for the books, but now it is time to spend the weekend in Prague and then back to school on Monday.

My first real snow experience in Vienna.

Group photo after one of the most epic snowball fights known to man.

The Lennon Wall in Prague

Literally one of the best things I have ever eaten and the reason why I will gain so much weight here. Thank goodness this was only in Prague and I have yet to find anything like this in Germany.