Week 3

After spending a fun, yet stressful weekend in Amsterdam, we got to spend a day in Bonn before leaving to Vienna, Austria on Tuesday morning. The taxi picked us up at 4:25 am, so I only got around 3 hours of sleep. My ears felt like they ruptured something when the plane landed, so I had a lingering pain all day. This all added to the difficulty of the first day in Vienna.

Vienna
Day 1 and 2. Vienna was the city that I had been looking forward to the most because of its strong artistic presence and history, but I ended up getting sick and not getting to see much of it. The first day there, we checked in and then went on a two-hour tour around the city. I have to admit, I was not very well dressed for the weather since I did not think we would be outside for so long. I was definitely missing a layer or two and stopped being able to feel my toes 30 minutes into the tour, but it was worth it to learn about some of the founding fathers of medicine. Also, I had no idea that Dr Schnabel was Dr Wasser so it was a pretty big plot twist for me. Oh and we saw mummies.

I started to feel sick around dinner since my throat was feeling kind of sore. I kept thinking it meant that I was thirsty, so I drank maybe 6-7 glasses of water, but it never went away. The goulash was amazing, though. After the tour of the Narrenturm the next morning, I slept the rest of the day. I only woke up to eat cereal.

Day 3. We toured the Josephinum in the morning and got to see a bunch of wax models of unique medical cases. I may never get to come accross some of those cases in real life, but it was interesting to be able to at least see what they look like in person. For lunch I tried the chicken schnitzel and it was amazing (a lot better than the veal one, in my opinion). Then we visited Sigmund Freud's house and we breathed in some of the tobacco on the walls from the days that he had lived there. In the afternoon, we went to a concert in St. Anne's church and listened to an ensemble perform music from Beethoven and Mozart.

My aggie ring touched a meteorite!

Day 4. In the morning we either saw Spanish people riding horses or we saw people riding Spanish horses. Sometimes they did tricks. For lunch I tried the veal schnitzel, which was okay. In the afternoon, we visited the Natural History Museum and it was amazing beyond words. This one trip made the entire Vienna excursion amazing, despite being sick. We saw fossils, bones, meteorites, and other stuff. Since I want to work with extinct and endangered species in the future, I love looking at how evolution worked through different generations to get to the species that we have today.

I would have enjoyed Vienna a lot more had I not been sick, but I am still grateful that I got to spend a whole week visiting another country instead of just being in a classroom all day.

Prague

There were statues like this pretty much around every corner

We left Vienna on a Friday and arrived at Prague around 12:30 am the next day. Prague was completely different than Germany and Austria in SO many ways. The language and architecture were completely different, but we still managed to make our way around. I found myself sticking to more familiar foods while there, however (eggs, burgers, cereal). My knees hurt the whole time and we did a lot of walking, but it was worth it to see the city. On our first day there we crossed the bridge to the other side of the city. We spent a lot of time on the bridge because of the view, the merchants, and the entertainment.  It was warmer than Bonn and a lot warmer than Austria. Mostly every person I talked to there spoke English, so it was very helpful. We missed our train coming back, but we were familiar with handling things going wrong so we got it figured out.

We visited a jewish cemetery; in order to save space, they buried
people in layers and that's why the headstones are placed at different
levels

 Things I've noticed:
-The pigeons in Europe don't fly away from people as often as they do in the US and they're also fatter
-I should stop buying post cards since I lose them all
-People in America argue about whether pineapple goes on pizza meanwhile Europeans are putting tuna on it
-Stepping on snow makes my toes get colder faster, so I try to stay away from it when walking
-Some restaurants give spoons with their hot chocolate and I have no idea why