Week 9

The first group met us outside and together we walked to the Goulashmuseum for our group dinner. Goulash is a soup or stew with meat and vegetables and a staple in Vienna. Different kinds of meat can be used according to the menu at the restaurant such as beef, veal, horse, chicken, or pork. We were a group of about 30 people and had to squeeze into a room of the restaurant. I was one of the last people to get inside so I found one of the last remaining seats and sat down. I noticed the seat was wobbly but I had had a seat like that before and figured it’d be okay. I was terribly wrong. As I was scooching the chair closer to the table, the bottom of the chair just fell out from under me! By this point I had been awake for over 36 hours so it took a while for me to process everything. I just kind of sat there with my butt hanging through the chair trying to figure out what had just happened and how I was going to get out of it when Nathan, who was sitting next to me, reached over and lifted me out of the chair as if I was a doll. Everyone at the table was laughing including me even though I was pretty embarrassed. A waitress came over with a new chair fairly quickly and I apologized profusely. Things settled down temporarily and we munched on bread and drank wine while we waited for our food to come out. I had ordered Kesselgulasch vom Rindsfilet mit Kartoffel or beef filet goulash with potato and it was served in this copper pot. When served, the pot was hung from a three-legged metal stand that had a small tealight candle at the bottom. The waitress for our table had to place several stands in front of people who had ordered the same thing and I was one of the last people to have their stands set down. The waitress was in a hurry so when she placed the stand she didn’t notice one of the legs was hanging off the table. She let go of the top and before I knew it, the stand tilted forward and the lit candle fell onto my leg. Again it took a long time to process that there was a lit candle on my lap due to the lack of sleep so I kind of just stared at it for a while. Nathan reacted first and was about to swat the candle off my lap when I finally reached down and picked up the candle. Thankfully only a little bit of wax had gotten onto my sweater and I hadn’t started a fire in the restaurant so I’d call that a success. The rest of the meal went smoothly and I had a great time! The food was delicious, as was the wine, and the company was superb. After the meal we all took the subway back to the hotel and day 1 in Vienna was complete.