These last few days have been an incredible whirlwind and I am finally getting settled in my apartment in the heart of Vienna. I've been unable to do my first real post until now, but everything turned out wonderfully and the last few days have been fantastic. Here's the somewhat brief synopsis of what I've been up to for the last week:

As I was about to leave for the airport on Tuesday (that feels like so long ago!) I realized that my flight got super delayed and had to call about 5 different people to change it. A flight to Frankfurt and then to Vienna and I got in around 3pm on Wednesday. At the airport I recognized a few people from my program at the airport, looking a bit more lost than I was feeling. It turned out that they were heading to the same hostel as I was, so we got on a bus together and made our way to the Wombats city hostel. We explored Vienna a bit, found the building that our program was housed in, and returned to the hotel.

At this point, I realized that my computer would not connect to the wireless network at the hostel (although everyone else's could), and spent about 2 hours trying to fix the problem until I became convinced that there was something seriously wrong with my wireless card - there's still a strange message that I don't understand, but I'm going to ignore it). It turns out that everything is okay, but I did lose some sleep thinking that I would have to send my computer to get fixed because I couldn't call Toshiba from Vienna.



Anyway, on thursday, All 150 students in the program met at the Westbahnhof train station to get on a bus to head up to Mariazell (I'll talk about the town a little later). Of course, meeting 150 people in a three day trip, especially when you are deciding who you are living with on the 2nd day, is a bit stressful. It was a bit overwhelming to remember the 4 Lindseys, 3 Rachels, and just about multiples of most other common names (the RA's who put together the housing at Mariazell took full advantage of this - A 2 Robs 2 Chris room, a 3 emily room, and a biblical room including Sarah, Mary, Magdaline, and Ruth).


The weekend was really a great time. Lots of meeting tons of people, drinking together, playing volleyball, walking to Mariazell to sightsee and other random activities, along with plenty of orientation sessions, German placement tests, and housing organization (a bit more stressful than it had to be). We stayed in a Familiengasthaus, or a sort of sports hostel for families. The accommodations were surprisingly really nice. Mariazell, which was about a 30 minute walk away, was absolutely beautiful. It was so unbelievably picturesque and looked cleaner than anywhere else I had ever been (not so coincidentally, the pope had come a year ago and every building in the city was repainted for his arrival!) The town is famous for 3 things:

1) A very famous Basilica, to which most practicing Austrian catholics make their pilgrimidge.
2) Lebkuchen - basically the original gingerbread
3) Mariazeller Magenliquor - A very famous Schnapps that has been made by one family for 125 years. Only one man now knows how to make it and he will pass it to his children. But if he should die suddenly, that's it!

One morning I woke up at 5:30 from continued jet lag and decided to take a morning hike. Here are some pics. Very eerie but beautiful.




Anyway, today we came back to Vienna, and moved into our residences. I ended up in an apartment with 4 of my friends in Mariahilf, a really fantastic district (no. 6) near the center of the city. It is steps away from the Naschmarkt - the biggest open air market in vienna, as well as several cafes, tons of restaurants, and Mariahilferstrasse, the biggest shopping street in Vienna. It's also about a 25 min walk to the center of the city and the study abroad program center.





Anyway, this post has been very very long. Most will not be as long, but so much has happened in the last 5 days. I'm really loving Vienna, and my German is starting to come back - I've been ordering food, conducting transactions, and talking to my friends auf Deutsch. Tomorrow we begin our 3-week intensive German class along with beginning to register for classes, etc. I've been missing the piano pretty badly, and I'm excited to get back to practicing.

Please leave some comments, I'd love to hear from everyone. Check back often, I'm hoping to post frequently with lots of stories.