Day 31 - arrival in Vienna

So I never went to sleep last night. I decided to stay up until my taxi picked me up. After all, I could sleep on the bus it the plane right? So at 4, I packed up the last of my luggage, turned off the light, and checked where my passport was before I walked out the door. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Soon it was 10 min after I was supposed to be picked up as I was getting really nervous. Just as I was going to call someone on the same rout as me, I got a call asking me to go outside. I was confused, I was outside! Turns out that the can driver didn't know he had to pick up 3 people and after picking up the first person, skipped me and picked up the third person. Luckily both knew and sent the driver to me and even though it was 15 min late, we arrived to our bus on time. 

The bus brought us to the airport in Köln and we all disembarked to check our bags and get our tickets. For some reason I was super hyper going into the airport, but when we all sat down to wait to board our plane, I fell right asleep. I woke up later to get on the plane, and once I sat down I realized that I has Aaron in one side and Dr. Wasser on the other. At first I fell asleep for about 20 min, but I was woken for the breakfast that we were given at about that time. Dr. Wasser turned to me and asked if I thought the food tasted good (in German). When I answered "yes", he asked if I understood things, again in German. I then turned to him a no explained that though I could not speak back in German to him, u can generally understand what's being said to me and my vocabulary has only grown with the time spent around my German speaking host family and their friends. He laughed and soon Aaron joined us in a conversation of languages and we were able to recommend an app that helps the user to learn languages. It turns out that he's going to be living in France for a few months and wanted to brush up on his French so he's able to talk to the locals while vacationing. Our topic turned to all sorts of other topics and the two of bus talked with him until the plane landed in Vienna. 

Getting off, we grabbed our bags and received our bus passes so we could get around town. We took the tram to our hotel and luckily our rooms were ready for us. We went up to our rooms and dropped our stuff off. I'm lucky enough that two of my friends are rooming with me, so we explored the room a little bit and decided who was sleeping where. We were told to meet an hour later, so mist of us fell asleep.

  We were woken to go downstairs where we took the tram to the meeting place for our historical tour guide. We were told Dr. Wasser would come with us, but we were skeptical about whether or not be would show up. Then, a man came up to us dressed in a black robe an black hat with a brown bag and a black leather bird mask. As he held his poking stick, he told us (in German) that he was Dr. Schnabel and he would be leading us on the tour. We walked for a while, most of us figuring out his secret in little to no time. Eventually he stopped and took off his mask, revealing Dr. Wasser. He took us through the city and told us about the interesting things that had happened at those sites. At one point we crossed the street to a beautiful church in the Gothic design that the Köln church sported. Though the castle was less intricate, it was still beautiful and beware the amount of pictures that will be posted in this post. At this point, I declared myself satisfied with the whole trip and anything extra would just be icing on the cake. With Dr. Wasser poking random people with his poking stick, and the new church to add to my collection, what else could I ask for?

Not 10 minutes later, I had my answer when we heard Dr. Wasser sing for the first time and again when he went in depth on a seemingly meaningless sci-fy reference. I can suddenly see one of my good childhood friends when he becomes a physics teacher. He looks like Dr. Wasser, and I am happy. 

After the walk, we took pictures with Dr. Wasser in his Black Plague doctor outfit before splitting for our separate ways for lunch. I went with Kelsey to a little cafe and had schnitzel for lunch. It was very good, yet another thing I recommend to try. When we left, we still had time before we had to meet the rest of the group, so we wandered around and checked out different stores. Eventually we bought a type of candy that's apparently made of meringue and we met up with everyone else. 

We all headed in a group to the next thing on our agenda; a tour of st. Micheal's church and the catacombs beneath it. Now, Vienna has a very interesting relationship with death and rejoice in death's eventual coming. In fact, Vienna seems to be where famous musicians come to die (Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) So we took a tour and saw the beautiful statues as paintings within the church before descending into the catacombs. Our guide talked about the coffins, and they were really pretty, but we were mostly interested in the various bones lining the walls in piles. At the end of the tour, Dr. Wasser turned it into a "name that bone" game with us ad we had a lot of fun. Our guide said that she'd never had a group that was more interested in the bones than the mummies and caskets, but that made our group interesting. 

When we made it outside, I was ready to just fall asleep. After all, I'd been up for over 36 hours with only about an hour to rest in between. However we still had one more thing to do before turning in to bed. Eating. We went to the beer clinic where they brew their own beers and had a fantastic dinner with friends nearby and tasty food and drink. When dessert came around, all the girls dove for the sweets, leaving the boys at our end wide eyed and possibly afraid of what we would do if they came between us and our sweets. On the way home, we all laughed about it and strengthened our bond as friends. I think it was a great day and I'm excited for the day of free time that I'll have tomorrow. 

After dinner we go home and I plan to go right to sleep as I've been gradually falling asleep since I got up at the hotel room earlier today.

Till tomorrow

Erin Z


Update: Apparently the hotel we're staying at is not allowing my photos to upload in a timely manner, so I will upload them later when I have more time and am more awake. Now a shower is calling, on my bed I'll be falling, for I am so sleepy, I say to you: Goodnight.