I'm in Vienna: The past week in Vienna...

...has been AMAZING! We’ve been getting mid-terms and papers back, and I’ve done pretty okay on all of them! My roommate Gabby has been teaching me how to cook - we made an awesome pasta sauce on Monday - zucchinis, carrots, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and lentil beans... it was DELICIOUS! On Thursday, a local bar and Zipfer (a beer company) hosted a beer pong tournament, which brought everyone back to America for the night. None of us had really played the treasured American youth past time in a while, but my friends Nick and Zach ended up getting in third place! They played a bunch of teams from Austria and all over the world, so it’s a lot more impressive than it sounds.

The finished product... it was SEHR LECKER!

On Friday, both of Frau Summesberger’s German classes (both beginner classes) met at 9:50 in front of the Naturhistoriches Museum on the Ringstraße. We were all in for a treat because little did we know that Frau Summesberger’s HUSBAND works at the Naturhistoriches!! We were so excited to meet him. Our tour was great, we got to see a lot of awesome artifacts and even got to see some behind-the-scenes exhibitions. There was one part of the museum we went to that was full of cabinets and cabinets of skulls. This exhibition was banned after WWII and the Holocaust because it compared the skulls of different groups of people.

The Kunsthistoriches Museum as seen from the Naturhistoriches Museum.

The entrance to the museum

Lots of minerals

Apparently Austria is known for its epidot (sp?)

DIAMONDS!

I thought these were pretty

This is Maria Theresa’s stuffed dog.

The skull exhibition... eeeeeery.

The best part of the tour was by far the end... we got to go onto the ROOF of the museum!! It was so amazing and definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity. After the tour was over we explored the parts of the museum we didn’t get to see, mainly the animal section. We had a lot of fun taking photos with all the stuffed animals.

The Hofburg

The Kunsthistoriches and the MuseumsQuartier

The Volksgarten

Michele, me, Bailey, Veronica, and Frau and Herr Summesberger!

Part of the Volksgarten with the Burgtheater

The Parliament and Rathaus, Votivkirche is in the background.

Parliament and Rathaus

Kent being eaten by a pterodactyl

Bailey’s favorite animals are walri

Michelle prowlin with the cheetahs

Kent is actually 6 foot 4, he ain’t got nothin on these giraffes

HEDWIG!

This one’s for my dad and Tommy... the VULTURE!

Veronica and her new buddy

On Saturday Gabby and I decided to have a dinner party with a few of our friends. We spent almost the entire day cooking pasta, meatballs, and pasta sauce, and the party was a success! We had a great time and the food was deeeeelicious. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from the party because my camera battery was dead.

Today, Sunday, Gabby and I got up extra early (9 AM) to head over to mass at Augustinerkirche. The 11 AM mass at this church has an entire choir and orchestra. This week’s mass was a Schubert Messe (please don’t ask me what that means - as far as I know everything played was composed by Schubert), and it was seriously the most beautiful mass I’ve ever been to. The church itself is incredible; it’s the same church in which Franz Josef and Sisi were married in 1854. After mass we walked around the Hofburg, chilled on the grass in the Volksgarden for a little while, and walked to the Rathaus, where there was a dirt-bike competition. We went to a cafe across the street and heard all the crazy bikers cheering. The weather was absolutely gorgeous today - it reached about 68 degrees, and I’m hoping the weather will continue to be this beautiful all week long!