Life in Vienna

Hello Family and Friends!

It is has been over a month since the time I arrived in Vienna.  What an amazing place to be.  I am staying in the seventh district of Vienna in an international dorm called Haus Erasmus.  I absolutely love living here.  It’s very social and comfortable and we have communal kitchens where people are always cooking up something.  I have one roommate and she is great, her name is Sabine, and she is from upper Austria.  We share a room and a bathroom together and we enjoy each others company :)

           

There are about thirty students here from the University of Illinois, studying business, political sciences or the German language.  I fall in the latter program.  During the first two weeks, I had orientation and then we began actual classes.  I am enrolled in five classes, all of them taught in German… you must be thinking, oh her German is great… not so much, but I’m learning and I’ll keep you all posted on my progress.  The work load is sure to be difficult, but if everything goes as planned I’ll complete a German minor by the end of the semester. 

It’s very exciting to start exploring the city.  I found during my first couple of days I had to master the important triangle—Dorm. School. Grocery store.  Now that I’ve master that I can start really getting to know the city.  The public transportation is amazing and easy to navigate.  I take the Ubahn or subway to school everyday and I'm beginning to learn some of the Strassenbahns or street cars.

Unfortunately the day before I left for Austria I realized my camera charger was left in Urbana.   My dear friend mailed it to my parents and then a friend on the trip mom brought it to me when she visited.  It was very unfortunate to not have a camera during the first couple of weeks but I still have some photos to share! 

The interesting looking building behind us is a heating plant designed by the famous Austrian artist and architect, Hunderwasser.  The incinerator is located right next to the school I am enrolled at, Wirtschaft Universität.

One of the first nights the whole group went ice skating in front of the Rat Haus (city hall).  

We went out to dinner with the group twice during orientation.  My meals may not look appetizing but I enjoyed them :) the first one is similar to noodles and is almost like a mac and cheese with ham... sehr gut!  Below is a pizza and the gross looking meat on top is supposed to be bacon, not exactly what I was expecting, but still good :)

The second weekend here, myself and five other U of I students decided to go to Venice, Italy for the Carnival celebration.  Carnival is very a well known celebration similar to Mardi Gras, in the sense that it’s the celebration before the start of Lent.  This celebration is called Faschings in Austria and people get dressed up for Faschingsdienstag (Fat Tuesday) in costumes similar to Halloween.   

So back to my weekend in Venice!  This was a very spontaneous trip to Italy, which consisted of a train ride passing the Alps and then a bus once we got farther into Italy.  Venice was beautiful.

                  People come from all over to celebrate Carnival in Venice.

A heartwarming city!

In this picture a random girl is throwing confetti at me when I'm trying to take a picture.  The fun begins!

The Venetian tradition is most famous for the elaborate masks and we found stands selling them everywhere.

We saw a lot of other interesting costumes throughout the day!

 I traveled with five other people and we decided to not get a hostel and instead stay up all night.  Our plan half worked, and after walking around the beautiful streets of Venice, eating at an Italian restaurant, and truly celebrating Carnevale di Venesia, we then attempted to sleep on the freezing floor of the train station, and eventually watched the beautiful sunrise on the buildings of Venice.  

                                                 We concluded Carnival was a successful trip.   

Well that concludes the first two weeks of my study abroad.  I do not want to overwhelm anyone interesting in reading about my time in Vienna so I will stop there and hopefully update again soon!  Love to you all.
xoxo
Maggie