Budapest!

So I haven’t been very good with updating my blog on a regular basis so I decided today would be a perfect day to write an entry, especially since I had such a momentous weekend.  I actually took my first trip outside of Austria and went to the lovely city of Budapest, Hungary! It was an amazing trip and wish I could have spent more than just a weekend there, but I made sure every second counted.

I took a train directly from Vienna to Budapest with another person in my program named David.  We took a later train so we could make it to German class in the morning on Friday so we didn’t arrive in Budapest until around 9pm.  The first thing I noticed is that Hungarian is so much different than German.  I could barely pronounce any of the street names!  And while it was snowing in Vienna, it was raining in Budapest and slush covered all of the sidewalks.  It was not the most pleasant journey but we eventually did manage to make it to our hostel. This was actually my first time spending the night in a hostel.  It was the cheapest one we could find so I didn’t expect much from it, but it ended up not being too bad!  For those of you who have never spent the night in a hostel, there are two things that hostels are not known for: privacy and cleanliness.  I was in a room that could fit 12 people and got to listen to my roommates snore and talk loudly throughout the night!  Luckily for us though, our hostel was pretty empty because not many people travel in winter. 

On Saturday David and I had planned to explore as much of the city as possible.  Our day started out horribly.  It was raining again, we couldn’t find any working subway ticket machines, I forgot my umbrella and cut my hand on a new one I bought...everything was just miserable.  We did manage to find our way to a museum called the House of Terror though.  This museum is devoted to showing the terrors that Hungary went through while it was occupied by the Germans and Soviets.  Most of it was in Hungarian, but I could understand some of the exhibits.  It was more interesting to watch the other people in the museum.  Many of them had been alive during this time so they were very touched by this museum.  I definitely noticed the effects of living on the other side of the iron curtain throughout the city as well.  Many of the buildings (especially on the Pest side of Budapest) were falling apart and there were not many modern ones as well.  The subway was also very beaten up and in need of an update. There are still many beautiful things in the city too though. 

After the museum, we walked around the city park and made our way to the Parliament Building.  Things were starting to look up too! A man in the subway noticed us struggling to get a ticket from an automatic machine so he gave us two short trip passes so we could go to an actual ticket stand a couple stops down.  We could now use the subway which made everything much easier.  When we got to the Parliament Building, we ended up waiting for over an hour in the cold and rain for a ticket but it was totally worth it.  This is one of the most beautiful and famous Parliament Buildings in Europe.  There were beautiful paintings, gold, and statues everywhere. I also got to see the Crown of Hungary which was amazing.  Here’s just a small sample of how beautiful it is:

After the Parliament building, David and I got dinner and decided to walk around the city in the evening.  Budapest is 10x’s more beautiful at night when all of the buildings are lit up. We went all over, seeing things like Fisherman’s Bastion and the St. Stephen’s Basilica and even walked across one of the bridges over the Danube.  We sadly had to leave early the next day, but I’m really happy I got to see most of the city.  Budapest really is amazing!

A Second Week Gone By

Guten Tag!

I've been in Vienna for two weeks already and I can't believe how fast time has flown! In six weeks I'll be traveling to Marburg for my actual semester to begin.  I'm hoping to do a little bit of traveling before I leave while I'm so close to so many places.  At the top of my list of places to visit are Prague and Budapest.  I'm also close to Salzburg and Venice so I'll hopefully be able to visit them too sometime. 

Along with my German course here, I'm also taking a class on the history of Vienna.  Our teacher is historian so she took us around the center of the city and showed us some of the best places to eat or to visit.  Apparently the first chocolate cake in the world was served at a hotel in Vienna! You can still order the original cake from the hotel so I will definitely be making a stop there sometime soon.  I also didn't know that Vienna also has a world-renowned riding school known as the Spanish Riding School.  Apparently they put on a lot of amazing shows so I'm hoping I'll see that too.

For my history class I am also required to visit 8 different museums in the city.  There are dozens of museums throughout the city so this requirement is really easy (and fun!) to fill.  This week I went to the Art History Museum and the Natural History Museum.  These are two of the biggest and most famous museums in the city.  The Art History Museum is filled with paintings from the Renaissance, has a display of coins from throughout time, and also has a large collection of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities.  It was amazing because I got to see paintings by Rembrandt, Pieter Bruegel, and even one by Raphael.  I loved the Greek, Roman, and Egyptians collections too.  I also thought the Natural History Museum was amazing too.  This museum had a collection of rocks, minerals, and precious stones that literally filled up around 5 rooms!  They also had a special exhibit on early hominids and humans so I was in heaven! My favorite part was their program that turns people into early hominids.  Here's what I would look like as an Australopithecus africanus:

Anyways, I've been doing a lot of shopping this week too.  This past weekend I went to a mall just outside of the city called G3.  It was a pretty big mall with a lot of shops (most of which I didn't recognize) and places to eat.  The malls main store was called Primark.  It sells pretty cheap clothing that's fashionable so it's extremely popular.  I didn't realize how popular it was until I got into the store. It was literally like Black Friday inside without the sales!! It was crowded with tons of people who were shoving and pushing to get what they wanted.  The line for the fitting rooms looked like it would take a half hour to get through.  This was the only crazy store though...the rest were pretty much like the stores in America.

My other favorite experience of the week was going to McDonalds for lunch.  McDonalds in Europe is 100x's better than the McDonalds in the states!  First of all, in Austria, most of the food is entirely organic.  You can definitely taste the difference too.  The stores are all updated and clean too.  One of the stores I saw even had three floors of tables you could sit and eat at.  All of the McDonalds also have a McCafe inside too.  This isn't just an option of buying a latte or other coffee house drink though...they literally have an entire bakery and coffee area you can go too!  I definitely want to see those in American McDonalds someday.  There are some small drawbacks to the McDonalds though.  The first is that you have to pay extra if you want ketchup. I LOVE ketchup so this was extremely sad for me.  The other drawback is that you can't get free refills for soft drinks.  If you want more, you have to pay for another cup. 

This weekend is probably going to be a pretty relaxing weekend for me.  I don't have many plans so I'm going to spend some time researching Budapest and Prague.  One of the members of my program, David, and I are probably going to go to one of the two cities next weekend so we've got some planning to do!  Thank you for reading my blog! I'm going to make an effort to post more often so keep checking in to see what I'm up to =)

Hallo Wien!!

Willkommen!! Danke for visiting my new blog! If you didn't know, I am studying abroad through BCA in Vienna, Austria and Marburg, Germany this semester.  I'll be spending 8 weeks in Vienna and 4 months in Germany taking classes and (hopefully) really improving my Deutsch.  I hope to keep everyone updated with what I've been doing through this blog so please enjoy :)

Traveling to Vienna was a hectic and extremely nerve-wracking. First, I took a 7 hour flight to Copenhagen in which I lost my entire night of sleep due to the time difference, turbulence, and a very upset child.  I arrived around 7 at the airport on Sunday (it was 1 am back in PA) and had to wait around for three hours for my next flight to Vienna.  I was exhausted by the time I got onto the plane, but I was pumped up with adrenaline to almost be there so I couldn't even sleep!

I met our program director, Kris Riggs, at the airport in Vienna along with another student in the program and we immediately bought a monthly public transportation ticket that allows us to take any of the subways and trams around Vienna.  Kris took us to our dorms to drop off our bags and then took us to the main office of IKI Wien (our international language school) where we would be taking our German classes.  Turns out, classes started the very next day...surprise! We then took a small tour of Vienna while trying to decide where to have dinner.  By then it was around 2 in the afternoon (around 8 in the morning in PA) and I had gotten no sleep.  I was in a bit of a daze walking around Vienna, but I was amazed at how beautiful all of the buildings were.  There were gothic churches next to modern buildings and many small artistic touches here and there.  We tried to find a traditional Viennese restaurant, but many were closed on Sunday or wouldn't accept credit or bank cards.  One was even closed to prepare for a Super Bowl party.  We ended up at an Indian restaurant and so my first meal in Vienna was a dish with spinach and lamb. 

By the time I actually got to my room around 6, I almost immediately wanted to fall into my bed but I had to unpack. My dorm has a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and a pretty spacious bedroom with two beds. I'm sharing my room with a girl from South Korea who is also attending IKI. She was extremely helpful with all of my questions, especially when I attempted to make my bed.  Turns out that in Europe, people put a sheet around their comforter kinda like a pillow and then have only one sheet to cover the mattress.  It took me a good 15 minutes to figure it out!  I finally got to sleep around 8:30 ( I had not slept for over 24 hours) and had the best night of sleep I've ever had.

For the past two days, I've been going to Deutsch class from 9-12 and then exploring the area, trying to buy school supplies, buy groceries, and also run errands.  I've gotten lost twice so far, but the Viennese are extremely helpful and very nice to foreigners so I haven't been too stressed.  Most of them speak a little bit of English, but I've been trying to speak only in Deutsch for practice.  I've also mastered the U-Bahn (subway) system these past few days.  All of the public transportation is efficient and definitely the quickest way around. 

So far, I love Vienna!  I'm hoping I'll find some time to explore more of the city this week :)