Hungary, check.

So last week, one of roommates, Molly, decided to hope of to Madrid to visit some friends from highschool, so I made the suggestion to my two other roomies that we should go somewhere, so as to not spend another weekend sitting around the apartment, catching up sleep. We decided on Budapest, which is a only a short 3-hour train ride from Vienna. So we booked the train on Wednesday, the hostel on Thursday night, and left the city just after noon on Friday.

So when we arrived at the train station in Budapest, there were people EVERYWHERE, all pushing and shoving and speaking in a language we can no where near understand. After about 20 minutes of pure confusion, we recognize the fact that we need to change money, which was strange, seeing as a Hungarian Forint is about 300 to 1 euro--trying to calculate bills and what not in your head with numbers that high was just a weird experience. Now that we had the right currency, we found our way to the Metro, and then wandered some side streets, finally finding our hostel, which turned out to be great! Our "room" was basically bigger then our apartment, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen and free internet. After the cheapest and most delicious and large meal in a while (everything in Budapest was about half the price it is here in Vienna), my travel partners immediately made use of this free internet access business, while I rummaged through the bookshelves in the common room, finding a "Best of Eastern Europe" book by my new favorite travel writer and person, Rick Steves. After staying up for a while reading it, I had our whole next day planned out. We started out eating breakfast in

a cafe that is apparently "the place to be seen" in Budapest. It looked pretty fancy, and touristy, so I was a little nervous that it 

would be expensive, but it was actually way cheaper than any cafe of the caliber in Vienna. I had this chocolate croissant that was literally the size of my face, not only topped but filled with

 chocolate, and it was about 0,90 euro. We then proceeded to walk down the Vacy Utca, basically the shopping street where everyone rips you off, so you don't buy anything. The street ended in the Great Hall market, which was 3 floors--one with all kinds of spices, fruits and veggies, one with souvenirs, and another with tanks full of still-swimming fish and lot's of hanging slabs of unidentifiable meat. 

Leaving he market, we crossed from the Pest side of the Danube (the same river that runs through Vienna) to Buda. Rick Steves was sure to explain that Budapest was once 3 different

cities, Buda, Obuda, and Pest--all their powers combining to create what it is today. From here, 

we went inside of a church that was built inside of a cave, saw many statues (Like this one here of St. Steven), and climbed lots of stairs up all of the hills in Buda. We then made our way to Castle Hill, where several lines of rulers lived over the last few hundred years. We'd been 

walking around for nearly 5 hours by this point, so we sat to enjoy yet another coffee and then proceeded to explore some the residential streets one the other side of Castle Hill. By this time, the sun was getting low in the sky, so we decided to start making our way back to the hostel so as to take a little nap and inquire from the reception a good place to eat dinner. Walking down the river walk to Budapest's most famous "Chain Bridge", I look around at all the landmarks and realize that they've started turning all of the lights on, and according to all the books I'd read and all of my friend's who'd  already been here, Budapest at night is a MUST SEE. So we start walking across this beautiful bridge, and the sky is getting darker and darker and more and more lights are turning on and I am just in complete awe. I just love the nighttime, is what I've realized, especially seeing the lights from a city. It took us nearly an hour to cross this relatively short bridge because I kept stopping to just admire everything and take it all in. Needless to say, it was a great little ending to our really great day of exploring.

The next day, we ventured out down Andrassy utca--one of the busiest streets in Budapest--and found a nice cafe where once again, everything was extremely cheap. The total was less than 10 Euro for the three of us. After breakfast, we hopped on the oldest metro on 

the continent (thank you Rick Steves) and went down to City Park, where there was yet another castle, Hero's Square, and probably miles of winding paths through trees and fountains and a stand after stand of snacks--we choose giant pretzels and mulled wine to warm up a little.

While we had a great time exploring a new city, and I know I've said this before, but it's always really great coming home to Vienna...I like being able to call Vienna home--at least for the time being. 

Another Reason to Love Vienna...

Despite yesterday being Fashing (aka Carnival, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras...whichever you prefer) and having stayed out much too late on a Tuesday, a few friends and I decided that we wanted to go to an opera tonight, Carmen. I had class until six, so the plan was my friends would get in line for the tickets, then I would just walk the 5 minutes from IES to the Staatsoper building, just in time for the ticket booth to open. But as I left class, my friends called to inform that tonight was opening night for Carmen, so the line was out the door and around the block--which is not particularly ideal when standing tickets are first-come-first-serve. Now, perhaps in a normal city, we may have just had to have given up at this point, perhaps settling for a quiet dinner at our favorite restaurant, our maybe meeting up with friends for Happy Hour at our new favorite bar, but no. This is Vienna, beautiful classical music is being played even from the OperToilette in an U-Bahn station. So walking past the Staatsoper a few blocks, I arrive at the MusikVerein, a concert hall for all kinds of music (I'm going there for a jazz festival in March). Tonight there was a performance by the Vienna Symphony, and even though the show was starting in less than an hour, we got standing room tickets for 5 euro. We then proceeded to eat a picnic dinner of sandwiches, chips, and cookies on the front steps of the building, enjoying the relative "warmth" of the day--still needing to warm our hands after every few bites. 

After checking our coats and backpacks, we made our way to the standing section, which was basically just a little lobby at the back of the concert hall with a gate up to my shoulders blocking us cheap-o's from getting to the seats out on the floor. I then made small talk with the guy standing next to me after he asked me to tell them what the German words on his ticket were--which I could do quite easily! He was from China, studying economics in Paris for the year, spending a few days here in Vienna. I was sure to tell him to go the Belvedere and Cafe Central...but who knows if he'll remember. But anyways, the symphony first played Haydn, then there was a French Horn concierto, and finally one of Beethoven's symphonies...#3 something or other.  Somewhere during the piece, it dawned on me how great it was that we had started out the evening with planning on an opera, but when that didn't work out, we could just hop on over this beautiful concert hall and listen to some absolutely wonderful music for so little money. It really just gave me a whole new appreciation of Vienna, and it's just one more thing to add to me growing list of "loves" in the city.

This last weekend, I went to Budapest, in Hungary. So hopefully I will get to telling you about that soon!

Ice Skating with 4th Graders...

So on the first day of our orientation in Deutschlandsberg, a woman named Heidi informs us that she is in charge of the Teaching Internships at IES Vienna. Now, I had never heard of such thing because I apparently didn't read any of my incoming packets from the program (which can be proven by the fact that I turned in nearly every form in late), but this woman gave such a great pitch about her program, promising to be sure to get us out of our comfort zones, that I figured I would interview, and see if I had a chance. Two weeks ago, I finally heard back, and I did indeed get the internship. Seeing as I have no teaching experience in a school setting (I'm not sure the North Woods counts) and cannot speak German, I was/still am a little nervous. Last week, I was introduced to the teacher I will be working with, Ursi--short for Ursula. She teaches computer classes and the 4th grade at the Lutherschule---a private Lutheran school, attached to the church. Ursi was very insistent that the kids, and herself, are so excited to have me, and that the really find it a privilege to have a native English speaker in the classroom.
Today was my first real day of the internship, though I'm not sure I can call it ''teaching'' because I went ice skating for 2 hours! Pretty much the only teaching I felt like I did was showing a few girls how to skate backwards and teach all the crazy ten-year-old boys that they were throwing ''snowballs''--which the promptly learned and would call out Christy! so I would turn around and they would say snowball! and throw it at me. I will just go ahead and take this as a sign of affection. I also received many hugs and 'Hello's' and 'My name is some crazy Austrian name I don't understand'. I had a really great time, the kids are so sweet and eager to learn new words and find out about me ('What do you love color?'). One little girl named Jessie (I think) even gave me her pink fuzzy hat with devil horns to wear so I wouldn't get snow in my hair--she had an extra hat, so it was okay.
The biggest difference I've noticed in their school system so far is that these kids stay together throughout all of their pre-university schooling, meaning that these kids have already been in the same class with each other for the last 5 years. This makes them all very close, and they all seem to be friends with everyone else--no one gets excluded and they are always willing to help each other out. You can just tell, even after spending a few hours with them, that there is bond among these kids that I never felt in grade school.
I'm glad I decided to do this internship--I am still a little nervous about it, because I am unsure of what to expect, but Ursi is so hopeful and is giving me lots of tidbits about being a teacher. I'm not sure when I started feeling this, but I've recently felt that teaching could be something I might be very interested in, so I think that this semester will prove very helpful in me deciding just what it is I want to be when I grow up. Banker? Teacher? Austrian ski bum? The next Ben Bernanke according to JJ...

Deutschland!

So our German intensive courses ended the last week in January, and we had a break last week, before regular semester courses started. IES sponsored a trip to Germany, so early morning on the 1st (and by early I mean 7:45, ouch), me and 44 other students and 3 staff member from the program hopped onboard a bus. Now let me just say, traveling is quite a strange experience, especially when doing so on very little sleep. Once the bus left Vienna, I promptly fell asleep, only to wake up two hours later at the border of Austria and the Czech Republic at a rest stop resembling a mid-evil castle, complete with dragons. Probably the best part about this rest stop was the duty-free shop, complete with every flavor Milka I could ever imagine. And Milka is delicious, I'm not sure if you knew. But anyways, after leaving this fairy-tale castle, I once again fall asleep, and again, wake up completely disoriented. I feel the bus stop and hear everyone getting off--we are stopping in Prague for two hours to have lunch! Still half asleep, I stumble off the bus and start to wonder, feeling slightly like a deer in headlights. From what I saw of Prague, I liked! There were castles and cool bridges and clocks that made funny sounds at the top of the hour. This is a picture of me in the main square. Me and a few others wandered off down a series of narrow alleyways, looking for a restaurant. Now because none of us were up for experimenting with Czech food (I'll be sure to do that once I return), we settled on Italian, which was cheap and fantastic. By the time we'd finished, it was back to the bus to travel several more hours to Dresden. And of course, I fell asleep.

We arrived in Dresden around 6 o'clock that night, ate dinner in the hostel (which oddly reminded me of some sort of prison), and then me and a couple of friends located ourselves on a map, and made way on foot towards the Altstadt--the "old" part of town. I say "old" because it 80-90% of the inner-city of Dresden was destroyed in 1945, and still in the process of being rebuilt. I've decided that I really like nighttime sight-seeing, everything just looks different, and in some ways more beautiful at night. 

The next day, we had a bus tour of Dresden, and went all over the city, seeing summer palaces, chasing ducks, and stopping in world famous cheese shops (AMAZING!). That was also the night of the Super Bowl, so IES took over a pub in the new section of town and started the show at midnight. Unwilling to stay up until 4am, I apparently missed an exciting ending! 

Monday, we left Dresden for Berlin, stopping for a few hours in Leipzig, getting to see the burial place of Bach and a series of different churches whose names I can't quite remember. Then we had lunch in the restaurant where "Faust" is based off of...which was mildly exciting.

 Leaving Leipzig, we were in Berlin after about 2 hours. First thing we did was check into our

 hostel, which was SO much better compared to the last one. This hostel had the theme of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I was told, and there was a huge lobby to hang out in on the main floor, complete with bar, free Wi-Fi, and pool table. I was in an apartment with 6 other girls, meaning we had the luxury of having two bathrooms in our room, as opposed to in the hallway. Tuesday was the day of our Berlin bus tour, where we drove past all the landma

rks I've seen and read about in my textbooks. I think my favorite part was a stop at the Berlin Wall--some of graffiti was so impressive, and there were just layers and layers of paint. In some places where chips had fallen away, you could look close and see at least 10 layers of old 

paintings. We also went to a Holocaust memorial towards the

 center of town. It was a series of tall, gray, concrete boxes, some 

2,000 of them, in rows on uneven ground. Walking through the memorial, the designer wanted to create the illusion of losing the ground beneath you, which I found to be the feeling I got when we were in there.  After the bus tour was over, a small group of us went on a little walking tour and saw the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and went up in the dome of the Parliament building, getting an aerial view of all of Berlin. 

The next few days were filled with classical music concerts, international film festivals, fruit-infused vodka tasting (who knew they made ginger?), sight-seeing and more sight-seeing. However much I enjoyed Berlin, I was very glad when we got back to Vienna on Sunday (after a grueling 10-hour bus ride). It's funny, but it feels a little bit like home!