Tour of Dürergasse 1812, Sick Days, First Lesson, German Finals, Staying Full in Hungary and That Money We Hate...

So once again, it's been a while since I updated. This last week was the last week of German intensive, so it was very busy! But here we go! This post covers a tour of my apartment (finally), my first lesson, German finals and our trip to Budapest, Hungary!

Eine Melange bitte!

Sonntag 5 September: This morning I went to church. I got all dressed up and headed to St. Augustin with Marisa and Meg. We ran into Zan on the way there so we all sat together. The church was so amazing, I didn't bring my camera, because who brings their camera to church? Apparently everyone. There were people just walking around during the mass taking pictures all over the place, tourist groups were walking by, it was very strange. I always feel pretty out of place when I go to Catholic churches, I guess just because I don't really know what to do and when to do it, but I felt really out of place when I didn't really know what to do since everything was in German. There was a lot of sitting and standing. Sometimes you would stand up and they would say one word and you would sit down. It was very interesting. It was super cool though because there is an orchestra and choir and the music was really amazing! After that, Marisa and I went to McDonalds. (We figure it's a pretty big part of the culture here so we should explore it and it's different here) I got a cheeseburger (my first McDondalds cheese burger in probably six years!) with fries and a coke. It tasted really different than in the states. Very real. The fries tasted like potatoes. Marisa got these things called potato rounds that were really good! They're kind of like flattened curly fries and you dip them in sour cream. After lunch we decided to find a cafe to do homework at. We found a place near our house called "Phil". It's a cafe and book store and seeing how I had over three hours of homework, it was perfect. I ordered a melange, (half coffee, half steamed milk). It's gotten to be my coffee drink of choice here. Coffee is just so amazing in Vienna. Anywhere you go, it's incredible! So the rest of the day was pretty much devoted to homework. Oh ya, I also made sushi today. Which despite not having everything like it is at home, turned out pretty good!

The triple. This is where Katie, Marisa and Elizabeth live.

Montag 6 September: Today I woke up so sick, but came home right after class and slept for a long time. The maid came today. We were all kind of confused about what day and when she comes. Turns out it's every other Monday in the morning. Now that the apartment is clean, I thought it would be a good time to take pictures, since I still haven't done that. So here is the virtual tour of Dürergasse 18, number 12:

This is my and Meg's room, mine is the right side.

Here's the living room, as you can see we've got a puzzle going.

Our kitchen, with Elizabeth and Lauren making lunch.

This is our bathroom, with our cute little cubbies!

This is Emily and Lauren's room.

My favorite part of the kitchen, the Obama magnet on the fridge! (It came that way :) )

Dienstag 7 September: Today I woke up and couldn't talk or move, so I stayed home. I slept until 3:00 and Ben brought me my homework. I left the house to register for classes and buy more orange juice (I drank 3 L of Orange juice today) and then I did my homework and went back to bed. That was about it for today.

There was a brochure of a rat at the Rathaus... Kind of funny.

Mittwoch 8 September: I still felt pretty bad when I woke up today, but my German class had a field trip to the Rathaus today, so I felt like it was pretty important for me to go. We had a tour and the entire tour was in German... So I didn't really understand most of it. It was really exciting whenever there was something that I understood though! Our final for German is on Friday so I started studying today. Emily made all of the roommates curry chicken today for dinner and that was really good.

One thing I understood is 10 people can fit in this chandelier!

There is a flag for each state, which we now know from our quiz.

The ballroom, for waltzing obviously.

The ceiling of every room was amazing!

Everything here is just so amazing!

Courtyard. It was raining a lot today.

Donnerstag 9 September: Today I woke up and felt so much better! Today was such a busy day! I called my teacher last night to see when I should have a lesson, his answer: "Tomorrow!" So today I had my first lesson. It was really good. It was two hours long and we spent one hour on the first line of my sonata alone. He's demanding, but nice about it so I think it will be good. Funny story, so I allowed myself an hour to get to the lesson since I've never been there. It took fifteen minutes. He lives by this huge park, I've never seen so many kids playing at a park before! It was incredible! So I decided to go to Billa (the grocery store) and get an apple and sit in the park and wait for my lesson. Well today at Billa with every purchase, you got a free apple, so I bought an apple, then I got a free apple... It was pretty funny. Then I met my Austrian buddy today also. Her name is Krisztina. She is so cool! I like her so much! We went to a traditional Viennese cafe and had coffee and talked about music and movies and culture for almost three hours! It was so much fun. We mostly spoke in English this time, but next time we're going to try German. I'm so excited to get to know someone who lives here! Then I went home and studied a lot.

Our little hostel room! It was so nice!

The strange but amazing instrument.

Our home made Hungarian dinner.

Literally a hole in the wall.

Freitag 10 September: German finals today. It wasn't so bad. Just very long, but I think I probably did alright. At 1:50 our train to Budapest left. I went with Kristin, Marisa and Emily. Three hours later, we made it to Budapest. (I was really sad because they didn't even check our passports or anything, so according to my passport I've never been to Hungary, but I have!) It was pouring rain when we got there, but luckily we all brought umbrellas. The first thing we did was go to the atm to take out some Hungarian money which is called Forint. (And we hate it) Kristin went first and thought she did the math right, but ended up taking out the equivalent of about 600 US dollars. I ended up taking out about 30 US dollars, which proved not to be enough, but I was able to buy some from Kristin. 1 US dollar = 223.264121 Hungarian Forints. Not the easiest conversion... We went and checked into our hostel. Hostel Adagio! It was so cute. It was an apartment and there were four rooms, one big dorm and then a few private rooms. We got a private room and it was really nice. Marisa has the Let's Go Europe book so we followed that a lot. We found a little hole in the wall place to eat dinner where there is no menu, you just go and this family cooks you a traditional Hungarian home cooked meal. There was also live music! There was this instrument that looked like a piano and harp combined, but the strings are hit with mallets! It sounds so amazing! For dinner we had this pasta with some sort of really good oil and then bits of steak and sausage. It was really really good. And then we each got a beer. It got pretty awkward towards the end though, these two violinists came and tried to sell us their cd. Then when we left they were like "Ciao Baby, ciao, sex" It was just so weird. But everything else was good. When we went back to the hostel there was a cute couple our age from Wales. They asked us if we wanted to go out with them to meet up with some other people staying at the hostel from Belgium. (It was so great because most of the people working at/staying at the hostel spoke English!) So we went with them and we went to this super intense club! It was three floors and huge. You had to pay a few dollars to get in then had to go through this labrynth of coat rooms and bars and other rooms and there were all these rules about where you could and couldn't go if you had a jacket or a bag and it was just so confusing and everything was so expensive and there were so many people there we couldn't really find the Belgians! Sara (the girl from Wales) found one, but he didn't stay long and it was just so crowded! The US Open was playing on a big screen near the dancing room, so I thought that was pretty funny! It's so weird how just a three hour train ride away from Vienna can be so different! Everyone at this club was dressed like they were going out at the Jersey shore, it was so different from what we've become used to in Vienna! Then we left this place to find a backpacker bar that we read about in the travel book. We walked all around and could not find it! We finally ended up at some random bar (which oddly enough was also playing the US Open) and played billiards. We went back to the hostel around 2 and slept like babies!

The inside of the antique subway car

The outside of the antique Subway ca

Samstag 11 September:

The location of Hostel Adagio.

Crepe and shake. This milkshake brings all the boys to the yard!

Welcome to the Castle District.

Parlament and the view from the Castles.

Walking around aimlessly. Everything is so beautiful!

Marisa and Kristin walking next to the Danube.

Walking across the bridge over the Danube.

The Danube, separating Buda on the left and Pest on the right.

The triathlon

The hummace bar (pre-hummace)

Are you HUNGARY for Hannah Montana funyons?

We woke up today in our lovely hostel ready to do more in Budapest. We stayed on the Pest side so we decided to go to Buda today. We took the subway which was just crazy! It looked like we were getting into this antique box that went speeding around underground! Once again, just very different from Vienna. We ate at this amazing crepe place we read about. It's open 24 hours a day and was really cheap! I got an apple and poppy crepe and then to drink a cherry and cinnamon milk shake! It was so good! So sososososososo tasty! Needless to say, we were not going hungry in Hungary. We decided to go to the castle district from there. We walked all around just looking at all the buildings and architecture of churches and castles in Buda. It finally stopped raining, which was great. It was very touristy in this area but it was just so incredibly beautiful! We decided to walk back to the hostel so we could walk across the bridge over the Danube. I'm so glad we walked, we got to see so much of the city! We stopped in a second hand store to buy some socks to change into on the train since all of our feet were soaked. The ones I got are grey and say in very colorful letters "OFF RUN". They're awesome! The lady that worked there was super sweet and was so excited to speak English with us. It occurred to me today that this is the first time that I've visited another country where I had literally no clue about the language spoken. I've been to Argentina, Spain and Austria and I've taken Spanish and German in school. But here, I don't know a single word in Hungarian, and even though some people speak English, not everyone does. That was kind of a weird realization. Anyway going back to the bridge. As we neared the bridge it seemed like some sort of event was going on. It was some sort of world wide traithlon! They were on the bike portion. There were so many people there so we waited and watched for a bit. It's just so crazy how there is so much going on in a city that you might not even be aware of. We kept walking on the Pest side for a long time looking at everything and decided for lunch to go to a hummace bar that we read about in the book. (Yes we really used that book!) It was incredible! SO good! (We ate well in Hungary, so well!) I got a falafel pita with hummace. Marisa got lafa bread that tasted like magic so I ate a lot of that too. We walked around a little more, but stores close really early in Budapest on Saturdays and everyone was pretty tired so we decided to head back to Vienna. We went to the train station and got some postcards and I got a scarf. We were going to take the 5:10 train, but we ended up hoping on a 4:10 train that we had to make a transfer on. Literally a minute after we got on the train it took off. I wrote my postcards and slept some. Then we transferred trains and made it back to Vienna! It was interesting coming back to Vienna, it really feels like coming home! We said goodbye to Kristin who will be leaving tomorrow for a week in Poland by herself! I hope she has a good time and is safe! We had a lot of fun on our Budapest adventure. Tomorrow we leave at 7:20 to catch a bus to Bratislava to catch our flight to Paris!