Like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow

My blog is majorly lacking in creative titles for each post. I wish I could think of more enticing words to label these posts, but it has just not been in the cards recently. This post, although quoting Katy Perry lyrics is not really creative, will attempt to have some sort of unifying theme.

I.

This past weekend I spent time in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The city was amazing. I fell in love with the way that it looked at night. It was darker and dirtier than Vienna and had much more obvious signs of the remnants of communism. It had a broken down charm that I just could not get over.

II.

When the firework video debuted so many people asked me if I had seen it. I had seen a clip on MTV between shows and so I told everyone that I had seen it. I did not realize what I was missing when I told them this. Take a quick look at the first few seconds of the video

That is right! The video is shot in Budapest. I hope that you were able to gather that by the specific pictures I posted from my trip. Preston, with whom I traveled to Budapest, sent me the link the day we got back. I could not believe it. It was strangely exciting.

III.

There was a Katy Perry concert at the big concert hall that is about three blocks from my residence in Vienna on the Saturday that I was gone. SO WEIRD the connections to all of these happenings.

IV.

Katy Perry's single Firework I think is one of the few truly positive and uplifting songs to come out in quite some time (perhaps even since Christina Aguilera's Beautiful). My favorite lyric of the song says "like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow." Since the first time I heard this song those lyrics have stuck with me.

I feel that on this current adventure/trip/life that I am living that my heart is truly glowing. I am in a place that has opened my eyes, my heart, and my mind. I am so fortunate to be surrounded by the people that I am and to have the opportunities to learn so much about them. Traveling to countries outside of your home country could be scary I suppose but I have felt so comfortable for the entire month that I have been gone. It is very strange not being able to speak the language here but I am at peace with that. When I go to other countries (such as Hungary) I do not feel as bad about not knowing that language, but when I am in Austria I still sometimes feel guilty for not knowing more German.

Besides the big experiences I am having, there are little things that still make my heart glow

- Getting a package in the mail from my parents. It had some of my clothes and some spices for cooking and my pair of Sperry's. When I received it yesterday I put on my sperry's a grey t shirt and my cut off blue jeans. As weird as it sounds, I felt so at home.

-I purchased some waffles at the Penny Markt the other day and heated them up this morning. I didn't have any syrup, but when I took my first bite I found them to be oddly sweet. They were deleicious and it was just really nice to eat them

-I started class on tuesday. So far I have enjoyed the two that I have attended and think that they will be very beneficial to me

-The weather is supposed to get to 40 degrees today

- I am going to Venice, Italy this weekend for their Carneval festival

V.

One more thing that I must add. I do not usually play video games online. Ever. Until last weekend. I encourage you all to play it a few times. It is nothing short of majestic!! Also, this song played during the game, definitely added to the "list of things that make my heart glow".

http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Break the law before breaking it up

I will do my best to recap the past 10 days-- It probably would not be hard to blog more often, I just don't really think about it.. so here we go

Feb 14- Happy Valentine's Day! Except that consists of me still laying in bed. It is different having a cold in the cold. I felt that if I went outside I would just die, so I stayed in.

Feb 15- I drag myself out of bed, out of Haus Erasmus and back to WU (the university). We heard an interesting lecture from one of the professors concerning the history and political structure of Austria. One of the most interesting things to me was the identity of European nations before and after both of the world wars. Austria was once part of Germany but somehow became this other area but never considered itself necessarily a separate entity from Germany. After the second world war the decided it was time to make the distinction. This was my understanding, it is probably a little off, but none the less, it was interesting to hear this.

My group of the program was scheduled to go to the Parliament building that day. We were allowed in three of the different conference room, each of the progressively more impressive. I did not have my camera with me, but this is a picture of the third and most architecturally interesting room that we saw.

Feb 16- I went to Erste Bank and opened an account. I don't remember what I did for the remainder of the day. Probably explored?

Feb 17- Went back to the bank for a minute to ask a question and then went straight to the United Nations building. We went through some janky form of security booth. The building was very modern and not very attractive. We saw a few conference rooms and that was about it. I did learn more about the purpose of the UN and how participation varies by country.

Feb 18- This was our last day of the OK program. We went to a theater called Burgkino to see the movie The Third Man, which is set in Vienna. It was an older movie, but it was cool to see the city then and compare it to what we see now. The ferris wheel at Prater was in one important scene of the movie and that was cool because the same wheel is still up in the theme park today. To read more about the movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/).

At 8pm we went out to a bar/pub called Charlie P's where they had fingers foods for us. These finger foods were sandwhiches and french fries. The place was packed with people from the program and it was fun to meet people that I had not met before and also see those that I had been hanging out with already.

Feb 19- A few of my friends here had not seen Black Swan so we decided to go back to Burgkino to see the movie. Once we paid for our ticket, which is a ticket for a designated seat, we sat down and then Alex I did not know if we had paid for the German showing or the original version. Luckily, it was the original..

Later that night I met up with my friend Kambis for a drink at a place called the Frei Raum on Mariahilferstrasse and then walked around the city centre. Vienna is such a beautiful city, especially at night.

Feb 20- A group of us went to a cafe with the intentions of doing some leisure reading. Once we got there it was too dark to read so we all just hung out and ate

Feb 21- Alex and Andrew and I decided to take an adventure. We jumped on a tram and headed across town. We had no plans and decided to get off on the south side of town. As we walked along the streets we noticed many of the embassy buildings. After a few minutes of walking we went through a little gate and stumbled upon this little beauty

By little I mean palace and by beauty I mean out of this world. This is the Belvedere Palace. Even though the gardens were not in bloom they were spectacular to look at. I cannot wait to go back when it warms up.

Feb 22- Went to the school with my friend Drew and found some cool street art. No one else was awake so we went home to gather more troops and then headed of the the Naschmarkt. They had dream catchers!! and giant grapes!!

Currently I am trying to dry my laundry and listen to Cat Stevens. I thought drying everything on the balcony was a great idea until I remembered it was 7 degrees below freezing. Oooppsss

The Summer Residence

Feb 9- Schonbrunn Castle: Summer home to many of the leaders of the Holy Roman Empire

Fun Fact- Marie Antoinette lived in this castle. She is Austrian and was originally named Marie Antonia, but changed her name to the French counterpart upon her marriage to Dauphin Louis of France. She was married at age 14 and was the 15th of 16 children!

Feb 10- City Tour of Vienna: Three hour tour on foot of the city of Vienna. We began our walk at the U Bahn (untergrundbahn/ subway) Schwedenplatz location. We wound around the 1st disrict, which is the city centre, and saw various buildings and historic places. My favorite building was the Hofburg Palace, which was the winter residence of those in power. Though I think I would prefer the sprawling gardens on Schonbrunn, the Hofburg had quite impressive architecture.

Feb 11- My group took a tour to the Donauturm Tower. This tower is located a bit out of the city on the northwest part of town jsut past the Danube River. The tower is one of the highest points in Vienna and therefore lends itself to incredible sights of the city. From the top we were able to see the giant power plant next to our university (sounds unappealing, but it looks like something straight out of the Willie Wonka movie). It was difficult to recognize some of the buildings from so far away, but it was really nice to see some of the residential areas that were beneath the tower. They houses are much more colorful than those in America, but still tasteful. There also seemed to be more space/bigger lots between the houses, but that could have been just the area I was looking at. From this height I was now able to get a good view of the mountains and hills that surround Vienna and they were so beautiful. This made me so excited for the weather to warm up so I can go hiking.

Feb 12- Linz: Yesterday I went to Linz. Here, we took a tour of the steel factory and the a tour of a future technology museum. It would have been cool if I was into steel factories or future technology museums, but alas, I am not. The day was not a total bore though. At lunch, we tried a new type of fruit. It was really tart but delicious. Turns out it is an Israeli fruit and is named syphilis. It made for a good joke because we had each passed it on to take a bite, and has therefore all given each other syphilis. Ok, kind of gross, but still funny.

Feb 13- Benadryl: my best friend for the day. Not feeling to well so I am going to take it easy.

Exhausted

Quick Update

Vienna is great at night. A huge group of Americans went out to watch the Superbowl on Sunday.

I have made friends from lots of different countries and they are really fun to hang out with.

Graz trip was beautiful.

Today I will take a trip to the Schonbrunn Castle. I think I visited this site when I was here in 1999, but this time will be great.

I reached a point of delirium yesterday and laughed for 3 hours straight. Sleep schedule may still be a bit off? Ooops

updates

-sometimes my google is defaulted to german

-I legally purchased a bottle of wine last night

-Today was the first day of our orientation program.

-There were way too many American there

-I went on a solo adventure today. No one who knows me should be surprised to know at the market I bought two oranges and a litre of orange juice

-I also bought two apples this morning

so far...

-I have discovered the Vienna is awesome

-That I definitely should have learned German- more ordering complications today

-The Billa, basically a convenience grocery store, that is in block of my residence is a total life saver.

-By life saver I mean I buy an apple every morning and they have 1.99euro bottles of good wine

Tomorrow my group will take its first trip. We will be going to the city of Graz. It is 2.5 hours from Vienna. We will see some of the city and ultimately tour a chocolate factory. Nomz. Pictures to come, for sure!

cathedrals, not churches

Today was my first full day in Vienna. First I will back track and catch up on yesterday.

Konrad picked Alex and I up from the airport around noon. He is completely awesome and so helpful. We bought two subway tickets and headed to Haus Erasmus. After we checked in we had to go register with the city that we will be living in our district. Next we rode to the university to try to get out student IDs and ultimately obtain discounted subway tickets. Admin office is closed. We then came back to Erasmus, said goodbye to Konrad, and headed to our rooms. I feel asleep at 7pm Vienna time, noon home time. I proceeded to sleep for 14 hours, getting up once around 530am for about 15 minutes. It was a drowsy, disoriented introduction to the city, but extremely helpful nonetheless.

Wednesday. At least I think it is Wednesday. I would have never guessed that but indeed that is what the calendar reads. I managed to get myself out of bed around 10am. Alex and I went back to the University to get our id cards. We cannot get these until Monday. Cool. We now use the hour we have left on our 24 subway card to make our way down the U4 to the outer ring of the city centre.

Once we left the sub station we began to walk aimlessly through the streets. Vienna is amazing because no matter where you are going there is always something to see. The buildings are hundreds of years old. The intricate designs of one building could easily keep me occupied for half of an hour.

To sum it up in less words, we wandered around the eastern part of the ring, stumbling upon beautiful buildings that we had no idea their purpose, and meandering through the turning streets to find churches that peeked over the rooftops. We went into St. Stephan Cathedral, which I felt resembled the interior of Notre Dame. These are also 7 year old memories of Notre Dame, so I'm not sure how close the structures actually were.

This lion head was at the base of a tower that stood in front of an intense building. We could not figure out what it was, but had a Latin phrase written under a double headed eagle.

Outside of St. Stephans Cathedral

We decided to go to a coffee shop to get something to warm up with. I ended up ordering a hot chocolate, which I wanted, and a chocolate cake, which I didn't necessarily want. At first we tried to order at the bar and the lady told us to sit down. When she came to take our order I obviously was not communicating the word pastry well enough so I said dessert. She then asked if I wanted chocolate cake. I said no. She repeated the same question. I didn't know what to do, so I ordered the cake. SHOULD HAVE LEARNED GERMAN. The cake was delicious but I cannot keep ordering things I don't want because I don't know how to communicate.

Later on, while looking extremely touristy with my nose in a map, a boy on a biked stopped and asked if we needed help. Jacob, I believe just wanted to practice his english, but was extremely helpful. I told him that we had already seen St. Stephan's church and he quickly noted that is was not a church. In Vienna they have cathedrals. Churches are the buildings we have in America. Vienna definitely has cathedrals.

Insert around three hours of walking in awe of architecture.

Once we arrived back at home my roommate arrived. Her name is Jessica, she is from Canada, and she is pretty cool. Schnitzelhaus for dinner and then mingling with the others in the building ended the night. Getting extremely tired now.

Schiphol

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport- Gratuitous thanks for your 1 hour of free wifi.

I will take advantage of the remainder of my hour to post about my travels so far. The plane from Houston to Amsterdam was at about half capacity. Half capacity; sucks for the airlines, great for me. I moved to an empty row and slept about half of the way over here.

Once I woke up we were nearing the coast of Ireland. Despite the fact it was pitch black outside, I was able to make out a little bit of the coast by the small bunches of light. It was absolutely beautiful. We then crossed over Dublin. The lights from the city took up quite a bit of room, but it was hard to tell how big the city was because I had no idea at what altitude we were flying.

Once we landed in Amsterdam we (Alex and I) had to make quite a trek across the airport to get to our next gate. This is by far the most amazing airport I have ever been to.

1) It is huge

2) There are so many nice shops throughout the entire building

3) There are flowers everywhere. I think it must somehow be tied to Holland?

4) There are all sorts of art installments; things in showcase windows as well as giant teacups that (Disney Style) that serve as tables at one of the cafes

5) The people! There are so many different accents and languages spoken. It is amazing, and beautiful, and just plain great.

So far I have spent 2.9 euro. I bought a bottle of water. Expensive, but it was wet and that is what I needed. I board in 20 minutes for Vienna.

FINGERS CROSSED!

p.s. my google homepage is in another language