Vienna

Early Friday morning, we left for the university sponsored excursion to Vienna, and a lot of interesting things happened that would take FOREVER to write about, so I will refer you to Krista's blog for most of the first day.

After morning Mass, we were led on a tour - I won't be able to tell you very many interesting facts about Vienna though, since I couldn't hear most of what was being said. 

This was the big difference between Vienna and Salzburg for me - Salzburg is, in a way, more interesting for me since I know "a lot" about it, but Vienna was more...immersion (I guess you could call it)

Anyways, for the first bunch of pictures, refer to Krista's blog if you want to know the general overview.

Veronica and Monika

Taking a picture of someone taking a picture of someone taking a picture of someone taking a picture. There were lots of these. 

St. Stephan's!

It has a cool tiled roof.

The other tower - basically the builders got bored and tired of Gothic architecture by the time they came around to finishing this tower, so they just stuck a dome on top and called it a day. 

The Most Expensive Street in Vienna...I think.

We gave up trying to figure out what the tour guide was saying, and instead took some more statue selfies! 

I took this picture for the guys ;)

First part of lunch - a super yummy soup that we also had in Salzburg. Someone told me the name, but I forget, and I still don't know what those noodles were made out of! 

We were walking through a random private apartment thing when we saw this.

Now on to the palace grounds...

The palace gardens!

I told her to make an interesting pose.

Cool gardens I wanted to explore

Creeping on a random citizen

Creeping on the group

Ooolala! Even Google+ noticed and decided to automatically edit it as such

D'awwwww, young love!

Upper thingy in the gardens - I was the only one who walked up all the way

Vienna! The palace looks "small" from here, but it has around 3300 rooms!!

Krista saw her doppelganger at the palace!

Some weird street food composed of spicy-ish chicken stuff, rice, onions, tomatoes and chopped up lettuce.

So, the funny story behind my supper Friday night; the whole group was really hungry after walking around the palace grounds and so we walked to a street with a lot of food places, but no one could agree on where to eat. We eventually decided that each person should just go where they wanted, and then meet back at the designated area.
A couple people got some Chinese food, some had a sandwich already packed, and some went to the Spar. I got some chocolate milk at the Spar, but for my supper, I wanted to get "authentic" Viennese food, so of course, I went over to one of the street vendors and ordered some food. I don't remember what it was called (Humerbox or something) but it was interesting.

Anyways, after I paid for the Humerbox thing on one side, the guy told me to go to the other side for the food. I walked over to the other side and watched another, younger Turkish looking dude prepare the meal, and I ended up talking a bit with him.
Because it would be difficult to communicate all the little expressions and misunderstandings very well, I won't even try, and I'll just give you the story in short; he asked me my name, told me his, then asked me where I was from, then asked me if I had a boyfriend (when I told him "no", he gave me a big smile and two thumbs up), then asked me for my number (I don't know what the number of my temporary phone is yet, so I told him no, to which he frowned), then asked me something else which I couldn't understand, and by that time, he had already handed me my box, so I told him I had to go back to my friends and I split.
It was quite an interesting conversation - so basically the first person to ask me out on a date wasn't American and spoke hardly any English at all.
On another semi-related note, when the FUS crowd was taking the subway to the hostel Friday afternoon, I ended up briefly talking with an older man on the subway. Everyone was super crammed in the sub, and a minute or two before we got off, the man standing next to me made a comment to me.
I didn't understand it, so I just smiled, but then he said something in the form of a question. I looked at him confused, and then he repeated himself, and upon more confused looks, said a couple other things to explain the question.
I still didn't understand him, and by that time, he was getting really confused with my confusion, so I finally just said "American", to which he laughed a little and nodded. He said his English wasn't very good, and he said something else that I couldn't understand, because it was loud in the subway car, and, as he said, his English wasn't very good.
Right before our stop, he asked me nicely what my name was, so I told him, than asked for his name (Rami), then we all flooded out of the car and that was that.
Sorta.
I was laughing about it and telling Krista about it as we were coming up the escalator to the exit, when out of nowhere, I hear someone say "CLARE PREZZIA!!" and rush at me!
It was super surprising but SUPER funny - Kristin and I were in the middle of a big rush of people heading to the exit, just hugging each other. I'm still really confused at what happened since it happened so fast, but Kristin told me to get back with my group and ran off - I didn't see her in Vienna after that, but it was still hilarious. Apparently a lot of the FUS students walking by were really confused/amused - Krista overheard one guy saying "Are they playing or are they for real?!" (I don't really know what that means either)
So basically the first day was quite eventful.

Louise!

Now for the second day.
We went to Mass at a nice Gothic church - I like Gothic okay, but I mostly just like churches with really pretty windows (which this church didn't have).

Afterwards, I walked to St. Stephan's with Krista, David, Kakha, and Maria. We ran into one of the RD's, Scott, on the way, and he took us into a nice adoration chapel in St. Stephan's. I ended up asking him if I could tag along with him for the day, because David runs his "tours" at a super fast pace, which I wasn't up for. Also, the other LCI girls weren't with the group (they were meeting up with Iryna's cousin); Kakha doesn't know much English, Krista would end up talking to David most of the time, and Maria is super nice, but very chattery and I was too tired from the night before.

So Scott and I did a holy hour, then I wandered around the church for a little bit while he went to confession. When he finished, we walked to a little cafe next to a church he really liked, and had some streduel. He got apple strudel - I know no apple strudel can beat Grandma Prezzia's, so I got "curd" strudel (tastes like cream cheese) and it was pretty tasty. Scott was really nice and paid for us both.

After we finished eating, we went to the church - I don't have the little card that I picked up from it, so I don't actually know what church is was. It was really pretty though, and there is a Servant of God resting there. I don't remember his name either, but when the Soviets were occupying Vienna, he went on the Marizell pilgrimage (more on that next week) and apparently had a vision. Mary told him to pray the Rosary a lot, and so he got the Rosary Crusade started. Some time (and TONS of Rosaries prayed) later, the Soviets left Vienna, and this is attributed to the Rosary Crusade he started.

Anyways, after that, Scott told me that he was meeting up with the other RD, Sarah, and Professor McNamara, to go to some Viennese food/flea market thing. 

Vienna is apparently some big shopping place for neighboring countries, and has a TON of stores, so the faculty peeps decided  to meet at some store called McNeals. 

And there, I spent a good hour and a half of my time in Vienna.

It was a blast.

I mean, honestly, one of my favorite things in the world is watching 30-something-year-olds try on really nice clothes. I just love it.

But for reals, aside from being very boring, it wasn't too bad - I just pulled out my homework once I realized that Scott and Professor McNamara were going to be shopping for a while. 

Finally, we left, and strolled leisurely along one of Vienna's "most expensive" streets, till we got to the market. 

The market was actually pretty interesting - I would have liked to pick up some of the cool spice/wine things for Mom and Dad, except I didn't know what most of the things were, plus I only had about two euro in cash.

I got this really tasty bread that was wrapped in bacon with cheese toasted on top - it was SO good, even though it didn't look terribly appetizing at first. 

We got through the food section and briefly browsed through the flea market section - beside not having anything really interesting, everything was SUPER overpriced, so we ditched it and started walking back to the meeting place, eventually meeting up with my history teacher, Dr. Hass. 

I kinda felt weird walking around with the faculty, but it was interesting enough (outside of the men's clothing store)

Scott is a really cool guy, but super A.D.D - it was only at the end of the day, when I was discussing the Latin Mass with Dr. Hass that he really focused and seemed interested. I don't quite understand Scott, but it was nice of him to put up with me and let me tag along. 

Professor McNamara was really nice, but honestly, I was a bit disappointed that he didn't know many Irish songs. He's really smart, so I felt pretty dumb talking to him, though he wasn't trying to make me feel dumb. 

I talked to Sarah for a while too, and she actually knows some St. Greg's guys, as she graduated from Ave Maria. She liked them, and thought the video of the guys juggling in our basement was cool.

Though he was with our group the shortest amount of time, I actually had the most fun with Dr. Hass. He's very opinionated, blunt, and kinda awkward, but funny if you're in the mood for his humor. 

We started off by talking about how he got into history, made our way to his previous job at Ave Maria, then I asked him if he knew about the St. Greg's guys too. He'd had a decent amount in his class, and his opinion of them was that he thought they were really smart and interesting, but too close-minded about his class. He taught Western Civilization, and apparently the students he had didn't like him spending much time on non-Church related history. However, he still really liked his students - his favorite St. Greg's student was a Daniel Schiller (?) and that guy's sister was one of his favorite students ever. He also went to Jeremy Gay's wedding...? 

Anyways, that was fun talking about that, but it got more interesting when we started talking about the Latin Mass - apparently one of the few times he went left a "bitter taste" in his mouth, because while the music was phenomenal (one of his favorite Mass's), he didn't like how the priest didn't inflect the Latin properly and thought the rubrics were too stiff. I thought this was interesting coming from a history professor that specializes in medieval history. 

It was when we were talking about this that Scott perked up a bit and started talking too. He really likes the Latin Mass, but also really likes a reverent Novus Ordo Mass, and told me that I should talk to Dr. Cassidy (my Christian Marriage teacher), since he really loves the Latin Mass. Now I'm excited to talk to Dr. Cassidy and see if I can get a ride with him to a Latin Mass sometime this semester.