Wandering in Wien

So finally, I'm actually writing about Vienna. I've had a lot of opportunities to wander around the city and see some of the main sights since I've been here. On my first full day in Vienna, the day after getting back from the Ski Week, I decided to do some wandering down Mariahilfer Strasse. It was Sunday, so all the stores were closed, but Mariahilfer Strasse is one of the biggest shopping streets in Vienna. As a side note, almost everything is closed on Sunday, including grocery stores and pharmacies. Some cafes or restaurants might be open, but usually never before 11, and then they close pretty early too. It's something that I've really had to get used to here, because I'm very used to being able to make a grocery store run at almost any time of the day or night, any day of the week. Here, during the week, the grocery stores usually close at around 6 or 7 at night. It's usually not that inconvenient, as long as you are familiar with it (I wasn't at first, and was very disappointed to find Hofer, the nearest grocery store, closed at 6:30 PM) and keep it in mind. So anyway, I was wandering pretty aimlessly down Mariahilfer Strasse, passing by hundreds of shops and restaurants, just exploring.

View down Mariahilfer Strasse from the MuseumsQuartier.

I came across this church, the Mariahilfer Kirche, whose exterior is very typically Austrian-looking. It was very beautiful inside, as you can see below. It was strange, because it was colder inside the church than it was outside (and it was COLD outside). I could see my breath in there.

Mariahilfer Kirche outside.

Mariahilfer Kirche inside.

A word about the weather: It is freezing in Vienna. In just the past few days, the sun has started to shine, and it has felt a little warmer. But last week and the week before, the cold was unbearable. Every day felt like the coldest day in Chicago that I experienced over winter break. But hopefully this warming-up trend will continue.. Anyway, I decided before arriving in Vienna that I wanted to make a point of visiting as many churches in the city as possible, because churches are some of my favorite places to visit when I travel. So I will keep you informed about my church visits. I kept walking down Mariahilfer Strasse for a very long time, because I didn't want to turn around even though my feet were killing me (my new boots weren't quite broken in yet..) and I was quite cold, and after a while I reached the center of the city, which caught me completely by surprise. I had no idea that I would end up in the "Altstadt," or historical city center of Wien. I passed through the MuseumsQuartier, where many of the museums are, walked past the Hofburg, one of the palaces of the royal Hapsburg family (according to Rick Steves, it was where they lived during the winter).

Die Hofburg.

A view down a street in the Altstadt ending at the Michaelertor, an entrance to the Hofburg.

The whole Altstadt is made up of cobblestone roads open only for pedestrians (and maybe a horse-drawn carriage or two as well..). On this particular Sunday it was filled mainly with tourists, who were watching street performers and admiring the Stephansdom and eating sausage from Wuerstelstands that surround Stephansplatz. Stephansplatz, or St. Stephen's Square, is the square in front of the Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral) and is at the heart of the Altstadt. I'm not positive whether the Stephansdom is the biggest church in Vienna, but it is massive. And very beautiful, with tiled roofs and tall spires, mainly in the Gothic style.

Stephansdom.

When we took a tour of the Altstadt as part of our program's orientation, we learned more about the area. The monument in the middle of this square, called Wiener Graben, is called the "Pestsaeule," or "Plague Column." It was erected sometime in the 17th century after the plague had hit Europe, and it's pretty impressive. It's covered with netting so that the birds don't poop on it (insider information from my Austrian friend).

Wiener Graben.

Die Pestsaeule.

On the edge of Wiener Graben is a high-end grocery store called Julius Meinl. To give you an idea of just how luxurious this place is, when our program director told us to find the most expensive bottle of alcohol in the store, the winning price was 25,000 euro. There's also a cafe in the store, and I was looking around and discovered that they had gluten-free "Torten," or cakes! I didn't get one, because we were in the middle of the tour, but I will definitely be coming back. I was so excited about that, because eating out here can be really difficult, especially with all the bread and pastries and cake that the Austrians eat.

Der Feinkostladen Julius Meinl.

Later on in the tour, we came to this church called the "Jesuitenkirche," or Church of the Jesuits. It was built during the Counter-Reformation, and it's right next to the "Alte Universitaet," the original University of Vienna, which was founded sometime in the 14th century, making it the oldest German-speaking university (which I think is pretty cool). Of course, since the Jesuits are oh-so-scholarly, they were the professors at the original university, and many Jesuits still live in the neighboring buildings today (each Catholic order has its own building).

Die Jesuitenkirche.

Another church that we saw on our tour was the Ruprechtskirche, the oldest church in Vienna, built in the Romanesque style.

Die Ruprechtskirche.

On the "Judenplatz," or Square of the Jews (the translations sometimes sound awkward, sorry), which was the site of the Jewish ghetto in medieval times, we saw this memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust. It's not a very big or imposing structure, but it's very symbolic. It's difficult to tell in the picture, but the memorial is made up of books (stone books) whose pages are facing outward, and I think there's supposed to be 65,000 in all, symbolizing the story of each person who was killed.

As part of our orientation, we went to the "Wiener Eistraum" (now this translation is definitely awkward.. literally, it's "Ice Dream," but we'll call it "Dream on Ice"). It's an ice rink set up in front of the Rathaus, or town hall, and it has two large open areas, but also these smaller winding passages that you can skate around. The skating part wasn't really that great, but just being there was amazing, because it was so beautiful, with the Rathaus all lit up and everything.

Wiener Eistraum.

Italienische Reise

When we arrived back in Vienna after our ski adventure, we still had over a week before the orientation for our program started. So many people decided to take this opportunity to travel, since the next chance to do so might not come until our Spring Break in April. I was actually planning on going to Belgium and the Netherlands with some other students from the program, but they were traveling by train, and not only was the train ride 12 HOURS long, but also I chickened out on buying the Eurail Pass (which would allow me to travel by train throughout all of Europe for 15 days within 3 months) at the last minute. I found a pretty cheap flight to Rome(considering it was somewhat last-minute) on the airline Niki, which is pretty new and part of AirBerlin. And so I decided that Italy would be my destination. A few friends of mine are studying in Rome this semester, and another is studying in Ferrara, a small city in northern Italy, so after booking my flight to Rome, I booked a train from Rome to Ferrara, and then a train from Venice to Vienna (since Ferrara is about an hour and a half from Venice). I arrived in Rome pretty late at night on Tuesday, February 8th, and the flight couldn't have been better. Niki turned out to be a very nice airline (but I was surprised that the plane seemed to be less than half-full), and the flight only lasted about an hour and 10 minutes. I was already in Rome for a few days this summer with my dad, so I had already seen all the main tourist attractions. So for this trip, I decided that I just wanted to explore parts of Rome that I hadn't seen yet, and to see Rome from a different perspective: the study-abroad student's perspective as opposed to the tourist's perspective. My friend lives in an area of Rome called Trastevere, which was far less touristy than certain parts of Rome that I had visited this summer and also very charming and beautiful. On my first night there, I could hardly believe that my friend lived there. We walked down narrow alleys (not the kind that you would stay away from in an American city), through piazzas surrounded by churches and with beautiful fountains in the center, past old and somewhat dilapidated buildings, whose dilapidation only added to their beauty. Here is a church that I saw on the first night:

My time in Rome was pretty relaxed, not filled with planned tours and activities, but rather with aimless wandering and exploring.. which meant a TON of walking. In the morning, we got cappucini or caffe macchioti from one of the countless small espresso bars. I never had bad coffee there. It was a little difficult, because the people I was with would usually get pizza for lunch, so I would have to find something else, like salad. But we were able to find restaurants that served gluten-free spaghetti, which was great. One restaurant was right by my friend's apartment, and the gluten-free pasta dish was only 5 euro! I learned something very interesting about Italy that made me wonder why I wasn't born Italian.. according to a website that we discovered while trying to find gluten-free restaurants, everyone in Italy is now tested at a very young age for Celiac Disease. If they are found to have it, they receive a stipend to buy gluten-free food for the rest of their lives.. for 140 euro per month! Isn't that unbelievable? So people were very aware of gluten intolerance and Celiac Disease in Italy, seemingly much more than they are here in Austria. And in the United States, they still don't even label gluten as an allergen in foods! Only wheat, but obviously gluten is in many more grains than just wheat. But anyway, one day, we visited the Church of Saint Ignatius! It was very beautiful and grand, built in the Baroque style.

Outside of the "Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio."





Main altar.






Side altar.

There are obviously a huge number of churches in Rome, and this is another one that we passed and I thought was very beautiful. I don't know its name, though..

Here's a little nook that I thought was very cute:




And finally, here's some sort of advertisement that we all liked a lot:




After a 4-day stay in Rome, I left on the train for Ferrara. The trip was pretty long, lasting maybe about 5 hours, but I took a relatively slow train. The express trains go faster and are more expensive. Ferrara was quite a different world from Rome. It is much smaller, much less fast-paced and hectic, and much less touristy. One of the most striking differences for me was that, in Rome, I felt like I was seeing so many Americans, mainly American students. They were everywhere, and I heard English a lot. But it took two days in Ferrara before I heard a single person speak English, and they were two American girls from my friend's study abroad program. So on the one hand, it was very nice to be in a place that felt very authentically Italian, but at the same time, I felt like I stuck out as a foreigner much more in Ferrara, since the people there don't seem to be very used to foreigners. But it was a very beautiful little city, with a very beautiful city center/piazza. My friend told me that it was a major Italian city during the Renaissance, but now not many very people know about it. This is a view from the central piazza:

On Sunday, we visited the main church in Ferrara. The first picture was taken on Saturday, and since it was a brighter day than Sunday, and right before the sun was setting, you can see the pinkish color of the stone of the church. Up close, you can see that it's made of a combination of pinkish and white stone.

Here's a picture of the church on Sunday, a much grayer day. Apparently, Ferrara is known for its fog (an interesting thing to be known for..), and it's almost always very foggy around this time of year there. But it made walking around on Sunday very nice, because the streets were unbelievably quiet, and the gray fogginess fit very nicely with that.

View of the town from the steps of the church.

The medieval castle in Ferrara, complete with a moat and drawbridges. I'd never seen a castle with a moat in real life, only in pictures and Super Mario 64!

On Sunday, there was a market in the town center, and the vendors were selling a wide variety of goods. I bought a pair of earrings made from Murano glass, which my friend told me was very "legit." Some of the stands were pretty odd, though, as you can see in the second picture.

The market.

Stand selling a wide assortment of mini-cacti and other small plants.

As I mentioned before, I took a train (actually a bus and then a train) from Venice back to Vienna, so I was able to spend an hour in Venice before my train left. The Santa Lucia train station was located directly on the Grand Canal, so I got a great view just from the steps of the station. I think I may need to come back to Venice..

Alpine Ski Week.

I apologize for the long silence, but I am finally writing my first actual Austrian post! After arriving in Vienna on the 28th of January, I woke up at 5:30 AM the next morning to get to the train station and begin the journey to our Alpine skiing destination: Saalbach-Hinterglemm. It was quite the process. We took the 6:44 train to a small, very cute Austrian town called Zell am See.

Church in Zell am See.

From Zell am See, we took a bus to Saalbach-Hinterglemm. Saalbach and Hinterglemm are actually two separate little towns, but they're so tiny and close together that their names are combined. Other than ski resorts, there's really not much there. We got off the bus and were essentially at the foot of the mountains. We rented all of our ski equipment, and then to get up to our hotel near the top of the mountain we had to cram into a gondola (the Schönleitenlift) with all of our newly rented ski equipment AND our luggage (in my case, a pretty large rolly suitcase). The ride up was amazing, with incredible views of the mountains around us. The five of us smooshed into the gondola marveled at the snowy, craggy mountain peaks covered with dense clusters of snow-covered trees. It was good preparation for the surreally beautiful scenery that would be surrounding me for the next 5 days. When we reached the top of the mountain, we loaded our luggage and ski equipment into a cart and then had to walk a long and, at times, very steep path down to our hotel.

Following Professor Murray (the head of the program) down the mountain toward our hotel, which you can see right near the center of the picture.

Since all the traveling and settling in took up such a big part of the day, we didn't start skiing until the next day. Our hotel was nestled right into the side of the mountain, completely surrounded by snow. We kept our ski equipment in a room right next to the lobby of the hotel, and after we put our ski boots on and walked out the door, we could step into our skis and ski right down the slopes, which was obviously very cool.

Our hotel: das Berghotel Seidl-Alm.

It was strange to ski at first, because I think the last time I skied was maybe about 3 years ago. But I think I got back into it pretty quickly. We had two ski instructors, an Austrian couple, Joschi and Burgi. Joschi is almost 70, and Burgi is a just a little younger. Needless to say, they were beasts. Burgi was my instructor, and I skied with her almost every day of the trip. On the first day we went on several different runs, but I wasn't really paying attention to where we were because I was so preoccupied with how beautiful everything around me was. It was almost hard to believe that I was actually there, skiing in the Alps. On the first afternoon, right after lunch I was starting to realize how exhausted I was, and how difficult it was to stay focused and in control. Burgi and I went down a pretty steep and icy slope, with a lot of little mounds created by all the skiers during the course of the day, and I wiped out hard. It happened so fast that I don't really even know what happened exactly, but basically I was going a little too fast and went over one of the mounds, got a little airborne, and then lost control completely and fell. I lost my hat and my left ski, and I hurt my leg a little bit. So Burgi (out of pity) took me to get some hot chocolate at the top of the mountain, and we spoke mostly in German, so it was really good practice for me.

Resting spot at the top of the mountain. Delicious hot chocolate.

On the third day, I skied into the town of Saalbach, which is down in the valley below our hotel, and it was very charming. But like I said earlier, there's not much there besides ski resorts.

In Saalbach.

One of the most amazing things about the ski trip was the ages of some of the children I saw on the slopes. The youngest were probably 3 or 4 years old, and I saw TONS of children who seemed to be in about the 5-7 range. And they weren't just going down the easy slopes, either. They were going down the really steep ones, and I even saw a young child doing moguls! It was insane. There were tons of groups of little children in "Skischule," getting ski lessons, and it was adorable.

Group of Skischule babies.

The weather was basically perfect every day. The first 4 days, there was barely a cloud in the sky. The sun shone so brightly, and I got very hot in my ski gear. It got pretty cloudy the last couple days of the trip though, but I actually think that the mountains looked even more beautiful, and kind of mysterious, shrouded in wispy clouds. Below are some of my favorite pictures. Enjoy!