A Farewell to Vienna

This is one of the more difficult posts I've had to write. It's Thursday now and I fly out of Vienna on Friday morning. It's been a long three months here. I've befriended some lovely people and I've also met some people I was not very fond of. I have grown apart from some things and have valued other things much more highly. I'm no longer afraid of living in a city, public transportation seems much simpler, and traveling is a breeze. But I've also missed my family, getting to see my baby nephew learning his first words, spending Thanksgiving with my extended family and driving a car. 

I've learned a lot here. I've learned about history, art, politics, and cultures. I've learned about myself. I've learned what I care about and what I don't need. I have had so many experiences that I never would have if I had sat at home. I have stories that fill my head from people I've met. I now have lots of material for my writing from this adventure. 

I did not get as homesick as I imagined I would. It wasn't until the end that I started longing for it. I think a part of me knew it would be hard to handle if I thought too much about it. 

Vienna is a beautiful city with more charm than you could imagine. But the holiday season is well upon us now and as the song goes, "There's no place like home for the holidays no matter how far away you roam, when you long for the sunshine of a friendly gaze - for the holidays you can't beat home sweet home." So as lovely and delightful as Vienna is, it is not home. It's felt like home after bad days and long journeys but with the holidays being here I know it is not. I've never been away from home at Thanksgiving until today. I've always been surrounded by my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and brothers at Thanksgiving. Being away has made me value that time so much more than I had before.

Packing for Vienna was tough. I was going to a country I had been to with a group of people I didn't know. I was scared and I had no guarantee what it would be like. Packing for home was bittersweet. I packed up things that were filled with new memories and put them in a suitcase without knowing when I will ever be back. On the other hand, I'm going back to my family, my dogs, my friends, my job, my home, and my country. I have guarantees where I'm going and that's great. But it was an incredible experience getting to put myself out there and praying everything would work out. I'm so grateful that it did. 

Vienna, you will always have a special place in my heart. I will be back someday. All my love. 

Yours until the end of the Internet, 

Eiggam

Europe Tales Part 2

After Amsterdam, I left the other girls and flew back to Vienna. Flying from one country to another and not having either of those countries be America was a peculiar feeling. I was sitting on a plane with mostly Dutch and German speakers and all I could do was laugh. One old man was playing Bejeweled Blitz on an iPad before the plane started to descend, the flight attendant warned him to turn off the game and he nodded, acting like he was just about it. Another flight attendant came by and told him the same thing. He nodded and acted like he was closing the cover until they walked away. This happened a few more times and while the plane was landing he was still playing his game. 
For some reason my phone had been deleting music to make room for all the pictures I had on it. I spent five hours in the airport, two on a plane, and another hour on a train back into the city all the time listening to about 30 different songs. Do you know how frustrating that is? I love my iPhone but having it mess up like that and not having any way to fix it, plus not having access to wifi at all? That is twenty-first century hell on earth. 
When I finally got off at my subway stop, I felt like I was at home. After nearly two months of living in Vienna, I realized that it had actually become like home to me. I can't explain the joy of being able to walk down familiar streets after so much time in unfamiliar cities. My parents were scheduled to arrive in a couple days so I got to recharge with some downtime and Netflix. 
When my parents finally flew in, it was time to start showing them my city. My dad gave me a card when they arrived that had a bright orange leaf from home pressed inside. I have it up on my wall here in Vienna to remind me of my parents and home in the middle of this experience. I told them the couple local stories I knew and pointed out a lot of famous buildings and landmarks. The great thing about Vienna is how most everything famous is concentrated in one area about a mile long. My parents and I toured the imperial apartments at Schönbrunn Palace. I became fascinated with the history of the Hapsburgs and bought a book called The Reluctant Empress by Brigitte Hamman. 
After a couple days spent in the city of music, we boarded a train to one of my least favorite places: Prague. I was not very in love with Prague the first time I went but I was willing to give it a second chance to redeem itself. I showed my parents the few sights I had seen in Prague such as the Prague castle, the Charles' Bridge, and the astronomical clock. 

We went to see a quartet that played some lovely classical music. We went to a few restaurants that were very good and the people were a little nicer than they had been the first time I visited. But I still I stand by my original feelings about Prague: Prague is beautiful from above. When you look down over the city, it looks like a fairytale. But when you walk down into it you are surrounded by the effects of years of communism.
After a little too much time in Prague for one lifetime, we were headed for Berlin. Once again I found myself feeling relieved to see and hear German after the disorienting language of Czech. The first night I knew Berlin would be better than Prague was when I saw this: 

That pink sign was like a beacon of nostalgia. At home, Dunkin Donuts are everywhere. It would not be uncommon to see two across the street from each other. Unfortunately, while I was in Berlin it was freezing so the iced coffee I had been craving since leaving home did not sound as appealing. The hot chocolate they had was absolutely lovely and was the absolute perfect temperature for drinking right away (why can't they do that in America?!). They had donuts there that were the size of my face and lavishly decorated. I loved the Berlin Dunkins but they were missing the flavor shots I love. 

My favorite part of Berlin was getting to see famous sights like the Brandenburg Gate above. Traveling makes history come to life in a way that books and movies will never be able to. Being able to walk in the same spots that others long before us did is powerful. In Berlin there is a famous memorial known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by architect Peter Eisenman and engineer Buro Happold. The memorial consists of 2,711 concrete blocks that vary in height. As you walk through these slabs of concrete you feel like you're suffocating. It is one of the most uncomfortable feelings I have experienced while abroad. It put a lot of things in perspective and helped me gain a better understanding of how art can play on your emotions. 

My parents and I flew back to Vienna to spend one last day together. We visited Belvedere Palace on our last night together. 

My parents and I had a tearful goodbye and as my time is winding down I am counting the days until I can see them again. Afterall, there's no place like home for the holidays and the holidays are coming up faster than I can believe. 

Yours until the end of the Internet,

Eiggam 

Europe Tales Part 1

The past couple months have been a whirlwind of trains, research papers, buses, and useless maps. During October I spent one week traveling with three friends to a few different countries. 

The first place we went was Salzburg which many know as where part of the Sound of Music was filmed. Now, I am going to be extremely honest with you about my traveling ordeals. Salzburg was extremely boring. We wanted to see Mozart's house, because he's from there but we didn't actually find it until the end of the day thanks to a very untrustworthy map. On the bright side, we did find a giant slide that was absolutely terrifying to climb up to and was faster than any slide I have ever been on. I swear there must be some kind of playground codes I don't know about because I don't think we would let kids on a slide like that at home. 

Because we clearly had not gotten enough of heights during our slide escapade, someone made the decision to climb up to a castle. At first, this did not seem like a big deal. The hill was high but the path didn't look bad. The path was bad. By the time we got in view of the actual castle there was a much steeper driveway we had to climb up. Already sweating we started to climb up that one. An Asian man laughed at the four of us seeing that we were vacillating between pain and humor that we were putting ourselves through this. When we finally got to the to the gate where they sold the tickets for entrance (which included climbing further up), we paused to catch our breath and take a few photos. The man that had been laughing at us motioned at us with his camera. Thinking he wanted a picture of the castle we nodded and stepped out of his way. Then he aimed his camera at us and we smiled most likely the most awkward smiles that have ever been captured and he took our picture. We eventually ended the day and spent an absurd amount outside in the cold just waiting for the train eating grocery store bought sandwiches on benches. 
We got on a train to Munich. Because it was so cold we bought coffees so we could sit inside Burger King. The problem was that we had about two hours before our train to Paris would arrive. Our solution was to make fun of the German music videos and play pick up sticks with coffee stirrers and empty sugar packets. 
The night train to Paris was a nightmare. At first it seemed exciting though! We got to sit in this cabin that looked like the ones on the Hogwarts Express. But then we realized there were no outlets to charge our nearly dead phones, which by the way are completely useless abroad, and a French businessman joined us in the cabin. There was nothing wrong with the man except that we felt like we couldn't talk much with him around. There was a group of girls, probably around our age in the cabin directly behind us. As the train made its way to Paris the girls starting talking really loudly in English. One girl really enjoyed talking about how she was British and all American girls kept asking her questions. So imagine really wanting and needing sleep, being in a very small room with a stranger, knowing your only sometime connection to the outside world was dying, and not being able to do a single thing about any of it. That was my night on the train to Paris (which split in half at 2 am). 
Eventually 12 pm rolled around and Paris rolled into view. At this point we had developed our system of finding a hotel and getting a map of the city from their endless brochure racks. Deciding we would go to the eiffel tower first so we had to get on the subway. The subway (metro, T, ubahn, whatever you want to call it) was literally packed with people. In order to get into the train you had to actually squish yourself between people. I don't mean awkwardly slide by some people to get to a spot to stand. No, you had to squeeze between strangers and remain there until God-willing enough people would get off at the next stop. After a bunch of wrong turns we finally made it to the Eiffel Tower. 

I had never cared about the Eiffel Tower. I wasn't even sure that I actually wanted to go up it because why would I pay for something I didn't care about? Plus, I don't care for heights either and that was also making me skeptical. But for only three euros it was a decent deal. The spiral steps were fairly nauseating and it was far higher than I expected but in all honesty the view was stunning. 

After our descent we went in search of lunch. You know those cafes that the world goes on and on about. Yeah, they're ridiculously overpriced and offer few substantial meals. We ended up getting pizzas at a restaurant that included a waitress that laughed at us and a dog that thought he was better than us too. Paris is not a friendly place. But they do have delicious candy stands, crepes and macaroons. I saw a few of the famous landmarks like Notre Dame (I've never seen the Disney movie but I have been there) and Arc de Triumphe.  Part way through the day we realized our plan to stay up all night was not going to work out since our night train was a disaster and we were already tired. Now we had to suddenly find a hostel with four free beds, preferably close to the station where we had to catch a train from in the morning. However, we had to find a hostel by using McDonald's internet on our fast dying phones. Once we had booked one we decided to go back to the eiffel tower to climb it at night. Still not my idea but by this point I decided I didn't really ever want to go back to Paris. Seeing the eiffel tower at night was even more spectacular though. 

One of the girls in our group wanted to see the tower "twinkle" which is something that it does every night. Another girl and I didn't care about the twinkling because by then it was late and we wanted to get to the hostel. So leaving two of them to wait for the twinkling we went to wait inside the warm train station where we had stored our bags. When we got to the station we decided we would just get our bags and wait so we could leave earlier for the hostel. We arrived at 10:50 and apparently the place that we thought was open 24 hours where we had stored our baggage which included our passports actually closed at 11 and didn't open until 6 am. Our train was supposed to leave at 6 am from another train station. You would think it would still be possible to at least walk in, but for some reason the guy running it that night decided it would be okay to lock up early. This was literally the most terrifying moment of my entire three months. We caught the attention of the guy who was pulling on his coat to leave and he came over. We asked if we could really quickly grab our bags, he told us we had one minute and we ran. 
With our bags safely in tow, we began to make our way to the hostel we had booked. After a few more wrong turns, we found the hostel and rang the doorbell for reception. No response. We rang again and no response. We rang probably twenty more times before a girl who was clearly a hostel guest came to the door and let us in. By the time we checked into our hostel it was around one in the morning. We made sure we could check out by 4:30 the next morning. The receptionist told us we could and to "have a nice nap." 
Only a couple hours later we were back on the streets of Paris with our useless map trying to find our way to this train station. After half an hour of trying to find some kind of street that would lead us to the train station, we decided that we needed a cab. That was the best decision we had made the whole trip thus far. With an amazing amount of luck we made our train and were on our way out of the claws of Paris. 
The next stop was Amsterdam. I have had an obsession with the Netherlands since I was in eighth grade. Amsterdam felt like a breath of fresh air. To start with, food was incredibly easy to find. We found a nice little place that sold - wait for it - apple, bacon pancakes with chocolate sauce.

When I say bacon I don't mean the American way of including bacon in food. The Dutch way of including bacon was putting in layers of bacon. It was absolutely one of the most delightful things I have eaten in Europe. In addition to this after years of waiting, I was able to try the famous Dutch fries with special sauce. And it was everything I ever hoped it to be. In addition to the world of culinary Dutch delights, I also got to see the gorgeous buildings. 

Amsterdam felt like a small town that happened to have a mass amount of people. 

To Be Continued....

Yours until the end of the Internet, 
Eiggam