Dear Papa: An Open Letter to My Grandfather with Hopes that Heaven has High Speed Internet

Dear Papa,

I will always love you.

I know you would give me one of your looks if you were here to see me writing this letter but at least I’m not on my phone texting.

I never truly thought this day would come and I wish it hadn’t.

My first memories of you were you telling me to stop crying. I was three years old and without my parents overnight for the first time in my life. I love you Papa but I didn’t stop crying then for my parents and today I can’t bring myself to stop crying for you.

Another memory I have of you is when we went on vacation with you and Granny to Vermont. It was that vacation that I truly fell in love with words playing on your team in scrabble at the age of five. The same week you taught me how to ride a bike.

After that year, you got sick for the first time in my memory. We visited you in the hospital and I don’t remember much else to be honest. I do remember telling my first grade teacher that you got better and that you believed in Jesus so I knew you’d be in Heaven some day and I wasn’t worried. She told me that you were a lucky duck and from that time forward until last weekend, I was the lucky duck.

I’m sad that I won’t be able to have you at my wedding or be able to introduce you to my children some day. I am happy that you were able to pull through that first bought with lung cancer in 1999 so those first memories of you were not my last. Whatever it was I knew of you at the age of six I know that today, I know you much better and I was honored to have you in my life as long as I had.

I wasn’t your most outspoken grandchild or the one you had a lot in common with or your smartest but I was your youngest. You came all the way to the vineyard the day I was born, you helped wallpaper my first bedroom which we still won’t let anyone touch or paint over, you came to my kindergarten graduation and teased me about “that boy Kyle Duff” from then forward, you were there at my brother’s wedding and you were there at every thanksgiving. You taught me how to fish and a million other things.

I knew that you loved me and I knew you know I loved you. I’m sorry I could not be there at the end but I still don’t know if I could have come back from that. You were in pain for so long and though we all knew it we did not have to be the ones who bore it. Thank you for staying here with us for as long as you did. I am relieved you are not suffering for even a moment more. I am glad you are at peace now. I love you more than you will ever know and I am so lucky to have had an incredible, strong grandfather like you. You told everyone how it was even when we did not want to hear it.

Everyone says you were one of the best storytellers and I never thought of you that way until now. I always thought of Granny and myself as the storytellers but you were one too. The only difference between us is that we weave words with ink and you wove spoken words. I will miss hearing your stories. But I will also miss you singing to me bits of old songs you loved. I will miss watching A Christmas Story with you and I will miss hearing your voice answer the phone. I will miss you every day. I won’t let that stop me from living life though, Papa, because I know you would never want that. So Papa, I will keep moving forward and I will try to make you proud.

I love you, Papa. Thank you for being the best grandfather and I will proudly tell my future children about you. We will keep Granny cared for and watched over. We will wear our jackets when it’s cold and zip them. We will hold onto the railing and we will continue to call when we get home. We will not do anything stupid and we will make sure the back door is locked. We will keep you alive in our memories forever, Papa and I will make you proud.

With all my love,

Maggie Joy

American Culture Shock

I am back on solid American soil. It was a long time coming but here I am. I am often asked if I miss Vienna and I know sometime soon I will but right now I am just grateful to be home with those I love. The flight back felt like a torture experiment. We had a brief flight to Paris where I was able to grab some lunch and pick up a Paris shot glass that I had forgotten to get when I first went to the city of lights. I collect shot glasses from places I've been and was kicking myself for not picking one up.
I had been craving Christmas in Vienna so while I sat in the airport waiting for the second plane, I read the short Christmas stories I had downloaded from the Amazon Kindle Store a week before. The first was "Christmas in Venice" by Meadow Taylor (do you think that's her real name? Because I have some yuletide doubts.) The second short story was "Christmas at Pebble Creek" by Vannetta Chapman. They were both free books and after spending three months in Europe my budget had been well depleted. I had never purchased a Kindle short story before but I figured they would take maybe a couple hours to read. Well, they took about twenty minutes. That's how short they were. That's not even a television show without commercials. That's like one half of a cartoon. I was very disappointed because I wanted that cozy feeling of reading a Christmas novel to keep me occupied during my wait. On the bright side, I feel confident that I could easily write a "short story" and publish it to Amazon sometime in the next few months. So stay tuned for more on that! 
On the second plane I sat next to an older gentleman who asked me how I was before introducing himself. When he sat down he handed me his customs card and told me he had forgotten his glasses in his checked luggage (ever notice you say luggage when you're on a plane? Maybe that's just me.). He handed me his passport and asked me to fill out the form for him. I definitely spelled the name of his town wrong but I'm going to chock that up to being away. His name was Elias and I informed him I have a nephew also with that name. He chuckled and gave me a nudge, "Now you have Uncle Elias and Nephew Elias." He was a nice old man but he definitely weird-ed me out. Mostly because I was tired and wanted to get home faster than the plane could take me. But partially because he kept hovering over me and getting up and coming back.
I usually love long flights. You have so much time to watch movies, listen to music, read books, and write. But this was the first time I had been on a plane and could barely watch the movies on the screen in front of me. I watched "The Heat", "The Way Way Back", and part of "The Great Gatsby." They were all good movies and I was glad to watch The Great Gatsby again but I could barely focus on them. My mind was on picking up my bags from baggage claim, seeing my parents, getting a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, and seeing my puppies. In that order. It felt like Christmas Eve in a sense as I sat with great anticipation. 
As soon as I arrived I did those exact things in that order. When I got home I forced myself to stay up awhile longer but after passing out in my bed that felt gigantic after being in a tiny bed for three months, I woke up fully alert at 4 in the morning. As soon as my parents were up I was ready to go out to Target. I had missed Target probably most of all American stores. I wandered around Target looking at everything from blenders to socks to makeup. It felt so right. As I was walking around I eavesdropped on conversations, something I hadn't really been able to do for awhile. At some points I could barely understand what people were saying because I wasn't used to listening to English as well as I had. I was with English-speaking people during the trip but I hadn't been listening in on conversations as much. I was hyper-aware of the accents of people from my area though. I don't have much of an accent from this area but when I listened I felt like I was getting slammed with strange sounding words. Since then, it's become more normal to hear other American voices and it doesn't sound as harsh as it had that first day back. 
Little things felt overwhelmingly joyous to me for the first few days. I made small talk with cashiers and even some people in line. I was full of gratefulness at just being able to communicate. Nothing scared me. My knew motto became , "If you speak English, you don't scare me." Being back felt like the playing field had finally been leveled after months of being at the bottom of a ditch. Not being able to communicate simple things like, "I want that to go please" felt like being tormented. You were subjected to whatever the person decided they would do for you. Of course people spoke English as well but it always felt like a burden talking to them. Being able to speak my native language without judgement felt like a gift and I was grateful to everyone I came in contact with for it. 
While traveling I used to have to screenshot things I might need before leaving the apartment or search for a WIFI spot if it was important. Now I can just look up whatever I want whenever. It feels like I got a smartphone all over again and I've fallen back in love with it. My iPhone has never seemed so precious to me. Of course this means that my battery is drained much faster than it had been while in airplane mode. Little technology things like being able to used blogger.com in English make me so happy. 
I love being able to drive again as well. Now that I'm back to work I get to drive my car an hour and a half a day and I love it. I have my audio books and music and the open road. It is absolutely a beautiful feeling being able to control exactly where you want to go and not being crammed in a hot train with strangers. 
It's been a crazy ride coming home but I have been grateful every step of the way. I am thankful to being able to spend the holiday season with those I love the most. 
Yours Until the End of the Internet,
Eiggam

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 

Topsy Turvy Time

St. Stephen's Cathedral 

The first week in Vienna was filled with getting to know the group of people I'm living with, orienting myself with the German language, and getting used to city noises and the time change.
The time change was probably the easiest thing to adapt to. The first day wore me out so I was able to sleep through the night. However, I live in the middle of nowhere at home and usually the only time I wake up to any noises at school is on the weekends when people are drunk and noisy. Now I've suddenly been dropped in a city where the garbage and recycling comes at 3 am every night, you hear millions of bottles being smashed simultaneously, police cars and ambulances jet through the streets at random, and dogs bark randomly at each other.
I have fallen in love not only with the city of Vienna but also the German language. I have to take a "German for Travelers" class while I'm over here. I figured that German was similar enough to English that I could get along well enough without needing to devote my energy to learning it. I was very wrong about that. Fortunately, German is similar to Spanish which helps with some things but I have found that not everyone speaks English as I had hoped. On the bright side I've rediscovered my love of languages through the process of learning German. I hadn't been fully submersed into a country of another language since tenth grade. When I travel I like to blend in so being able to actually speak the language helps a lot more with that, or at least navigating which bathroom is yours correctly (Damen - women, Herren - men). Also, turns out, we've all been greeting people informally which is not very nice. We've been saying Hallo instead of GruBs gott. Oops. 
I've come to love the people I live with in a short amount of time. It is great to have a small group to go on adventures with instead of a large group of people that are clearly tourists (again with the blending- I know). With smaller groups we can pop in and out of stores, find tables at cafes, make spur of the moment decisions, and make friends with locals more easily. 

Wiener Melange

Our first week was fueled by delicious coffee. We explored the coffee culture a bit around where we live. 
Here's an interesting tidbit - you don't need to rush at cafes in Vienna. In the states, you order drinks, then food, then you eat and you leave. You are not very welcomed to stick around for an hour without ordering anything else. Here though, you can order a single espresso (which comes with a very delightful cup of water) and just sit around for the rest of the afternoon with a book reading. No one rushes over to you or even asks if you want the bill, you're just welcomed to enjoy your day. At first this made me really uncomfortable. I sat down, I drank my coffee and I wanted to go. I felt like I was doing something wrong by just sitting there. Turns out, that's just the thing to do. Now instead of going to a library for homework we are all looking forward to grabbing a Wiener Melange and sitting down with our laptops connecting to WIFI. Also! Splitting an omelette two ways is completely acceptable! Same with just about anything else you want to share because your stipend for food is so small. 

In addition to the German language, I've found a new appreciation for street art. American definitely needs to start following this trend. Walking down a street and seeing beautiful works of art like this brightens my day immensely. 

 Belvedere Palace

 Belvedere Palace

(with Steph, Paige, Me, & Chelsea)

On Saturday, we were given a closer look at Vienna through our professor who we lovingly call Uncle Martin (behind his back).  Uncle Martin is the sweetest man who loves to show off the city where he grew up and has lived for many years. He also teaches elementary school children so he has an excellent demeanor and is excited for us to learn and explore. We had a few grimy spots on the wall that our own college professor pointed out in concern to him and our landlords. In response, Uncle Martin offered us a book of Klimt paintings he had for fifteen years to tear out and tack up so that we would have something nice to look at (we are refusing and are only holding onto the book for him as a favor, it will be given back intact at the end of our stay). Uncle Martin took us to Theresianum Academy where he used to teach. The school had been a palace for the royal family of Vienna. We then went on to the Belvedere Palace. Belvedere is one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my life. It is the ultimate idea of what regal is. It is surrounded by a beautiful artificial pond in the front and a number of fountains and manicured lawns in the back. 

Hofburg Palace

Hofburg Palace I've probably gone by about fifteen times at this point but the largeness of does not cease to astound me. I swear one of these days I'm going to break something by staring up at all this architecture. It too was an Imperial Palace and is now used by the prime minister of Austria as his offices.  

View from the Vienna Woods

After a quick swing by a gelato place where they make the most delicious raspberry gelato I have ever dreamed of, we ventured up into the Vienna Woods. All the pictures I have of this place does not begin to do it justice. There is something so ethereal about being in a quiet place after being surrounded by people and noise for more than a week. The peacefulness filled me up an rejuvenated me for more time in the City of Dreams. 

Vanille Kirkuchen

To end our day three of my friends and I swung by a small Konditorei (a bakery specializing in cakes) and split a vanille kirkuchen and a zitrone kuchen. 

Stadionbad

The next day, Sunday, we went looking for a pool we heard about from two of our professors. What we found were some professional Austrian football players (not soccer but American football) and an expansive water park that cost only three euros to get into. It had a wave pool, diving boards, a wet bar, a lap pool, and water slides. 

All in all, it was an incredible first week. Now we're getting into the swing of classes and planning weekend excursions. 

Auf Wiedersehen! 
Yours until the end of the Internet,
Eiggam

Vienna Waits for You

For about eight years my favorite song has been Vienna by Billy Joel. It's the song that I put on the first mix cd I make for anyone I care about and it's the song that I cherished in my darkest hours. But despite my love for the song, I never really dreamed I would end up here.
I took what I would normally fit into my SUV and trimmed it down to fit in a suitcase and a backpack.
I'm ecstatic but also scared out of my mind since I only know a few people on this trip and barely at that. The person who had been planning to join me on this trip backed out and I know that I would never forgive myself if I did the same. But so far everyone has been really nice and friendly so it's great!
On the flight over it hadn't hit me what was going on. It felt like I was just on a long flight to anywhere and there happened to be some people I knew on the plane. We were all lined up in a strange alphabetical order in the very middle of the plane so sitting down you might not even have known we all were a group. I didn't get any sleep on that first long flight to our connection in Amsterdam. We made it through customs and a second security checkpoint then speed walked through the airport to find our connecting flight at what felt like 1:30 in the morning. We waited to board and saw a beautiful sunrise as we sat there.

We were all pretty antsy to get on the plane to get to our final destination of Vienna. On the flight they spoke Dutch very rapidly and then translated it in English. I used to want to learn Dutch but German will have to do for now. When we got on the plane they served us chicken sandwiches which didn't make any sense to either of the timezones I was currently operating under. It was good and came in a little box with a windmill on it and instructions on how to make your own wheat bread (in English) but my stomach was hurting from the strange dinner I ate on the plane before so I couldn't really enjoy it.
Our group split up with six of us going to one apartment and five of us going to the other. We settled in and then journeyed out with our professor to go (as we later figured out) grocery shopping. It took us five minutes to figure out which water we were buying and then our professor told us which one was what we actually wanted before we bought it. Who knew there was "mild" water?

When we got back to the apartment I crashed like I never had before. I put on pajama shorts and before changing my shirt as I had been planning I fell asleep. After we woke up we went out to dinner with the whole group and were served a variety of things I couldn't pronounce but boiled down to a soup with "small sliced pancakes" which was surprisingly delicious (frittatensuppe), basically a fried dough with pork in it (weiner schnitzel), and an apple strudel with whipped cream (apfelstrudel).
It was all delicious and was a huge relief after eating plane food. Now I have plans to get breakfast at a cafe with the girls in the apartment and then plan the rest of the day.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Yours until the end of the Internet,
Eiggam