After exploring the summer palace gardens we went into the center of Vienna and went on the Catacombs tour under St. Stephens Cathedral. We saw a variety of different tombs of Bishops and Cardinals as well as mass graves of Viennese dating back to around 1000 A.D. In a few chambers down there we saw human bones stacked on top of each other until they reached the ceiling! During the tour we were told there were so many people buried here at one time the church above had to be closed due to the horrific smell of all the bodies decomposing.
Before I move on, a funny side note. On the tour with us was the famous Bay Watch actor David Hasseloff. We were able to get a photo with him in the background. (On Facebook) It was funny standing next to a celebrity for the 30 minute tour. To Germans at least, he is considered one of the most famous actors to come out of their country.
The next night we went to the Bermuda Triangle of Vienna. It is considered the Pacific Beach or Gas Lamp district of Vienna. All the major clubs and bars are located in this area of the city. We went with our student director Valarie who showed us a few cool places to go. After bar hopping a bit we had to navigate our way back to the Europhaus dorm before the public transit closed. It was a very fun night, having a local take us out allows us to understand the area from a locales prospective. Hopefully once school starts here we will have a chance to meet some other Austrians who would be willing to take us out places.
On Tuesday night we watched the Austrian National Soccer team take on Turkey during the qualification round for the UEAFA Cup. It was fun watching the game with Austrians here at the dorm. They really got into the game. Overall, it was a fun experience to get to talk to some other Austrians who live in the same building. Most of them know English pretty well so its easy to communicate, although, there are some cases where we do run into situations where communication becomes a huge problem. Many of these situations occur at grocery stores and restaurants.
At grocery stores I have run into problems where the credit card machine does not work or go through. The cashier generally doesn't know english and I either have to try and point out what is wrong or an Austrian who knows english helps me out. Also, at restaurants some waiters do not know english well. Sometimes we have a german speaker order for us, but when we don't have the luxury we point to what we want on the menu and attempt to say what we want correctly. A few of us have gotten the wrong things due to this confusion. Overall, the language barrier hasn't been a huge problem. Most people here know english well enough to communicate with. I am eager to start german in two weeks to at least know how to say a few things. Sometimes I feel rude when I am not able to communicate since I have no idea what they are saying to me.
Over these next two weeks we plan on traveling quite a bit. Tomorrow we are off to the town Salzburg in north western Austria. We plan on going white water rafting on Saturday and sight seeing on Sunday before we come back here for class on Monday. Then, we plan on leaving for Krakow Poland, Prague, and Aucshwittz next week. A five day trip encompassing all these areas. The following week we are planning a tentative trip to Italy where we would visit Rome, Florence, and Venice. Today we are suppose to arrange/book these trips. Hopefully we can get good rates and follow through with our plans! Until next time keep checking my facebook for new pictures of my travels over here!
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