Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Rainy tuesday

Tuesday, May 21 (Day 15)

Today was a calmer morning than others.  We woke up with plenty of time to eat and finish homework.   I enjoyed a nice conversation with my housemate Rachel over my nutella/banana toast.  It was nice.

We headed over to the AAIE for class, since everyone had class at 9:30 today.  Yesterday was a national holiday, and today was a school holiday, so schedules have been a little different lately. In class, Abigail finished her presentation on Schubert, which Reisinger supplemented after the break.

For lunch, Abigail, Jessie, Meredith and I headed over to a place called Maredo, which was "Mexican." We enjoyed the salad bar, as well as meeting up with another one of the classes from our program.  After a confusing day of being over-taught by their professor, he had dropped them at the restaurant and left.  But we all enjoyed the food anyway.

After lunch, Meredith, Abigail and I went to find an old church called Marie am Gestad, which translates to Mary on the Banks. The church used to run along the Danube, and is in beautiful gothic style. We had the church almost to ourselves.



We headed back towards the institute, where we met Jessie again to go to a movie called "The Third Man."  Here's the IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/?ref_=sr_1

The movie was shot in 1949 Vienna, when the city was still somewhat damaged from the war.  It was really cool to see the city where we've spent almost all our time the last couple weeks in a totally different context.  We recognized a lot of the scenery, the buildings, and Orson Welles.  It was a blast for me, as a film buff, to finally see this cool movie, and know the nuances of the setting of the shoots.  Yay!

When the movie was finished, the group of us met up again to go to dinner at a place Dr. Reisinger recommended.  The restaurant was called Melker Stiftskeller, which is loosely connected to the Melk Abbey in Salzburg.  It's in a cellar, which was cool, and had authentic, delicious Viennese food. Almost all of us had roasted pork and bread dumplings, which we couldn't even finish because there was so much food.

After dinner, we came back upstairs to discover that Vienna had given us a monsoon.  We stood awed by the rain for a minute, then tried our darndest to find the nearest U station to take us home.  We talked to a nice older gentleman, who we found out used to organize choir tours from the U.S. to come to Vienna. After asking our poor waitress for directions, we began our soggy trek to the station a couple blocks away.

Audrey and I made our way home, after waiting half an hour for a bus because the U was running slowly.  Had some hot tea, watched Community instead of doing homework, and went to bed late.  

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