Trains Are Meant For Riding, Not Jumping Off Of. Week 5.

Week 5 started off very early with a 6 am train ride to Vienna. It was a long train ride but I slept most of the way due to getting home late from Paris. After we arrived and dropped our stuff off at the hotel and then went to meet Dr. Schnabel. I was definitely not expecting to be met at a tram station by a plague doctor, but I was thoroughly entertained, nonetheless. The guided walking tour around Vienna was very interesting and getting to try some plague treatments was somewhat appetizing. The second day we got to go on a tour of the Josephinum museum wax collection. It was probably one of my favorite museums that we had seen thus far. It was incredible to see an anatomical wax collection that was over 200 years old. That afternoon we then went on a tour of a crypt underneath a church in the middle of the city. It was so eerie to see actual mummies and be inside of a crypt that is hundreds of years old. That evening we went to a classical concert at St. Anne’s church. It was an absolutely beautiful church. It was decorated with vibrantly colored paintings and accented with gold. The walls were red and blue marble. I had never seen anything like it. I had also never been to a classical concert before. I really enjoyed the music, though, and the musicians were fabulous.

The next day we started the day at the Fools Tower museum. It was a very cool museum, and the collection of the wax figures of dermatological diseases and malformations was a little gross but very interesting. It was interesting to learn that the building was made circular so that the patients could walk around the hallways and still end up back at their room. Then in the afternoon we went on a tour to the Natural History museum and we saw the Venus von Willendorf, which is a figurine that is over 25,000 thousand years old. Throughout this entire program I was constantly infatuated with the elaborate buildings and architectural styles that we saw. This museum was definitely one of those buildings. Immediately after the museum, a group of us went with Henning to a pub to watch the Germany world cup game. Even though Germany lost, watching Henning’s reaction to the game was hilarious. I love how invested into soccer games people get here in Europe. The whole bar would be on their feet screaming at just about anything remotely interesting that happened during the game. The final day we were there we visited the Freud house. It was cool to actually get to see the room where Freud treated his patients.

At the end of the Vienna excursion we left from Vienna and took a bus to Budapest for a night. When we got to Budapest we found a great taco place and had some cheap tacos and then we went to one of the famous ruin pubs. This place was so cool. It was a huge club/bar that was built into an old ruin in the middle of Budapest. It was huge, there were multiple different rooms and it just went on forever. We met a bachelor party from London and talked to them for a while. They told me that I had a pretty decent British accent and I think I peaked in that moment. The next day we just walked around Budapest and saw the canals and the palace and it was beautiful. That night we took an overnight train to Prague. That train ride was altogether just an unpleasant experience. The train was 9 hours long. The train workers would come by just about every hour and wake us up to check our tickets. Then a big group of drunk people got into the car next to us and were loud all night. At some point I am pretty sure the train was hit by something while we were stopped at a station because at one point in the night it lurched forward like another train had slammed into it. When when we arrived in Prague we woke up and realized it was about 6 am, which was when our train was supposed to arrive and since there was nothing on the train to tell us where we were we had no idea what station we were about to stop at. The train rolls up to a station and we are frantically trying to get our stuff to get off the train. Only half of us make it to the door and when we open it the train starts moving again. Since we are half asleep we were obviously not thinking, and we thought this was the right stop because of the time. So, we jump off of this moving train and only two of us made it off while the other two were still on the train as it rolled away. We quickly realized it was the wrong stop and we jumped off of a moving train for nothing. So we ended up having to uber into prague. Then, our airbnb cancels on us so we frantically had to book a hotel. I guess the universe decided to finally have mercy on us and somehow we ended up accidentally getting a penthouse suite with a terrace that overlooked the city. Prague was absolutely gorgeous. We spent most of our time there just wandering around the city and seeing all of the sights. It was quite an eventful weekend but it ended up all working out in a better situation than we planned. So I guess it was a lesson learned to always keep a positive attitude about things. Overall, it was another amazing week!