I beat the heat (and the black plague) in Vienna

       You'd think as a native New Mexican and an adopted Texan that I'd be used to the heat, but I've learned that a critical difference is the ubiquity of air conditioning in Texas. In Vienna, air conditioning is a rare commodity at best, and any we did encounter seemed to be ill equipped to handle the body heat generated by thirty-one sweaty college students.

       On the bright side though, none of us got the plague, probably because we were all well prepared with cloves and healthy young boy pee (definitely not just herbal soda) beforehand.

       I feel like as far as our excursions have gone so far, this one was the most relevant to both courses overall, with a whole bunch of medical history and a whole bunch of musical history packed into the same place. The fool's tower was so incredibly fascinating, and I honestly could have spent hours in there looking at all the models and specimens. Along the same lines, Michael and I actually got so caught up in the musical museum that we completely missed lunch. The concert in the church was really amazing, especially the fact that they were playing on period instruments, and the natural history museum was legitimately one of the best I've ever visited. I still can barely believe elephant seals are that big.

     There were also other great experiences I had in Vienna, like the Freud museum and lecture, or the carnival, or the cat cafe, or the amazing chocolate cake, but there's frankly too much to talk about. The whole thing was really wonderful, despite how sweaty I felt literally the entire time.

    Then, the weekend after Vienna we went to Budapest. For reasons I can't even entirely put into words, this was maybe my favorite trip of the whole study abroad (possibly tied with Nordeney.) Possibly its just that, unlike Paris and Rome, I was coming in with basically no expectations and only a few general plans, but Budapest really blew me away. It was so beautiful there, with a combination of a new and historical buildings that came together gorgeously.

    The Budapest eye Ferris wheel and the Danube were only a block or two away from our hostel and our first night we just went up in the wheel and then stayed and talked in the big, pretty park surrounding it. All the food there was incredible, and I ended up eating a lot of goulash because it was inexpensive, and more importantly, really really good.
 
     Maybe my best experience there was in Margaret park in the middle of the Danube. We just happened to arrive there just as their giant water fountain was doing a choreographed musical show. Steams of water spiraled around the fountain and water cannons shot up rings of spray in time with the music playing over the speakers. There was a big outer ring of the fountain where you could sit and watch and dip your feet. It was absolutely incredible, and just down to plain luck that we saw it. Then we got the biggest sticks of cotton candy I've ever seen and watched the sun set and it was absolutely amazing. That night we went out with our hostel to a Ruin Bar, which was a really great experience. All around, it was just a fantastic trip.

   There was a bit of a complication when we had to get back from the airport at one in the morning thanks to a delayed flight and not one but TWO taxi drivers misheard our intended destination and drive to the wrong place first, but we got home back safe for our last two days in Bonn, then the excursion in Berlin!