Week 5 in Vienna and Budapest!

This week I went to Vienna, Austria with my class. We started with a Medical City tour with Dr. Schnabel, who was dressed up as a plague doctor with the bird-like beak and black robe. Along visiting the major landmarks in the city, we had to take various "elixirs" to make sure we are not infected with the plague. Some of these elixirs consisted of several herbal treatments such as cloves, mint, rosemary, as well as urine from a young boy (sprite... in this case). We also visited the Catacombs later that day, which was interesting. Seeing thousands of bones in piles from actual human beings was somewhat unsettling, though. My favorite museum we visited during the Vienna trip was the Narrenturm. This museum had hundreds of wax figurines that showed the symptoms of several diseases. I have always been more of a visual learning, so physically seeing how specific diseases affect the human body was amazing. I could have spent hours and hours walking through the hallways, but sadly we were pretty rushed throughout the entire tour. If one thing should be changed about the Vienna trip, it would be to lengthen our time at that museum. We also went to a classical music concert in a church, which was beautiful! Dr. Waltz even told us where to sit in order to perceive a more acoustically friendly sound. Over the weekend, I went to Budapest with Micheal, Melissa, Maria, and Bella. We stayed at a cool hostel that was very youth friendly. By staying there, we were able to get free admission into some really fun bars. We also met a lot of people from all over the world, so it was nice to hear other peoples stories and backgrounds. On Saturday, we went to Fisherman's Bastion, which was a unique terrace in neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque style which was situated on the Castle hill overlooking the city. We also went and explored Margaret island, which had a musical water fountain, Japanese and rose gardens, and an amazing cotton candy stand. On Sunday, we went to the Szechenyi Thermal Bath and Swimming Pool, where we swam in water containing sulfur. The smell was pretty bad, but it was very refreshing to swim in cold water during the extremely hot day. We flew home that night on a plane that was delayed 2 hours. I didn't even get home until 2:30 am. I was extremely tired from travelling all week, so I was grateful to return home and sleep. Although I am sad that this was my last free travel weekend here in Europe, I am beyond excited to get back to Texas.