Week 5

 A week in Vienna and Prague!

This week we traveled to Vienna and Prague. I think this has probably been my favorite week so far. We started the week off with a day of class. I loved the lecture about Da Vinci and how he drew different animals, especially the birds. Tuesday, was a long travel day to Vienna. While the train ride was super long, it didn't feel awful. I enjoy the travel days because it gives me time to just chill and be with my thoughts. That night we went to a restaurant that was in a really old cellar and it was so cool.

Wednesday, we started off with a walking tour of Vienna led by Dr. Schnable. This tour was very interesting. We got to see an old lecture hall which was amazing and made me jealous that I have to go to class in Blocker. That day we also went to the Drogisten museum which was so cool. I love seeing what kinds of herbs and medicines people before us used. I also loved to see the prints of the plants that they used back then. The last thing we did that day was visit the crypts beneath the church. I thought the crypts were cool, but I always get a weird vibe when seeing a place where people are buried. The mummies gave me a little bit of a creepy feeling but it was interesting to see how they were preserved for so long.

Thursday, we first visited the Josephinian Military Academy which was totally awesome. The detail of the models was astounding and it was so cool to be able to look at and study them. After, we visited the Freud Museum and learned about Freud and his work in the field of Psychoanalytic. There were so many things that I didn't know about Freud's early career in researching cocaine, and it was interesting to be able to see where he worked after learning all about him. The final thing we did was visit the Narrenturm. This was so interesting. All of the preserved specimens and models were interesting to see, and it made me think about all of the different things that can affect humans and their health.

Friday, we started off the day at the natural history museum. We saw so many stuffed animals and really cool meteors. I also loved the dinosaurs. I think that paleontology is one of the coolest fields of study and the recent discoveries on whether the dinosaurs had feathers is fascinating. After the natural history museum, we went to the cafe Demel which I thought was underwhelming. The chocolate cake wasn't what I was expecting, but it was still okay. We then got on a train to Prague where we met a new friend named Jakob who was so helpful in telling us about food and places that are must-sees in Prague. That night, we went to an Irish pub for karaoke where we met some English people who were fascinated by the fact that we were from Texas.

Saturday, we headed up the hill to the palace. I thought the palace and the cathedral were really cool, but there were so many tourists that there were times when I couldn't see some of the things and it took probably 5 times the amount of time to walk through the palace. The most interesting part of the palace was the defenestration window. Defenestration has been one of my favorite words for a long time and I think it was so interesting that they actually threw people out the window. We then got lunch at a winery which was beautiful and we got to see the beginning of a wedding in the winery I think I found where I want to get married one day. We then headed to the monastery where we got beer made by the monks. I didn't know that beer was typically made by monks but it was interesting to learn that they do in a lot of monasteries.

Sunday, we woke up at 4:30 to hop on our 5:45 train back to Bonn. While we missed our second train, it ended up working out because instead of having to get on 3 different trains after, we were able to hop on an ICE train and we ended up getting back to Bonn an hour earlier than we were supposed to. 

Overall, it was a great week and I am excited and sad to be entering our last week of the program.