I think I'm turning Viennese

July 19-21

Well we reached Vienna Monday morning with the intention of going and visiting the modern art museums etc., but once we hit the hotel, the bed called and wouldn't let us leave for 3 or 4 hours. Then after that McDonald's wanted us over to have a meal so we indulged in what we thought was a familiar friend. All the burgers had weird names and seemed smaller and a little more expensive than their American counterparts, but the Mcflurry saved me. Oh, and for the students being good and reading the blogs before you travel, Alserstrasse has 2 one way streets and if you leave the tram it should be right across the street. As we were waiting for Nils and Dr. Wasser to get ready a strange woman approached us and gave us tram pass for the week, which at the time I thought it weird that she would have eight passes just to give away. The confusion was resolved when Dr. Wasser came down and recognized the woman and greeted her children, I guess she was affiliated with the program somehow. Then we left and went to a cafe to have some Viennese food and she introduced herself as Reiner's (sp?) sister-in-law, Susan. We all had typical Viennese food and boy was the schnitzel delicious, it needed nothing but a little squirt of lemon.

Now it is time for the History of Medicine portion of the program, we first visited the Freud museum and while it was very interesting, I'll admit I was out a little too late the night before and passed out for a good 5 minutes during Dr. Wasser's lecture. He even called me out on it when I pulled him aside and asked a question about something covered in the lecture. While the tour guide was interesting and good, I personally think that Dr. Wasser could give better insight on Freud's life and expand a bit further on things covered, mainly because we natively speak the same language. Then we had the history of medicine walk (I'm sorry if the timeline is off, I couldn't keep the days straight after the change in schedule) which I personally think would've been more interesting if Vienna would've put up a plaque or something where the important medical innovations were created instead of putting up a department store.

The next day we visited the museum of Vienna, of which I didn't find too particularly interesting other than the weapons, the way Veinna remained intact during the Hungarian invasions and finally the way the city had changed during the times. Then we were off to the cemetery where we saw Freud's parents' grave and while I would risk going through the tall grass I was advised against it due to the snakes and what not in the grass. It was here I learned that the fearless Dr. Wasser had one weakness, spiders. Well that's it for this blog entry, stay tuned for Vienna part 2 in the next entry.