The One With The 343 Stairs

Hallo!

Sometimes I think I will get used to living here eventually, but I'm having a hard time believing that. Every single day I've been here, Vienna has totally blown my mind. With it's beautiful old buildings, but having a side that's classy, sleek, and modern. It shouldn't work, but it totally does.

This morning was a really lazy one for Delanie and I. The night before last night I had only gotten a few hours of sleep thanks to the wonderful fault of jet lag. So we decided to give our bodies a break and let them wake up when they needed to. Because of that, after we got ready we went straight to German class.

The class is a little overwhelming but I'm sure it'll come with time. There's a lot of times where you are put on the spot and the best you can do is just stutter, mumble, and slaughter the words coming out of your mouth. I'm pretty sure the teacher corrected almost every single word I said today. Ha! They told us we are going twice as fast and normal classes you take in college. So I know that's a really big reason for my confusion. But if I work through it, I'll be able to understand/speak it that much faster! Plus, we've only had two classes and I'm already recognizing more words on signs and posters. So that's a confidence booster.

After class, Garen wanted to show us his favorite place to eat that he discovered one of the first days. It was a kebab shop. Everyone got döners which is a sort of sandwich with the kebab meat in it. I basically got the sandwich without the bread. They had a gluten free option with the kebab meat, salad, and rice in a box. It was super yummy! But I think I might only get that every once in awhile because it was pretty heavy. :) The below picture is a picture of the meat. It spins around slowly on this pole and the workers shave it off with a knife for your meal.




After eating Garen and Whitney left and Lizzy, Delanie, and I headed towards St. Stephens. St. Stephens is the cathedral in the center of Vienna. It's absolutely beautiful. We went inside and took a few pictures, but Lizzy and I wanted to climb the stairs to the top. (There is an elevator option, but... we wanted to say we did the stairs. :D) It was so fun! It was a really narrow spiral staircase to the top, 343 stairs to the top to be exact.



We had barely started up the stairs before both of our legs were having a hard time. Some of the common phrases that we used while going up the stairs were: "My quads are burning." "I can do hard things." "Hold on, I need to breath." etc. On one of these stops, we noticed that someone was coming up and would want to pass us. It turned out to be a quite older man. We told him he could go ahead and he ventured on up. We chuckled at the fact that we are in fact more out of shape than someone in their 70s, but we tried not to let it get to us.



We finally reached the top to find a gift shop, which I thought was pretty funny. Nevertheless the view was absolutely incredible. It was nice to see over buildings for the first time in a week. The climb was absolutely worth it, and it made the view even better knowing that we worked for it.



After we descended back the stairs with our shaking legs, we headed to the U-bahn (or the underground for all my British relatives) to go to the National Library. Lizzy had gotten an annual library card earlier in the morning and I wanted to get one so I could go in their to study. You can take a tour or get a day pass, but with the amount of homework I already have from the German class I knew I needed a place to really study. I got an annual pass which means I got my picture taken and everything. (yay for the lack of heads up for my awesome hair! haha! Just kidding, it's not too bad.) But I'm absolutely beyond stoked to be able to study in that beautiful building all semester!




On our way home, Delanie and I decided that for dinner we were going to have dessert. Because we're classy like that. They had a few gluten free cake options so I decided on the Caprese cake which has white almonds as the base and LOTS of chocolate. It was so yummy but very rich so I'm afraid I didn't finish it. But it was still great!



Even though today was as jam-packed as other days, it was still great. I think it was better to have a little bit of a slower day. I think I could just sit on a lawn in front of museum all day and be perfectly content. I'm getting more and more comfortable with the transportation systems too, so it's feeling more and more like home.

<3

Auf Wiedersehen!