Weiner

Perhaps you imagine that I'm mature enough to be traveling around Europe, so I should be mature enough to not laugh at the word "weiner" when it's posted on every other sign in the city of Vienna, Austria. You'd be wrong. I'm also going to laugh at this. This language is just hilarious.
But I should fill you in on the happenings leading up to the adventure in the land of strudel and schnitzel. And, I'm sure you're all dying to hear how the museologia exam went. (You've been losing sleep, I know.) Well, WE PASSED! And not only did we pass, we all got the equivalent of a B+ or A, and some of us even got perfect scores. So there, Study Abroad. We didn't fail. We were on cloud nine after we finished our exam, and went out for a celebratory lunch and drinks afterward. This is where I will leave out a number of hilarious stories, because my Babbo told me he'd prefer that I didn't talk about drinking so much in my blog. So, I'll just let you know that there are some hilarious stories, and share some pictures so you can let your imagination run wild :)
But that was last Thursday, and our adventure to Vienna began on Saturday. Our flight was out of Milan on Sunday morning, so we spent Saturday in transit and stayed in a hostel near the Bergamo Airport. We were lucky enough in both of our accommodations on this trip to book a 4 person room. While there were 3 of us. And have some random girl sleeping in the rooms with the 3 of us, all whilst we insist on composing ourselves like 5-year-olds. Like when Adair trapped Jenna in her bunkbed while the strange foreign girl was in the shower, and was in the process of climbing on top of the fortress when the girl emerged from the bathroom. Adair proceeded to pretend like she wasn't Dennis the Menace, and ended up in this position:
The next morning our flight went off without a hitch (which is becoming unusual for me...obviously) and we arrived at the Bratislava airport on Sunday afternoon. Bratislava? Yeah, we didn't know either. Adair had red online that it was a busride away from the Vienna city center, and because RyanAir insists on positioning its airports as inconveniently as possible, that is where we arrived. All the while we were making jokes about where we were--if we'd landed in Botswana or Bolivia or Bulgaria. Well, we thought we were pretty funny at least...
We arrived in the Vienna city center with the help of a robot-like subway worker who insisted on speaking Italian to us after he asked us about our travels. He was pretty hilarious. The public transportation in Vienna is awesome: very clean and efficient. In case anyone was wondering: I approve. So we clearly grabbed some disturbingly large sausages and sat on a bench in the freezing cold to enjoy our immersion into Austrian culture. And then we stumbled upon these guys... talk about immersion. Who knew that people still did things like this? I mean, those people have those things hanging in their closets all year long. Casually flipping through your wardrobe, "Hey, mom, where's my hat with the plume in it?! I need that for this afternoon's parade!" But really, they were hilarious.
Afterward we checked into our really fun and funky hostel, oddly named the Wombat Hostel. But it was a really cool place. Again, highly recommended. And got to meet the next poor soul who had to sleep in a room with the three of us. Except this was a very quiet little Asian girl that we named Nancy, because all she said to us was "Hi" and "Bye" (I spent two nights sleeping on the bunk below her, and that was the extent of our conversation. Bizarre.) Sunday night we ventured back into the city center and decided to go to an interactive music museum called the Haus Der Musik. It was a freakin' blast. We had no idea what to expect when we got there, but we had a really really good time running around (again) like 5-year-olds and playing with all of the funny exhibits and learning all about Beethoven and Mozart. Spoiler alert: Beethoven was a huge jerk and Mozart was way too nice and everyone walked all over him. But they both made good music, I guess. It snowed on our way back to the hostel, but we were all appropriately dressed for the weather, so it wasn't miserable, just pretty.
The next morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast at the cafe where Sigmund Freud used to play chess. (Apparently that's significant. I just know that my croissant was AWESOME) After breakfast we wanted around the city a little bit, visiting the castles and all of the absolutely beautiful buildings in the historic center of Vienna. It was really cold at this point, but the snow made everything so much prettier! Strudel happened, again- a given. It was delicious. Also a given. We found our way to the Freud museum in the late afternoon. In reality, it was pretty boring. Sorry, Freud. Your house just wasn't anything to write home about. I wanted to hear weird stuff about why he was such a weird dude, obsessed with sex and killing people and stuff, but the museum had very little to offer in that regard. I did snag some pics to impress Matty, though. And obviously took a picture of myself being psychoanalyzed on the couch.
Monday night we hung out in the "Wombar" in our hostel, and had some silly sprinkled drinks. Nothing too crazy, we had to be up the next morning to head back to Africa, or wherever the airport was.
We arrived at the Bratislava airport a little bit early for our flight so we set up camp on a cluster of chairs and proceeded to talk loudly and obnoxiously, like we're famous for, and we caught the attention of another future passenger. We had assumed that the guy sitting in the suit across from us didn't speak English, and proceeded to discuss what country we actually thought we were in. (Embarrassing, I know.) And I'm pretty sure at the end we concluded that we must be close to a border, but certainly still in Austria, because you can't just take a bus from one country to another. Hold on. Unless you're in central Europe. In which case, you absolutely can. You can go from Austria to Slovakia and never even know it... Like we did. We had to be informed of this dramatic relocation by said "guy in the suit" who was, in fact, a Chicago native--only 2 years older than us, who had graduated in May and was currently a professor of English in Bratislava. We obviously adopted Ben into our silly little group, and he even introduced us to Slovakia's famous soda: Kofola. (Fun fact: Slovakia is one of only 3 countries in the world where Coca Cola is not the most popular soft drink. Even more fun: Ben told me that, and I have no idea if it's true or what the other two countries are.) But Ben was on his way to meet up with his girlfriend in Rome who he hadn't seen in 6 months and he was very fun to have around. I hope they had a good time-- he was very excited to see her. It was adorable.
So after a long day of traveling, we arrived back in Firenze on Tuesday evening. Nothing much to report around here, other than the fact that I got bangs yesterday. It's a pretty terrible haircut-- that was done with a buzz cutter (like, the thing you shave boys' heads with. Instead of scissors) That was pretty terrifying, but hair grows, and the bangs are growing on me. I feel so Euro. I even bought heels today.
Well, my Holy Cross buddies who study in Bologna are in town for the night, and I'm going to go meet up with them.
Love and miss you all! Baci!