Wien

 On Monday, we took a train to Vienna, where we met back up with the group at our hotel.  We toured the city all afternoon, and then went out for dinner at a really nice restaurant.

On our tour, we saw where the building the Mozart died in used to stand.

We also saw the Imperial Crypt, where the Kaisers are buried.

On Tuesday, Dr. Wasser led us around Vienna on a Medical History walk.  He had a PowerPoint on his iPad to go along with the hospitals, memorials, and old buildings we went to see.  Then we went to the Sigmund Freud Museum, which was in his old house.  Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture here too.

After our long day of lectures, we went back to the hotel to clean up, and got ready to go see an operetta. I thought it was going to be the most boring thing ever, but it turned out to be pretty entertaining, considering we had no idea what they were saying or singing.  It was a pretty cool stage too; it was an outdoor show, away from the city, and kind of off in the woods.

After the operetta, several of us went back to my room and finished watching The Sound of Music from where we left off in Salzburg.

Wednesday, we went to The Museum of Vienna, and got even MORE history of the city.  We were all getting pretty tired of tours and history by then, and it didn’t seem like many people were paying much attention.  At least they had Legos in the gift shop.

After the museum, we went into the catacombs under Stephansdom.  They were pretty creepy, and were more like the scary catacombs in movies than I expected.  The crypt we went to just had a bunch of coffins, but this one had some rooms completely full of bones left over from the plague.  So many people died, that there wasn’t time to bury everyone, so they were just stacked up.  There were thousands in each of these rooms.

After the catacombs, we had a free afternoon.
On the way back to the hotel, we saw this guy, floating.  He had a pretty big crowd.

After our break, we went to a wine garden for dinner.  It was a nice little quiet place to get away from people, so we stayed for a while.  It was pretty relaxing.

We had another movie night in my room.  I’m pretty sure no one stayed awake the whole time, but we tried… and added to our sleep deprivation. 

The next day, we went to Vienna University.  After a lecture about how the medical education system in Europe works, we went to Narrenturm, or “Fool’s Tower”.  This was one of the first asylums in Europe, and was turned into a pathology museum.  They had sections for different types of diseases, like diseased organs preserved in jars, skeletons showing deformities, and hundreds of wax models of diseases that affect outer body parts.  This was probably one of my favorite museums of the trip.

After that tour, we had lunch at a Pakistani restaurant.  It was surprisingly good.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I have no idea what I ate, but I got seconds.  This was one of those restaurants where there’s not a set price, you pay what you feel like you should.  So, we all thought we would get a really cheap lunch, but after trying the food, I think almost everyone gave more than we expected to.

After lunch, we went to the medical library on campus, where the guide showed us some medical books that were centuries old.  I think the oldest one we saw was published around 1550.  I was surprised they let us handle them, but they did…and they were heavy.

After that, we were all pretty ready to head back to the hotel, but we had one stop left: The Museum of Pharmacology.  They had exhibits showing the development of pharmacy in Vienna.  I didn’t really care for this one, especially since we were all ready to be done for the day.  It didn’t seem like many other people paid much attention either.

On our last day in Vienna, we went to the Natural History Museum.
It was a pretty impressive building:






They’re best known for Venus Von Willendorf, a small sculpture carved in the Stone Age.  The estimate of the carving date  was 25,000 BC.

They had a re-creation of a Dodo:

and a saber toothed tiger:

After the museum, we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags, and took the train to Prague for the weekend.

Munich and Salzburg

We were planning on being all rested and ready to start our day in Munich early, but none of us slept very well, and we were all pretty exhausted the whole day.  So we checked into hostel, looked into some tours, and decided that we wanted to see Neuschwanstein.  We didn’t want to pay a tour guide to take us, so we just counted on finding it by ourselves.  I looked up the train and bus stop names, and we left with just those names.

It turns out we didn’t even need to look those up.  If you’re in Munich, you can just follow a large group of Asians with cameras, and you’ll end up at the castle.

So, we made it to the castle, waited in a huge line for tickets, and finally got to go in.  I was a little disappointed with the tour, mostly because of how many of us they crammed in there.  It was hard to see some of the things the guide was pointing out. It was still really pretty, but I think the inside of Schloss Brühl was more impressive.The outside of this one was much prettier though.

To take that first picture, we walked out onto a bridge across a canyon.  Here it is from inside the castle:

Hohenschwangau was nearby too, but we didn't take a tour of it.

The trip to the castle took all day, so we didn’t do much after. 

On Saturday, we went on a free tour of Munich.  The guide walked us around for 4 hours, and had some pretty interesting stories about events involving Nazis around the city, along with general history back to medieval times. 

This bronze strip shows where people would have walked to avoid walking past a plaque that was put up as a memorial for Nazis who died in the Beer Hall Putsch.  They were required to salute the plaque as they walked by, and there were Nazi guards making sure you did so.  Those who didn't were shipped off to a concentration camp, so people began taking a side street to avoid it.  Guards figured this out, and made another post around the corner to catch people trying to get around it.  These people were sent to camps as well.  This strip is a memorial to them.

After the tour, we went souvenir shopping, and climbed up St. Peter’s Church tower.  The tower had over 300 steps to the top, and no elevator, so the girls weren’t too happy with me for making them climb it.  But they survived, and we had a great view of the city.

We caught a 6 o’clock train to Salzburg that evening.  We were the only group to go to another city that weekend; everyone else stayed in Munich. It was nice splitting off into smaller groups on weekends. It made planning much easier.

For dinner, we found a sushi restaurant near the hostel, and I tried octopus there! 

For the rest of the night, we just hung out in the hostel and planned for the rest of our time there.

On Sunday morning, we slept in for the first time in forever.  Then we visited Mozart’s house, which ended up only being about a ten minute walk from our hostel.

Here’s one of his harpsichords:

And his entire printed works:

Mozart was a busy man.

The Sound of Music tour was next, so we watched the movie during lunch, so it would be fresh in our minds.

It was pretty cool recognizing the scenery from the movie.

Here's what we rode around the city in:

and the lake where the kid's boat sank, along with the patio where Uncle Max sat:

The trees that the children were climbing in:

and the gazebo:

We also went to the church that Maria was married in.

After the tour, our guide pointed us towards Mirabell gardens, where more of the movie was shot.  We walked around there for a while and took lots of pictures.

They ran around this fountain during Do-Re-Mi:

and also ran through this tunnel:

After the Sound of Music sights, we spent a little more time walking around the garden before heading back to the hostel.  There were lots of pretty flowers:

We went to Cafe Tomaselli for dinner, which is the oldest coffee shop in Austria.  It was started around 1700, and is still operated by the Tomaselli family.  We ate there because of that, and the fact that Mozart was a frequent customer there.  Sooo.... yea, Mozart and I hung out in the same restaurant.

After dinner, we started wandering back towards our hostel.  We thought we knew where we were going, but suddenly, this large rock appeared in our way:

I still have no idea how that mountain ended up between us and the river.

...so that was an adventure navigating around that.

Then we walked along the river, then finally back to the hostel to rest up for the day of travel ahead of us.

Goodbye, Bonn

So, I’ve been playing catch up for a while.  I have a pretty big chunk to add over the next few days.  Sorry.  Hopefully I’ll be able to finish these before I get home. 

On Monday morning, we had class again.  Then a student worker for AIB took us to the Haribo Outlet Store.  It was grocery store sized with aisles and aisles of gummy bears.  And they were really cheap so I stocked up. 

Later that night, we met up at AIB again and watched Goodbye, Lenin.  We were all exhausted, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell asleep, so I’m not really sure what it was about.

Tuesday was everyone’s favorite day in a while.  We started out exploring a small town called Bacharach, where we had lunch and climbed up in a church tower for a good view of the town. 

Walking around the town felt like we were in a different century.

Then, we went on a cruise down the Rhine, which was lined with tons of medieval castles.  The boat took us to the Marksburg Castle, which is the only completely intact castle along the river.  We got a tour of it, and saw the cannons that controlled the river, and some other cool rooms, like the torture room.

Here's the boat:

and one of the many castles along the river:

This is the one we toured, Marksburg:

The Rhine from the castle:

Thumbscrews from the torture room:

 After that tour, we went to the Mayschosser Winery for another tour.  We saw the wine cellar, and the vineyards on the sides of the mountains where it all came from.  Then, we went to a wine tasting in the cellar, and tried a few of the wines that they made there.

I felt really classy.

So, that was a long day, but it was a lot of fun.  It was nice to get a break from museums and lectures.

On Wednesday, we went to the Haus der Geschichte, which was a big German History Museum.  It was interesting, but the tour went kind of slow, and we were all definitely ready to leave when it was over.  But Dr. Wasser didn’t think the guide did a good enough job, so he walked us through it again.  So we were pretty much sleep walking.  We were scheduled to have class after the museum, but I guess Dr. Wasser realized that was enough for the day, so he cancelled it.

On Thursday, we took another day trip to Cologne.  We left earlier to fit in our make-up Cathedral rooftop tour.  It was rainy, but it was still really cool.  The tours aren’t open to the public, so we were pretty lucky to get to go up there.  There was some kind of service going on during the tour, so it was just a really cool scene with the gothic structures around us, and the dark rainy day, and hearing the organ below us.

After the tour, we went to the Cologne Zoo.  We also had a tour guide there, so it was different than a normal visit to the zoo.  We learned a lot more than if we would have just looked around.  There was also an exhibit like body worlds, but for animals, so we did that too.

There was a baby elephant in the elephant house, so we spent a while in there watching them.

When I got back to Bonn, I packed up everything and said goodbye to my host family.  It was sad, and I couldn’t believe how fast the 3 weeks with them went.  My host mom got me a going away gift; it’s a German cookbook for guys.  It’s called Man Kitchen… the group thought it was pretty funny.  There are lots of pictures, so maybe I’ll attempt to make something crazy this year at my apartment.  Unfortunately, it's all in German.  I’m not sure if she realized this, but I’ll figure it out.

I got a picture with the family during our last Sunday dinner:

After saying bye, I met up with Michelle, Elena, and Carrie at the train station to catch our night train to Munich.  We slept in tiny, triple bunk beds, in a very small room.  It wasn’t the most comfortable night ever.  I think I would have rather been in a reclining chair.  There were also two other people already sleeping in the room when we got there, so we woke them up trying to maneuver our huge bags into this tiny compartment.  So, we finally got settled in, and went to sleep.  The train arrived in Munich at 7:30 the next morning.