Study Abroad Blog | Blogging From Abroad

15 Sep

I am HERE!! I was successfully made it from plane to plane and plane to Austria. So I left at 11:50AM on Tuesday, September 9th and arrived in Vienna at 9:00AM on the 10th. I was met by two amazing Austrian girls, Berni & Lisi, who were assigned as my ‘Buddies’ to help me. (They actually studied abroad in Minnesota last spring so their English is great.) They took my bags and I followed them into the city of Vienna. First we took a subway, then a train, bus, rail car, and bus. We successfully used all of the transportation in the city. This was quite new for me because, other than the WVU PRT, I haven’t experienced much “public transportation”. I was a little overwhelmed to say the least. The worst part is I had my big backpack on and I kept hitting this old Austrian guy in the head. He kept yelling at me in German, but of course I don’t know any German so that didn’t help the situation. I feel like this will be one of many awkward situations I will experience in the next few months.
Since I arrived in the morning, we immediately started working on my ‘To Do List’. It turns out; my housing is in a touristy district in the Northwestern part of Vienna called Grinzing. I really like my apartment and the ladies that run the building are really sweet. I have been VERY blessed to have Berni and Lisi to help me get everything situated. By the time we finished that evening I only had a few things to do the next day and I was settled in. It was a bit overwhelming because I have been awake for 45 hours and my adrenaline was all over the board. I slept that night/next day for 15 hours and was still tired when I got up. This whole time difference thing is going to take some getting used to as well. I am 6 hours ahead here- I hope my body doesn’t hate me too much. :) After sleep, I like Austria a lot. Without sleep, I’m not too fond of anything really:) So goal #1 is sleeping, #2 learning German, and #3 meet people. Oh, I have also become obsessed with world maps, probably because I keep meeting people from countries that I forgot even existed. I have a whole new appreciation for World Maps-

They are sooo pretty!