An Education In Copenhagen: When will you realize... Vienna waits for you

So I’m back in Copenhagen, and while my host family greeted me with a small birthday celebration to brighten my long trip back, I wish I were still traveling, roaming winding European streets and exploring new cities every two days. My sixteen days of traveling were filled with ups and downs, but it was an overall incredible and positive experience. I’m going to do my best to include everything, so be aware that this is going to be long.

Hillary and I left for Vienna on Friday night with a few minor glitches. First of all, we could not find each other in the metro station. You may be thinking how is that possible, but really it took us ten minutes to find each other before we could even get to the airport. Hillary and I like to say that we can never do anything “normally.” It is always more complicated and our adventures somehow turn into a comedy (If you need more elaboration, refer back to my Bornholm biking post). Well, we finally found each other and headed to the airport. To our surprise, there were two other girls heading to Vienna from our program. We just can’t seem to get away from DIS students. They’re everywhere.

So we arrive in Vienna at about 10:00 at night, and the lady at the information desk tells us to take bus number two. We walk outside in the dark and see bus number two and head on our way. I am not going to lie, we were not positive that was the right bus to take, but we got there just fine! Our hostel in Vienna was great. Hillary and I had a double room. It was really clean and comfortable.

When we woke up the next morning to pay for our rooms, I recognized one of the kids staying in another room from Denison. I saw my friend Ryan, who I hadn’t seen since the summer at a random hostel in Vienna. What a small world! We went with him and his friends to the Imperial Palace. The garden outside was beautiful. Hillary and I took so many pictures of parks and trees while on the trip. We kept joking that people would see our photos and think we didn't leave the U.S.

We then went to a market and had an interesting experience buying dried fruit. When we told the vender we were from America, he started screaming, “America! Obama Barack! Barack Obama!” over and over again, proclaiming that he loved America. It was a new experience being in a country where most people did not speak English. In Denmark, I am spoiled by the fact that everyone knows English, and while Hillary and I were traveling we had some strange, interesting, and funny encounters with non-English speakers (More on that later.)

The next morning, we had a small situation with our itinerary for the trip. Hillary’s mother emailed us, saying that we shouldn’t go to Paris because there was a strike planned for the following Thursday, and we might not be able to make our flights. Hillary and I were a little worried since we were supposed to meet Eleanor in Paris and had no way of contacting her. Finally, after much debate, we decided not to go to Paris and instead, spend more time in Prague and Salzburg. We canceled our flights but could not get refunds. We spent the rest of our visit marveling at beautiful works of art at the Leopold Museum and then having delicious marble cake and expressos at the Leopold Cafe (side note: I did not know that when you order an expresso, you literally get a small half cup of coffee. Just a heads up before you order one). Later in the day, we moved on to the next leg of our journey… SALZBURG!!!! We took a train. I enjoyed Vienna, but I think I liked Salzburg a little more.

Our hostel in Vienna. Also, I forgot to add this. On the second night, they had to move us to a different room, but it didn't have heating. They offered to let us stay in the room for 5 euro each, and then they bought two heaters for the room. It was nice and toasty and only five euros for each of us. We were very lucky! Hillary and I bought them some chocolate and left it for them as a thank you gift.