Austrian Adventures

We arrived in Vienna before 9 am on Monday morning. With all of us running on around an hour of sleep, there were many hysterical laugh attacks on the plane and on the way to the hotel. When we'd left Bonn it had been chilly and rainy, and had been for most of the week, but when we walked out of the subway towards our hotel we were greeted with summer weather. By the time we'd gotten all our luggage to the hotel we were already sweating! We got a couple minutes to change and then we were off to the city center of Vienna. Luckily, we all got a chance to grab some coffee before our first tour. The first event of the day was a medical walk around Vienna. I did not know this before, but huge amounts of medical history took place in Vienna! We were able to walk around and see the buildings, and tour some, where many advancements in medicine happened. After lunch we got a short break to look at some shops before we were given a private tour of the catacombs at St. Micheal's Church. Not gonna lie, it was kinda creepy. Mummy's are a whole lot weirder in person when you're not seeing them behind some glass of some sort. The rest of the day we spent kind of working on our research projects and mostly catching up on sleep and laundry.

Tuesday started as an early morning as we all walked to the Josephinum Medical School. By far one of the coolest museums I've experienced! They have wax models of all the different internal structures. I was a little skeptical when hearing about it but these models had such amazing details, and the crazy thing is most of them are crazy old too! They had about 6-9 rooms all filled with different models and systems. They even have a crazy detailed obstetrics room showing all the growth stages babies go through and how they look inside the Mom. The coolest part was the detailed mannequin showing all our lymph nodes! After going through this museum we were released for the day to do what we wanted in Vienna, as long as we were back for the concert we were all going to later that night. One of the girls on the trip, Katherine, and I decided to go off on our own for the day. We got on the subway and decided to try out one of the local flea markets. We were hoping it'd have more shopping then food, but it was still so cool to see all the local produce! After that, and wandering around for a few hours, we went to the Lippizaner's training stadium. It was a really cool tour and we got to see the gorgeous horses and learn more about the history of them. That night we went to a string quartet concert. It was a really cool experience getting to see a show in Vienna since its such a famous music city!

Wednesday we had a guest lecture at the Vienna Medical School and learned about how medical education is taught in Europe. Including the fact that it's totally free! After that, and lunch, we went to another museum that's actually on the school campus as well. This museum has real and wax models, of about every sort of disease and defect a human body can ever get. It was something I'd describe as grossly cool!! Mid afternoon we got a break and I actually got to meet up with my cousins for the afternoon! That was really cool that we happened to be in the same city in Europe at the same time! The group met back up for a huge group dinner that night where I finally got to try Wienersniztel and Apffelstrudel!

Thursday we toured the Freud museum and had a lecture on his life and theories. While he was pretty out there and I don't agree with all this theories, I do agree that if it wasn't for him we probably wouldn't even be thinking about these theories. We were then free for our free weekend! A group of 7 of us set off for Salzburg on a train. Around 3 hours later, we arrived in one of the most beautiful cities I think I've ever seen. Not even kidding, Salzburg is straight up phenomenal. It took us a while to find our hostel and get checked in, then we went to the old town city center. Part of what makes Salzburg so gorgeous is that it's a quaint town set in between beautiful mountains. We just hung out for the night and decided to try and make it to bed for our big day Friday.

Friday we embarked on a combination tour of The Sound of Music and The Bavarian Salt Mines. The Sound of Music has always been a favorite of mine, but the tour made it even more of a favorite movie!! We got loaded up in a big tour bus and went around the city seeing where many scenes were filmed, while learning behind-the-scenes secrets. After we'd seen many famous sites, we headed higher into the mountains, doing sing-longs to the Sound of Music soundtrack on the way! We stopped for lunch at the church where they got married and got lunch there too. When we got back into Salzburg we got on another tour bus towards the Bavarian Salt Mines. I really had no idea what to expect and we had about a 40 min bus right there, where we all promptly fell asleep! Once we got there we were immediately given these adorable full body suits and got on a sketchy train car to be taken to the mines.

Pretty much everything was dark the entire tour but we got to slide down mine shafts and learn about the history of mining as well. After our adventurous day, we had to go home and work on our project some more…yuck. I guess that's what you get when you study abroad haha.

Saturday started with an early morning but I didn't mind much… because I was about to check another thing off my bucket list. We took a two hour train ride to Innsbruck… and we went PARAGLIDING!!! Seriously one of the most amazing experiences of my life!!

Flying high above the alps did not last long enough, that's for sure!!! My only advice is go paragliding! And go to Austria, mostly Salzburg. You won't regret it, I promise!!!