At last, reunited with Mer: Vienna Day 1

Friday, Oktober 10, 2008. Vienna Austria.

After successfully getting up at 4:30 and making it to my train on time, I finally arrived in Vienna. Meredith was waiting for me on the train platform and I couldnt have been more excited to see her. 36 hours is a long time, especially when you are by yourself for those 36 hours. We had talked with Ryan (who studies in Vienna) the night before, so we were meeting up with him too. He took us to breakfast at this great little cafe--where we accidentally almost left without paying...oops--and we had great breakfast wraps! Mer and I HAD to drop off our stuff because our backs were dying, so after we said bye to Ryan who was heading out of town later that day, we went back to the hostel to drop off our stuff.

We checked in but couldn't get into the room yet, so we got a map, and decided to venture out into the city for a while. We saw SO MANY beautiful places in Vienna. (PLEASE SEE MY PICTURES! They are up now!) We grabbed some brie, bread, and jam from a grocery store and sat down by a water fountain and had the most delightful picnic! We went to the opera house because we wanted to get tickets to that nights ballet. Usually students get standing room tickets for 3 euro, but we splurged for 5 more euro and got a box seat! We walked around until about 4:00 where we both just crashed and decided that for the rest of the day to be the slightest bit productive, we would have to nap. So we did.

When we woke up, one of our hostel-mates was there. We got to talking with her and guess what we discovered?!?! SHE IS A TRI DELT TOO!! haha, go figure! (there is a picture to document, don't even worry). Anyway, we got up, got dressed, and headed over to the opera. We packed another picnic that we ate on the steps of the Albertina Museum (where Mer found a guy who lives SO close to her house at home!) and then went to the ballet.

We couldn't see much because we were at a bad angle, but it was still such a cool experience. The building itself was AMAZING and HEY, I was at a ballet in an opera house in Vienna!! We went home from there, but not quite to bed. Once we got back, we went down to the lounge/bar area of the hostel to hang out and make some friends. And a "friend" we made... More like this Persian guy from Iran wanted to take Mer salsa dancing and she woudln't go and he got hostile. Luckily our other new friend Andrew from Philadephia rescued us. We finally escaped from there to shower and hop in bed for another day of Vienna.