Danke, Danke, Danke Schön!: May 15th - 16th: Jet Lag and Slivovitz

HALLO, and welcome to my first ever blog! I am creating this blog to go hand in hand with another first-time experience, a school trip to Europe. I am traveling to Vienna with a group of seventeen Appalachian State students to study the art, architecture, music, history, and culture of the city, with a special focus on the turn of twentieth century ("fin de siècle"). I am one extremely lucky dude to have made it over here. If you'll notice, my blog title is "Danke, Danke, Danke Schön!", meaning "thank you, thank you, thank you very much," which is pretty much all I can give back to my many generous supporters. DANKE SCHÖN!

I am currently at the end of my second day in Wien (as it is natively known), and I am still sleepy and jet-lagged, but I am determined to get this [brief] post done before I go to bed! The trip over here involved about nine hours of flying, first an eight-hour flight to Munich, and then an hour-long flight to Vienna. It was nothing too bad, but there was no chance to sleep, and that certainly did not help the jet lag. When we finally made it to the city, however, excitement and adrenaline kicked in and I found it surprisingly easy to stay awake. We arrived at our cute little hotel, the Hotel Geblergasse ("gasse" means "alley"; this place is named after the street it's on), and got situated before heading out for lunch. This was very odd, since it felt like 6:00 or 7:00 am to our poor North Carolinian brains. But it was an amazing success! We managed to find a legit Austrian restaurant where the employees hardly spoke any English. This was trying, because I have studied absolutely no German, but with the help of some friends I was able to successfully order my first Wiener Schnitzel. Delicious but overwhelming.

Aside from just wandering the city and getting used to the shopping, the language, etc., the other big event of the first day was finding our first cafe (Vienna has a famous coffee house culture; this was a must). We decided on a quaint-looking little cafe down a back road called "Mmm Espresso". It was NOT what we expected. We stepped into a dark, smoky, room whose walls were covered with Jägermeister bottles and polaroids. It looked to be more of a bar than a cafe. Anyway, everyone seemed to fall silent when we entered; I don't think they were used to foreigners. And again, no one spoke English... One of our German-studying students managed to get us through it again, and soon we were sitting at one of the tables while they brought us—to our surprise—free shots of Serbian liquor! We soon after learned that the cafe was owned by a Serbian family. The manager came out and got pictures of us and with us, which was when we realized the polaroids were probably of past customers. We left quickly because we were kind of freaked out by the place, but the people were very kind, and we couldn't have asked for a more immersive cultural experience on the first day. Our picture has undoubtedly already been added to the wall of Mmm Espresso.

Alas, I am so sleepy I don't think I can write about the second day yet, but I will be sure to post about it ASAP tomorrow! I hope you enjoy the blog! Pictures can be found on my Facebook page but I might post them here later as well! Tschüss (bye)!

UPDATE: Pictures! And be sure to look for more on Facebook.