Next stop for day 2 in Vienna was dance lessons. I was a bit skeptical about how Viennese dance lessons would be. First of all I have two left feet and no experience dancing. Next, when I heard I was going to be learning the Viennese Waltz I had this preconceived notion that the teachers were going to be snotty and overly critical. I was totally wrong. We walked in and it was this really sweet old couple that was teaching us. They were incredibly patient and helpful. Because there were more girls than boys on this trip I was dancing with Shannon. I thought I was bad, but Shannon was a whole other story. We were turning the wrong way, we kept stepping on each other’s feet, we kept running into Mckayla and Caleb who were dancing together, we were all a hot mess. But we laughed the entire time. We also learned how to Polka, which I liked a lot better than the Waltz, it was more fun. This experience was great because the part of the trip I was most unsure about ended up being one of my favorite parts.

After my dancing experience I was on my way to see the Hundertwasser Haus. The Hundertwasser Haus is public housing, so people do live in it. The man who created it, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, despised straight lines and anything that resembled normalcy. Hundertwasser was very into incorporating nature into his works. This is his reasoning for his hatred of straight lines, he thought of it as “godless” because there are no straight lines in nature. The building was all different colors, it was something you do not see every day. Even the cobblestone outside was topsy turvy. I like that he rejected normalcy, his eccentric and colorful building brings life into what could’ve been just another beige and grey alley.

The next thing on our itinerary was the sewers. We were on our way underground for the Third Man tour. The Third Man is a famous film that was released in 1950. There was a very famous chase scene taken underneath Vienna in the sewers and it is still regarded as one of the most famous chase scenes in film history. It is so well known because the camera angles make the tunnel look at lot larger than the part that was used. Before we could go down we had to get ourselves some very chic helmets with a light on it. I felt like a model. Then we went down this long spiral stairway into the depths of Vienna. It was rank. I knew it was a sewer system, I wasn’t totally ignorant, but seriously there is no preparation for that stench. We kept going down and I tried to stop looking at the lights because the spiders were enormous. There is no need for a spider to be that big in my opinion, but oh well. Then we even saw a rat. Literally, in just one day I was in a palace, learning to waltz, and now I was in a sewer with a rat as company. I loved that this trip had so much variety.  

Finally it was dinner! Our group was split up at that point. When we went into the sewers the other half was getting dinner, and then we would switch, and some people didn’t want to go into the sewers so they were just going to wait at the restaurant for us. Well, when we got to the restaurant the waiter seemed kind of confused that a large group was coming in. That struck us as weird because we had reservations for every restaurant we went to and they would give us two options to pick from for dinner. But then when we sat down there were exactly the right amount of seats, so we thought he just didn’t speak English very well. Then when he came out he gave us full menus, which struck us as weird again because like I said normally at most there would be two options for us to choose from to keep it simple for the chef. So Savkova told him again we were with a student tour and he said okay and brought out new menus. As all of this was happening we could not find the students that we were supposed to meet up with and Savkova was getting very worried. Then they called and asked where we were. We were at the wrong restaurant! We were in the right building, but the restaurant we were supposed to be at was in the basement. Savkova was in a panic because she wasn’t sure if we would have to pay for the meal because we prepaid for the dinner that was cooked downstairs. I was deeply concerned that I wouldn’t receive dessert, we were supposed to get apple strudel. I had my priorities straight. But the restaurants were nice enough to come to an agreement and we didn’t have to pay for another meal. And more importantly the apple strudel was delicious.

Our first stop on day 2 was back into downtown to Vienna, but this time to the Naschmarkt. The Naschmarkt is a humongous flea market. It was awesome. There was an insane amount of food. The people at the stands would constantly ask if you wanted to try something and of course I’d try it all. I had all kinds of dry fruit, and stuff I honestly don’t remember the name of. We attempted to try and talk in German with somebody who was working at a shop. Caleb and I both took German in high school, so it was interesting to see if we could actually communicate. We could a little bit and she was very sweet and seemed impressed that us Americans were making an effort. We walked around awhile and eventually got hungry. We decided to stop at this small crepe stand. It was seriously amazing. The warm nutella with some banana was beautiful. I do not understand why they do not have stands like this all over America. In Europe I would stop at these magical crepe places all over, just about whenever I saw one. It was edible perfection, and that is not an exaggeration. We also needed to pick up some lunch for later because we were going to have a picnic. We stuck with fruit because we just had those heavenly crepes. We weren’t positive how it worked at these stands, if the workers were supposed to grab the fruit or we were, so we definitely were ticking this one guy off, but we figured it out. Workers aren’t as over eager to help customers over there as they are here in America, so he wasn’t really trying to be rude, it’s just a bit of a cultural difference. Then we did not want to walk around the market again, so we decided to stop at an art museum across the street. It was a really pretty building, it had this big gold sphere on it. But then we realized we only had about 45 minutes until we had to meet the group, so we did not think we had enough time to actually go in the museum. What we did was sit in the gift shop and enjoy the A/C for a little bit. Classy right? 

Next, we were on our way to the Schoenbrunn Palace. That picnic we had to buy food for took place in the palace gardens. The gardens were gorgeous. There were little mazes made out of hedges like you see in the movies, bright flowers that were all meticulously cared for, and huge trees everywhere. Then we relaxed for awhile and ate the fruit we bought earlier. The fruit was delicious. It tasted like it just came from the farm that morning. At that point I was in a very good mood, I was relaxing with my friends just enjoying the shade and the food. The one problem was my feet felt like they were being completely mutilated. So before I even left on the trip I fell in love with a pair of vans. I heard they were comfortable, so I wanted them for the trip. However they were expensive and I did not want to spend a lot of money before leaving. But then two nights before I left I went to the mall, they were on sale. I was so happy and bought them. This’ll be great I thought, my feet will be comfortable. WRONG! I didn’t break them in. Rookie mistake. So stupid. I still have scars on my feet. But I persevered.We finished lunch and walked/ limped to get a tour of the palace. I just hoped I didn’t bleed on anything. It would so be me to bleed on a palace floor. But the tour was wild. I have a serious appreciation for history. To be inside of the walls where all kinds of noble people came and made decisions that impacted nations was incredible. The tour guide told us “Here in Europe if it looks like gold, it probably is gold.” The whole palace was adorned with real gold. I knew places like this were going to be ridiculously over the top, I mean it’s a palace for goodness sake, but it was still unreal to think about how much it was worth. On this trip in most of the places we visited we were not allowed to take pictures, but I wish I would have taken some anyway because it was beautiful.