Fueling my Wanderlust

You would think that traveling through Europe would help tame my wanderlust but that's not the case. Traveling reminds me of all that I have yet to see.  

Sitting on the train from Venice to Bregenz I was listening to music, observing the changing landscape, and contemplating life.  The entire time I was reminded of taking road-trips in the US and suddenly that is all I wanted to do; road-trip all over the US, while I was on a train in Italy and Austria.  "What kind of person does that?" I thought to myself.  I just had an awesome weekend in Salzburg and Venice and all I can think about is traveling more.  Maybe it will get better as I travel more in Europe, I thought.  That is not the case thus far.

I have done a fair amount of traveling thus far in my life.  At the age of 21 I have been to 32 states.  I considered myself relatively cultured.  Last weekend we traveled to Vienna as a class and I realized how uncultured I really am.  There is so much history and culture in Vienna.  As I experienced in Mexico, there are building that were constructed before the United States was even a country.  With discussions in class I now realize how impressive it is that these buildings still exist after WWII.

The greatest feeling of being uncultured was when we went to The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.  That art museum is giant and the first rooms we went in to was full of craft work.  This was so much to take in but I enjoyed it immensely.  After that room we then continued to the rest of the museum.  That is where things got...interesting.  There is an entire floor of paintings.  That was also the fourth art museum we had been to in three days.  I enjoyed looking at everything but I just could not process everything that I was seeing.  There were so many works of art gathered under one roof and all I could think of was how much longer til we could leave.  I felt terrible for continually checking my watch but I still enjoyed the museum.  I also noted that when I go to The Louve when traveling to Paris, I need to wear tennis shoes.

So. Many. Paintings.

I also had an interesting cultural experience when attending my first opera while in Vienna.  The class went to a Verdi opera, Attila which is an Italian opera and had German subtitles.  Therefore I had very little idea as to what was going on.  We had watched some clips in class however this production had very modern staging.  All the music was the same but the costumes were far from traditional.  We have two more operas while we are here and I look forward to the different experiences that I will gain from them.

 Vienna is very metropolitan as we were told before we left but I didn't realize how much so.  The main shopping streets were very Chicago-esque however there was still so many historical buildings.  With my wanderlust I would rather travel than shop so as I walked around Vienna being a tourist instead of shopping.

Parliament Building

One of the many Hofsburg buildings 

With everything I have yet to do on this trip, I am looking forward to experience more different cultures.  Having the opportunity to experience different cultures reminds me to be humble as I am only one person in this giant world and only one piece of history.  I hope that throughout my life I remain humble and get more opportunities to remind me of that.

Cultural Differences

We were warned in our pre-trip meetings that there would be cultural differences between the US and Europe.  I haven’t experiences as many cultural differences here as I did when in Mexico but there are a few differences.  (Listed in the order I thought of them and not a particular order)

1)      Internet:  As I mentioned before, there is no internet at my homestay.  Not having internet is not uncommon here but in the US we tend to spend astronomical amounts of time on the internet.

2)      Food:  The food here is healthier.  The first weekend we were here there was a festival going on in Bregenz.  The only fried food there was from the “Original American Donuts” stand where the donuts were still fried less than actual American Donuts.  There were also multiple chocolate-covered fruit stands which is unheard of at US festivals.  The portion sizes are also more reasonable.  You can go out to dinner and get a sandwich without all the sides and such that makes dinners in the US so filling.
3)      Smoking:  Almost everyone here smokes and there are many places that don’t have separate smoking sections of the restaurants or some buildings.  I have gotten used to the no-smoking laws in Michigan so I was really surprised to find a smoking lounge when we got off the plane in Zurich. 

4)      Drinking:  There are no open-container laws.  It is a nice feeling to be able to walk down the street with an open beer and sit on the beach drinking. 

5)      Overall health:  I don’t know if it’s because we are in the Alps or not but the people here are generally just much healthier.  When a group from MSU walked up the nearby mountain we had to stop multiple times to catch our breath.  Meanwhile there was a mom with an infant in a carrier strapped to her and a 2 year old wandering down the mountain.  Apparently 2-year-old Europeans are more in shape than 20-year-old Americans.  People here also walk and bike a lot, another reason they appear more in shape. 

6)      Bilingualism:  Just about everyone I have encountered is bilingual at least to some extent.  Not everyone is fluent but they still know more English than I know any other language.  This has been very helpful since I know next to no German but makes me realize how self-centered many Americans are since we seem to feel no real need to learn another language. 

7)      Driving:  Bregenz is a relatively small city where lots of people walk or bike so there aren’t many cars on the roads which is good since most of the roads aren’t wide enough to fit cars going both directions but aren’t one way streets.  This means that as people drive (usually through hills) they have to suddenly pull off to the side when there is a spot to let other people pass.  I have only been in a car once here (when we got picked up from the train station) and it was an interesting experience.  There also are areas that look like paved pedestrian courtyards between shops that randomly have cars on them.  On the plus side, people stop when you are waiting at a cross walk.  This is very different from MSU (and may not work out in my favor when I get back).

8)      Dogs:  People bring their dogs with them everywhere.  The beach, restaurant, train…I even saw a person with a cage for his bike basket to keep the dog in.  That was interesting.

9)      Drinking Water:  All the sinks here are safe to drink from and taste good too (nothing like MSU water).  The fountains can even be used to fill up water bottles, which is very handy.  I should probably check into if this is true for the other parts of Europe I’m traveling to but for now it’s nice at least. 

Overall there haven’t been any drastic cultural differences to get used to so far while in Europe.  I realize I have very little to compare it with but Italy had a different feel than the rest of Europe.  I am interested to see how other cities and countries vary from my experience thus far.  With another 26 days in Europe (and lots more traveling in that time) I’m sure I will experience other cultural differences throughout my travels.  

Adjusting without Internet

We were warned that some of our homestays may not have internet; mine is one of those homestays.  This was hard to get used to for many reasons.  One of my instructors here didn’t have internet at first and he said it felt like he didn’t have a soul.  As a US college kid I spend lots more time on the internet than I need to so cutting back on my internet use wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that without a phone, the internet is the only way I have to contact people.  We can use the school for internet access but that’s pretty much only during the week.

Adjusting to being over 4,000 miles from home was harder than I thought it would be, especially when I wasn’t able to contact many people at first.  I thought I would be ok.  I’m in Europe, I should be enjoying all of it but between jet lag and anxiety I had a rough first few days not helped by the fact that I didn’t have internet for more than a few minutes at a time.  The first morning I was in Bregenz, which was 2 days since I had left the US, I went down to the stage where I was told the day before there was free WiFi.  It was raining and they were practicing on the stage so you couldn’t go on the bleachers but they would be too wet to sit on anyways.  I ended up standing awkwardly balancing my umbrella against my shoulder with my chin as I typed a few emails and a facebook status from my Kindle.  I’m sure I looked absolutely ridiculous but I didn’t care.  It was the only contact I had with anyone from home and it was as the excitement of being in Europe was being replaced by anxiety.    

With only a few minutes of internet throughout the weekend I set up a skype session for some time when I got out of class on Monday.  The problem was that I didn’t know for sure when class would get out but Joe being the amazing person he is got up at 7:45 to wait for me to get online since I needed to skype.  We ended up getting out of class around 1:00 that day since we were just talking about the history of Austria and then ran to the store and the train station to reserve trains for the weekend and after the trip.  I ended up getting back to the school at 8:20 Eastern time to an e-mail from Joe saying that he was going back to bed but he left his computer open and phone next to him so he would hear an email or skype call.  I only had about 15 minutes to skype since there was a group of people hiking to the top of the nearby mountain.  I was glad I was in the classroom alone as I spent most of the call crying for no good reason other than anxiety. 

It turned out that first short skype call was all I needed to get over my anxiety.  Since then I have been fine.  I think a combination of having a more of a routine with classes and doing stuff after class with a group have helped make me less anxious and I also was just more comfortable with everything here.  Joe and I ended up skyping the next day for a few minutes because I stopped at the school on my way back from the beach and he was able to be online.  That skype call went better with no tears on my end.  Yesterday while everyone from my apartment went to the school to “work on homework” between eating dinner and going to the bar I was able to skype again and was all smiles as I told him more details about my weekend that I didn’t feel like taking the time to type out on my Kindle while facebook chatting on the train.  (Trains with WiFi are pretty fantastic.)  I’m hoping that I will be fine with everything for the rest of the trip.  I am having the time of my life and I will try not to let mild anxiety get in the way of that.  

Wearing out a pair of shoes (and burning through my wallet)

Many people who know me know that I have a slight obsession with shoes.  Mainly shoes I got form the clearance rack.  That being said it was near impossible to decide which shoes to bring to Europe.  I cut back a few but still brought way too many with the intention that I would probably wear through at least one pair which was fine since I got most of the them for around $10 a pair. 

This past weekend we had a free weekend with 3 days of traveling planned.  I looked at the weather and saw that it was supposed to rain in Salzburg and then be hot and sunny in Venice.  With all the traveling we had planned we didn’t have a place to keep our stuff so we had to pack everything for the weekend in our book bags to carry around pretty much all weekend so I wanted to just bring one pair of shoes and then flip-flops if needed for the hostel showers.  I decided on one pair, my blue striped canvas shoes, which matched everything I was planning on wearing.  I wore the shoes on Wednesday when it rained in Bregenz and decided that they were more comfortable when wet than dry so that was great.  I thought I hated having wet feet but it turns out that I just hate having wet socks so that worked well for this weekend. 

The bottom of those shoes are twine so it turns out they were still wet from Wednesday when we got on the train Thursday afternoon.  I let them dry off more on the 4 hour train ride to Salzburg and they were dry by the time we got there.  Once we got there we had dinner at a restaurant near the train station where I got Weiner Schnitzel for the first time and ordered a Fanta which is the color of orange juice without all the dye in it.  We then found our way to the subway (after we stared at a map for a while until someone came up and asked where we needed to go) and got on the train less than 2 minutes before it left.  We made it to the hostel fine and chilled for the rest of the night. 

 

Dinner at 8:30 after 4 hours of train ride is great.

We woke up to rain while we ate breakfast but it had stopped by the time we left.  The wet streets soaked through my shoes almost immediately and started creeping up the sides and top as we waked to the subway and through the train station to buy Salzburg Cards which granted us free access to many museums and public buses.  We wandered around Salzburg for a couple hours before going to the train station to find another person from our class who was coming out for a day.  Shortly after we got back into the touristy part it started downpouring.  We decided it was past time for lunch but at this point my shoes were soaked and my big toe on my right foot had worn through the top of my shoes (it was a matter of time before this happened since my big toes curl up). 

Beginning of the day, still not too bad.

Meriposa Gardens

By the time we got done with lunch it had stopped raining so we saw Mozart’s birthhouse and museum, contemporary art museum, and natural history museum.  It had started raining again when we were there, no rest for my wet shoes.  After that we went to the fortress where it started raining again and were then headed to Hellsburn Palace and the trick fountains.  From the brochures we knew what bus to take and what stop to get off so we got on the bus and stopped at what we thought was our spot.  It turns out that the bus we were on displayed the stop we just stopped at in the largest text and then the upcoming stops underneath that.  We thought the largest text was the upcoming stop so we got off one stop too late and my wet shoes had to walk a kilometer in the rain back the other direction avoiding slugs the entire time.  We made it to Hellsburn Palace though and enjoyed the grounds and fountains.  The grounds had the Sound of Music gazebo and the fountains were amazing and built in a few years 400 years ago. 

Trick Fountains at Hellsburn Palace.

In Salzburg before I took of my shoes for the night.  I was leaving wet footprints everywhere.

While waiting for the bus to go back downtown for dinner I decided it was time to take my shoes off since the ink was actually washing out of them and my feet looked like prunes.  Good thing I had my flip-flops with me.  After dinner we went to a bar near the train station to wait for our 1:34am train to Venice.  My sopping wet shoes went from the water bottle pocket of my book bag to the floor of the bar and then to the luggage rack in the train compartment.  With 5 people in a 6 person compartment all with their wet shoes off it stated smelling pretty bad in there and some guy sat in the extra seat for about 5 minutes before he left; probably because he couldn’t stand the smell of feet.  We had a compartment full of drunk people speaking German next to us so that made sleeping difficult until we started moving around 2:30am.  At that point no one had taken the extra seat and we decided to just take over the extra seat so we could stretch out a bit and arrived in Venice at 8:30am. 

My shoes were only slightly damp now but definitely worse-for-wear.  The hole from my toenail was bigger and more prominent, there was a small hole near the outside of my left foot, the stitching on that shoe was stretching, and there were lines from where the dye had come out.  I decided that these shoes wouldn’t make it home from Europe but I wore them all morning as we took the waterbus tour around and then went to the island of Murano.  Sleeping on the train, walking around, and being dehydrated made my feet swell so my feet were starting to hurt a bit.  After Murano we checked into the hostel and I looked at the damage to my feet.  There were 3 identically spaced scabs on my right foot so I decided it was time for flip-flops for walking around St. Marc’s square, eating dinner, and taking a Gondola ride.  Venice is much more flip-flop friendly than Bregenz and Salzburg with less hills and more even brick-work sidewalks. 

Venice!

On the way to Murano.  My feet are swollen here but only got worse in the next few hour.  

The next day we went back to St. Marc’s appropriately dressed so we could get in and wandered our way back to the train station getting lunch and gelato on the way.  My shoes stayed in my book bag all day Sunday so my feet were in much better shape.  We spent about 9 hours getting back to Bregenz with our second train delayed by about 20 minutes getting us back at 12:30am on Monday.  

You can't wear shorts and have to have your shoulders covered but you can still wear flip-flops in St. Marc's.

My shoes came out of my book bag before class on Monday and I’m not sure they will be worn again in Bregenz or just thrown out; either way, they won’t make it home and I’ll have more room for chocolate.  Next weekend we go to Vienna and the weekend after that Munich before I have 10 days of straight tourist mode through 3 different countries.  We will see how many more pairs of shoes I end up wearing through (and how much of my bank account I spend).

Hiking the Alps

After class on Monday a group of people decided to hike to the top of the mountain near Bregenz.  I didn't really know what to expect or even how far people planned on going.  I was thinking something along the lines of US National parks.  I packed up my bookbag to include by water bottle, bathing suit,  and towel because there was talk of swimming when we got down since it was nice out.  I didn't want to wear my gross gym shorts so I decided to be really stylish and wear my tennis shoes with a sundress.

The hike up the mountain was harder than I expected, it was steeper than most of what I have hiked before. Having a bookbag on also left I giant sweat mark on my back so that was awesome but after an hour and a half we made it to the top!  We stopped quite a few times on the way up and felt like lazy Americans but we took pictures when we stopped too.

The streams were really cold so we put our hands in them to cool off.

This alone pretty much made the hike worth it.

Taken at the top of the mountain where the tram lets people off.

On the top of the mountain we got ice cream and looked at the zoo that contained mountain animals.  A few people decided to hike to the next village so we walked an hour downhill to the village of Fluh.  It turns out there isn't much there except for slugs.  The sidewalks right near the grass were covered in slugs.  Other than that we passed a fire station, church, houses and a hotel/restaurant that was closed on Mondays since it was about 6:30 when we got there we were slightly disappointed by that.

The Church in Fluh

 We found a bus that ran from Fluh into Bregenz and took the last one of the night.  When we got off the bus we found other people who had gone swimming after getting back down from the mountain so we all got dinner then headed to the beach (with a beer in hand) to hang out and watch the sunset.  It was a great ending to the night

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Living with a Host Family

As promised, a post about my homestay experience.

I didn’t know what to expect for homestays.  The only homestay experience I have had so far was staying with a family for one night when we were in Mexico for ASB.  Me and 1 other girl who both had high school level Spanish were with a mother, her mother, her 10 year old daughter and 5 month old son for a night.  She knew next to no English (less than I knew Spanish) so the other girl held a brief conversation while at dinner while I spent most the time making faces at the baby.  Needless to say I was a little weary about living with a family for a month after that but we were told all the families would speak English so one less thing to worry about (especially because my German is essentially non-existent).  We received our homestay assignments about a week before we left and I found I was living with 4 other girls from MSU.  I was glad there were so many other MSU students but was unsure how that would work when living with a family.   

All the rooms had Roses.  We also got welcome cards made by the girls and chocolate.

Our host dad and his 2 daughters picked us up from the train station.  We found them because they were standing with Willi (described in my previous post) and we were introduced to Klaus, Keli and Lefe (and I probably spelled both of the girls’ names wrong).  He then took us to their house and told us we would be staying in the apartment on the top floor.  In Bregenz many of the houses have individual families living on each floor in separate apartments and the family we are “staying” with owns both the ground floor and top floor apartments with another family living between the two.  There are 3 rooms plus a bathroom (with toilet and sink in one room and shower and sink in another) and a kitchen.  With 5 girls this means only 1 girl gets her own room.  That girl isn’t me which is fine.  Sarah W. and I share a king sized bed so it’s essentially like having our own bed. 

Bed in our room.  I just have to remember not to hit my head on the ceiling.  

 We don’t see the host family much which is somewhat disappointing as we don’t have the same experience as some other students on our trip but it is also nice to have a place to ourselves.  The first night we were here the parents came up and talked to us and Lefe came up with them and talked to us for a few minutes.  I found out she is 4 years old because I can count to 10 (and now maybe a bit higher) in German so I started counting and pointing at her.  She then continued talking and I just smiled.  I would love to learn more German so I can talk to this adorable blonde, curly haired little girl (but that would also involve seeing the family more than in passing).  The host family has to provide us breakfast and a place to do laundry.  I haven’t had to do laundry yet (it hasn’t even been a week, I brought WAY too many clothes to need to do it anytime soon) but they did put some breakfast food in the fridge/pantry for us and then got us more yesterday.  Unfortunately they did it during class so we didn’t get to see them.  A stack of towels also showed up this afternoon so I know they come up here but we are not in the apartment much.  (Update:  2 of the girls were here and they took our towels and are washing them for us.)

My version of unpacking.  It's only gotten worse... 

We did talk to them for a bit tonight when they came up because a light bulb burnt out in one of the rooms.  I think they are trying to find the right balance between letting us have our space and being there when we need something.  Overall the homestay experience has been uneventful since it is essentially living in a families extra apartment that has breakfast food magically show up and the garbage taken out for us.  Maybe overtime we will talk to the family more however since there is no internet at the house it is more likely that our evening when we are not out (or after we have been out) will be at the school so we can do homework.  (There is homework to do offline too but I decided writing this offline sounded like a better idea than doing homework which I now can no longer avoid.)