Packing for Greece!

Hallo!
Today is the day before we leave for Greece and I am so excited!  I had my German oral final yesterday and the written final today, so I am all done with my German Intensive course.  All of my other courses start on Monday, September 20th.  But I did a lot of fun things this week!

On Sunday, I went hiking at the base of the Alps (shocking, I know!) and it was beautiful.  It was actually pretty warm out that day, so we wanted to take advantage of the last few weeks of nice weather before the snow comes.  After hiking, I went to the Opera House and waited in line to get standing tickets to the opening night of the Viennese Opera Season.  I waited for about an hour and got a ticket for 3 Euro...not too bad!  I watched the first act of Wagner's Tännhauser from the very last possible row in the theater, but it was still incredible.  I can't believe that there is an opera every night that we can go to for only 3 Euro!

a vineyard/restaurant towards the top of the mountain

view from our hike

I had a little cold, so I didn't do much on Monday.  But on Tuesday, I had to go back to the Naschmarkt for class and find the stand called Dr. Falafel.  After looking up and down the market for about 30 minutes, I finally found him and bought enough hummus and falafel for my entire German class.  (My program reimbursed me!)  It was the most delicious hummus and falafel that I have ever had!!!  I had to ask the Doctor a few questions, and he turned out to be a really interesting person...his family was from Israel and he spoke 7 languages!  Other people in my class had to get other food, so we had a huge feast on Wednesday morning in class, which was perfect since it was my birthday!  But on Tuesday night, my roommates surprised me with a huge delicious dinner of chicken, rice, and brownies for my birthday.  It was so nice of them!  Then on Wednesday morning, my roommate who is in my German class took me to my favorite bakery and got me ein shokocroissant, my very favorite!  Then after class, my friends from school and I went to Cafe Central, which is one of the most famous Kaffeehauses in Vienna.  Leon Trotsky used to go there, pretty cool!  It was beautiful and had delicious hot chocolate.  Then I got another chocolate croissant, went to Katie and Carrie's apartment, and went out for pizza at our favorite pizza place.  Then Carrie and my friend Ian and I went to an American bar and watched American sports for a little bit so that I could do something fun on my birthday, even though we all had German oral finals on Thursday!  It was nice to be somewhere American.  So all in all, it was a good day!

my surprise birthday dinner!

Cafe Central...so pretty!

my delicious pizza birthday dinner from Pizza Mafiosa

On Thursday, I had my final and then I had my second day of my Mahler class.  We went on an excursion to a Mahler museum, which was really cool.  My professor is such a Mahler nut that he told the museum tour guides that he would give us the tour.  It was really interesting and the museum itself was beautiful.  This morning I had my German written final, then came back to my apartment to try to fit a week's worth of traveling things into my one backpack.  So far it's going pretty well...I'm almost done packing!  I've got a lot left to do before we leave though, so I better get going.  I will write again when I get back from Greece!! :)

Auf Wiedersehen!