Stories of March 28th

So last night I could not fall asleep for a variety of reasons. First, I believe jetlag set in so I didn't actually fall asleep until approximately 8 AM. But the second more encompassing reason for my lack of sleep was the fact that I had read an article on European travel and they mentioned watching out for bedbugs and I proceeded to get very paranoid and feel very itchy in my bed. Which I'm sure is not full of bedbugs but according to my 2 AM brain, I was being completely reasonable.

I then got up this morning at about 8:30 because I was meeting my friend Erin (from high school), since she is also studying at the moment in Vienna. Boy, can I tell you it was nice to hear someone in this country speaking American English! Who knew! She showed me the Naschmarkt, which is quite cool. On Saturdays, it is a flea market along with a regular market. It seems you can find anything there: fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, spices, hummus etc. We bought breakfast (I bought a chocolate croissant and freshly squeezed juice which was delicious).

We then proceeded to try and find the Skull Sauna, which she had seen before. We were both quite horrified that it had either been moved or completely removed! How dare they. That was going to be part of my Skull montage that I currently have 2 pictures for! One from Venice and one from Vienna! 

Anyway, she then headed back to go to a concert and I finally found an ATM. Aka  Erin showed me what they look like. I went back to my apartment to return my coat because it was getting excessively hot in my jacket. However, when I returned I also got very tired and needed a nap, since I'd had very little sleep. So I took a nap which I KNOW is forbidden for jet lag but it was necessary!! It was just for an hour or so...

Then I decided to go out again since it was such a beautiful day. When I checked the temp it was 64 degrees and probably got warmer than that! Again, I found some very awesome sites and my pictures turned out great with the lighting! I found Peterskirche and the area around that which is quite awesome! Lots of little squares and statues/fountains which are really beautiful! 

After about 2 hours or so, my foot started to hurt and I could tell I was getting a blister so I decided to head back slowly to my apartment to get a bandaid then go grocery shopping. At the Opera House there were a TON of police cars and people shouting and waving signs, which I thought was weird. I saw one of the signs said "schweine" which means "pig" so I just kept going to my apartment. On the way there, there were a bunch of streets blocked and by the time I was near my street I could see that they were stretched all the way there! That meant that there were a LOT of people demonstrating (I heard later it was a large group of vegetarians.) As I'm walking down my street van after van after van with 8 policemen in each van drove by heading to the demonstration. Of course they were demonstrating on the street where I needed to go grocery shopping.

I decided to lay low a bit in my apartment. My housemother said that occasionally groups of people will get together to demonstrate and the police go on either side of them just in case. It was quite interesting though! Once in my room, I took off my shoe and might I say my foot was disgusting (see pictures) and I had definitely bled a lot in my shoe. I used handy wipes to clean my shoe out and my foot which I'm hoping doesn't get infected because that won't be fun. And you may be thinking, "Oh it's just a blister it can't be that bad" but NO. It is gigantic and awful. My mom asked me how I was even able to walk back to my apartment. I then went grocery shopping and bought real food and had a normal dinner that wasn't icky! woo! (don't worry I'm sure not all food in Vienna is icky. just what I had for dinner at my apartment last night. It had crunchy sausage that's all I'm going to say).

http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a353/LaurenHillard/Vienna%20Day%203/

Here are my pictures from today! there aren't as many of them as yesterday so will be a lot faster to look through!




And for those of you who haven't noticed, if you have commented on one of my blog posts, I most likely have responded to the post under the same comments section!