Wednesday morning Ally woke me up at 9:30, fifteen minutes before we had to meet downstairs for our morning trip to the museum. After rushing to get dressed I met up with the group, and we took the subway (which is starting to grow on me) to get to where we needed to go. The museum's architecture was beautiful. There were two museums parallel from one another both owned by the Hapsburg family with a common statue in the middle of them of Maria Theresia, one of the most prominent and influential leaders of the Hapsburg family, which ruled Austria.
After group photos we entered the Hapsburg museum which focused on man-made historical artifacts. Immediately the interior design was breathtaking. Once through the doors a gorgeous marble staircase welcomed us, which staged a colossal statue of a Greek soldier overpowering a centaur. The statue in and of itself drew significant emotion just through its visual appeal. We learned towards the end of our tour that the statue was built during the reign of Napoleon but was transferred to the museum because before the sculptor could finish his masterpiece, Napoleon had been exiled. The artistic background of the sculpture signified a Greek soldier protecting his people/country by defeating the centaur (the mythical half human, half horse creature), which had planned to kidnap Greek women.
The tour of the museum took approximately two hours and we barely got to see the museum in its entirety. The museum offered Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts that ranged from sculptures, to tombs, to mosaics tiles, to commonly used jewelry and gold plates.
By the time we were back from the museum I felt exhausted. This fatigue was partly due to everything I had just taken in but more likely because of the Ost Klub I had checked out the night before, which offered amazing live music both in English and German. I skipped lunch in order to catch up on sleep and spent the rest of the day catching up on reading and other work. By the time dinner rolled around I had worked up an appetite…. But was disappointed to find only fish, shrimp, and calamari were on the menu for dinner. I sat with my group, ate a banana, and then hit up the pizza place down the street with Sam.
The pizza was pretty good but the sauce was mixed with green peppers which made it a little weird. In Austria you can’t order just “Cheese Pizza” or else they’ll give you what Americans refer to as “White Pizza” without any sauce. It’s called “Margarita” pizza here and it tastes different every place you go, but pizza’s pizza for the most part and its hard to do wrong.
So far this week has been going pretty good. I’m just trying to immerse myself in the culture, get more familiar with the city, and try and to get used to the food.
Erin Dwyer
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