My Journey Home-Bratislava

I’ve been in London for 2 full days now with Kimmy and I’ve been having a blast. What a beautiful city! I’ve loved everything we’ve done so far and I still have 2 whole days left =). Although, starting my trip home started a couple days ago, so I should probably re-cap.

May 18^th was my last day in Vienna, so Ben and I went to visit Schönbrunn and walked around a little before settling on a bench to just relax. We sat and talked and enjoyed being there together one last time. We then had a fairly relaxing evening, saw some friends then headed home to get some rest for the busy day ahead.

On May 19^th we had some chocolate croissants from Der Mann with coffee before heading to the train station to go to Bratislava (with all my huge bags in tow). We checked the bags at the train station then walked around the city, seeing a few sites, like the Castle there, St. Michael’s Gate, etc. Since we didn’t have a big breakfast we were starting to get hungry so we found a little place (a brewery type restaurant for a local beer) and decided this would be a good place to eat. Plus the fact that a half liter of beer was only 1 Euro 70, also helped make our decision ;). We had some delicious food, Ben got garlic soup that had a bunch of cheese at the bottom, and I got a half chicken in a blue cheese sauce with fries. It was delicious! After that we walked around a little more just exploring the city and saw a few booths with homemade knickknacks and stuff for sale. We checked those out and kind of meandered on back towards the train station where we would take the bus to the Bratislava airport.

We got on the bus with our huge bags and took it on out to the airport. Since I was flying Ryanair their desk didn’t open until about 7 (my flight was at 9) and we got there around 6:30, so we just hung out at the airport which was nice. When the desk finally did open I was nervous to weigh my bags to make sure I kept them under the allotted weight, since it was very expensive if your bags went over. They were supposed to be under 21 kg and under 16 kg and my bags were 20.8 and 15.8 kg. Woot woot! Once huge burden had been lifted and I immediately felt much better about traveling. Ben walked me to security we said our sad good-bye.

As I was going through security my name was called on the speaker overhead, so I asked what that was about. The security agents all said, “ah you is ok” so I moved on. I walked through security, through customs, where the lady seems confused seeing I only had one stamp in it when I came in through Dusseldorf back in September, so I quickly showed her my Vienna ID and she allowed me to pass on through. I settled in near my gate and my name was again called on the overhead speaker. What the heck do they want? They didn’t stop me in security when I went through and I kept telling them all I was the person being called on the intercom. I freaked out a little when I realized I had to go back to security, so I did and quickly told and agent that I was the person they had been calling and asked them what to do. “You wait here madame.” Oooohhh kkaaaay. I waited while the agent went in the back room to get another man who then came out and asked me to follow him. Oh my gosh, do they think I’m some sort of threat to security? What’s wrong? He quickly asks me if I have a lighter in my bag (which I had bought as a souvenir for a friend of mine) so I tell him “yes” and he says you can’t have that in your checked baggage. Well ok, this sucks I guess I have to throw it out now. So I got to my bag in the bag room, then removed the lighter and gave it to him, he looked at it and told me to put it in my pocket. Ok? I was glad I didn’t have to throw it away, but I was confused as to what kind of security rules allow you to have fire on your person, but not in your checked bags. Oh well.

The rest of the trip was fairly calm, waited to get on the plane, with the typical Ryanair mad dash to the plane. I had terrible expectations for Ryanair, but it wasn’t too bad, so that was nice. Besides the screaming baby behind me, the flight overall was fairly uneventful.

The "RyanAir" Mad Dash to get the best seats!

Now I know I’m in London now, but I think I’ll hold off on my London blog until after I get home.  So I know you all are on the edge of your seats, but you’ll just have to wait to hear about my London trip.

I'll leave my heart in Vienna

Well Ben and I just spent a lovely but quick weekend in Prague. We have been wanting to do a trip to Prague since before we arrived, and continually put it off until now and I’m really glad that we finally got to go.

We arrived in the Czech Republic late on Friday evening, found a cab and had them take us to our hotel. We stayed in a really nice, reasonable place with complimentary breakfast in the morning, and was (of course) walking distance from all the down town attractions. We quickly got to sleep and set our alarm for the next morning.

When we woke up the next morning we had a lovely breakfast and tried to fill ourselves up with the free food so we wouldn’t have to pay for much more food for the rest of the day, it is interesting how people’s characters come out when a free breakfast is involved too. There was one woman there (it wasn’t me I swear!) who took about 3-4 baguettes worth of bread to her table for her little family of 3. I understand that it’s a free breakfast but there’s’ no need to take THAT much bread for yourself! Geez! Anyways, after breakfast Ben and I headed downtown taking pictures the whole way of the lovely architecture. We walked through the old gate into the old part of town and walked around near all the souvenir and crystal shops. At the end of the road there was a huge town square of sorts with the big clock, and every hour everyone gathers around to see it chime and have the little robots dance around. Since we had some time before the clock would start chiming, we went to check out a church right near the town square. It was beautiful! It was definitely a “Bohemien” church with beautiful art and amazing architecture and statues. It was all very baroque so the church seemed much lighter than other churches we’ve seen. We then walked across the town square to the clock to see it chime. The chiming itself wasn’t super impressive, in the context of todays technology, but when thinking about how long this animatronic clock has been dancing around at the hour, it was really neat to think about!

When the clock was done chiming we decided to head over to the castle, and along the way found a Hard Rock Café! No, we didn’t eat there, but it was really neat to see, and I almost got something from it, but decided against it. We continued our journey to the castle and crossed the beautiful bridge where many jewelers and artists were selling their work. It was all very beautiful, but didn’t get to buy anything from them unfortunately. On the bridge we came across a sculpture of sorts that apparently is rubbed for luck. There’s two pictures, one of a woman and one of a dog, and apparently you rub the woman for good luck, and the dog is bad luck, but people were rubbing both, and I didn’t get to get close to either of them since there was such a huge line, so on we went with our journey to the castle. We trekked up a huge staircase to get to the castle and when we got to the top we had a beautiful view of the city. We took some pictures and enjoyed looking at the city before walking farther into the grounds of the castle. Apparently, we arrived there just in time for the “Changing of the Guard”. Since the castle is technically no longer a castle, it is currently a political building which is guarded, and we saw a little bit of the changing of the guards before moving on to the next part. We saw a tiny part of the garden then moved to the other side of the castle where we saw another church. This one was older than the other church we had previously checked out and was more of a neo-gothic style. Once again, another beautiful church.

We then left the castle area, tried to see Kaftka’s house on the way down, but apparently you can only get to it if you’re in a tour group, which is unfortunate. We walked down another set of stairs and crossed another bridge and made our way over to the Jewish Quarter of Prague. Since it was a Saturday the area was very quiet, but we still got to see the synagogue and the outside of the Jewish cemetery. Also, while we were there we did some crystal shopping! We had seen other stores, but Ben showed me the store where he bought crystal for his parents when he was there in 2003 so we went to that shop. Thankfully, they said they will ship our crystal for us, so we bought a few things 2 gifts and 1 thing for ourselves. All together, it was pretty expensive and would love to come back to buy more nice things, but for now I think we’re good. After some more shopping around we had a later lunch/early dinner at a restaurant had some local Czech beers and enjoyed our time there. We even met an older couple from Arizona who were on vacation there. So we talked to them for a little while before they had to leave. When we finished our meal we walked outside and, BAM! It was raining! The whole day the weather had been gorgeous, bright, sunny, and warm, and now it was raining. Thankfully, I had my umbrella so I busted it out on our walk back home, stopping a few times to get souvenirs. We got back to the hotel around 4 and spent the rest of the evening in our room watching hockey on TV, playing games on the internet and eating our snacks for “dinner”. It’s a good thing we got back when we did too, because not long after getting back the storm had hit and we could hear the pouring rain outside with thunder and lightning as well.

The next morning we had another filling breakfast then checked out of our hotel before walking around downtown again, looking for more gifts and other types of food. For lunch we got some foods that were being sold from booths in the town square. I had a yummy Langos which is basically a flat piece of fried dough and you can pick your “topping” they had Nutella, ketchup, or garlic. I chose garlic. Ben had some kraut, but got a little bamboozled with the price since the guy said you had to buy it by grams, so Ben wanted 100 g of it, and the guy pilled on a bunch more anyways. Oh well, he seemed to enjoy it even though it was overly expensive.

After our lunch we headed back to the train station and waited for our train to arrive then hopped on the train to start our 5 hour journey home. After we arrived back in Vienna, we met up with our friends at a Heurigen for some wine and food and of course just overall conversation. It’s been great to spend as much time with our friends as possible before heading back home.

It was interesting though, as we were riding the U-Bahn to meet up with our friends, I felt so peaceful. I felt like I was home after being in Prague where I didn’t know where anything was, and didn’t know the language that was being spoken. Riding the U-bahn once we got to Wien felt comfortable to me, and it made me feel relaxed because we were home. I will only be able to call this amazing city “home” for 2 more weeks, and then I leave. I got kind of teary eyed thinking about it. I have loved everything that has happened in the past 8 months for Ben and I. Yes, it’s been stressful at times and I thought to myself, “Why did I leave the States and a job to come here?” But I know it was all in God’s plan for us. I am so grateful for this opportunity, and when I leave I know I’ll be leaving a little of my heart in this city because it will always be special to me. I pray that Ben and I will get to come back often, and maybe (if we win the lottery or something) we could have a flat here to come to during the summers or during holidays. We will see what the future holds.  

More Esswein's in Europe

I just counted (again) how many days I have left in Vienna. Fourteen. Only 14 more days left before I head to Bratislava, then London, then home. There’s still so much to do! I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

Well a few big things: First off, I just started working with another family about 3 weeks ago. Crazy, I know since I’m leaving so soon, but they’re American and have a 6 month old baby. The Dad works for the UN and they just moved to Vienna, so the Mom said she’d be willing to have me babysit at least for a little while that I’ll be here. I’ve really enjoyed this family and wish it would have worked out for me to have worked for them longer, but hopefully we will be able to keep in touch.

Secondly, Ben’s parents just visited us! They arrived on Tuesday the 17^th of April and we got to do a lot of the touristy things since they were here, obviously St. Stephan’s and Hermesvilla as well as the Hofburg, plus Café Landtmann . During the first weekend they were here, we took a trip to a little Austrian town, Mittersill where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, did a little exploring in the rain, and checked out the castle there. We also got to go to Munich (which was only 2 hours way) to meet up with a second-cousin of Ben’s mother. We had a good time, but weren’t in Munich long (next time I go to Munich I need to spend more than 24 hours there! Haha). We went to a Bierhalle got some souvenirs, then headed back to Mittersill. Ben’s parents left for Italy the Monday after they arrived and were there there until that Thursday, then they came back to Vienna to spend more time with us before heading back to the States. Thankfully they arrived home safely and they were even able to take home some of our space bagged clothes and souvenirs.

Thankfully, we’ve been doing better financially so we’ve been catching up on all our souvenirs, and will hopefully be able to finish soon. I believe we only have 8 or so souvenirs left to buy, and since we’re going to Prague this weekend, we’ll be able to get a few out of the way while there. The plan for this week is to get as many as I can, but also try to enjoy being in Vienna. While I’m thinking about it, here are a few things I want to do before I leave:

-Another picnic or some sort of gathering with the rest of the Fulbright gang before I leave

-Prague

-A nice brunch out by Heitzing (Ben and I have found this place that has a great deal for a huge breakfast, and haven’t been able to go yet!)

-Hookah bar

-Finish buying souvenirs and ship them home!

-Heurigen (as many times as possible)

-One more opera- “The Barber of Seville”


Ben and I are doing a last little “vacation” before I leave and are going to spend the weekend in Prague, checking out the castle, doing some shopping, and overall just enjoy being together for one of our last weekends left before I head home. I plan to get a lot of shopping done, mostly crystal.  

Prost! Ben and I at Cafe Landtmann on a lovely afternoon with his parents.