Eek, Behind Already!

I haven't blogged for a few (several) days because 1) I've actually been out and about doing awesome stuff that I will tell you about and 2) Internet has been even more hard to come by than normal. I will do my best to catch up!

I think I'm going to save my blog on the alternative walk home from class for a bit later because there is way more exciting stuff to tell you about.

First up:
MELK MONASTERY & DURNSTEIN

On our first day as a group in Vienna a Colonel in the Army gave us a tour around Vienna to show us the sights. His job for the army is to be a historian so he knows pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about Austria and Vienna. He showed up to join us for dinner on Friday, May 28th and offered to take us in his VW bus/van on a day trip out to the countryside so we would have a chance to see more than just the city.

Five of us took him up on the offer, he picked us up the next morning at 10:30 and off we went:

(me, Alecia, Laurin)

First The Colonel took us to the Melk Monastery. The pictures of it on the Wikipedia are more gorgeous than any I took, but I'll do my best.

The inside square of the monestary:


The entire monastery was gorgeous. It's up on a hill overlooking the Danube with an adorable village at its base. The entire village is historic and picturesque. It's easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

From a window of the monastery down to the village:


Ceiling of one of the rooms:


The library was beautiful, but the nerd in me was so bummed that all of these gorgeous and ancient books were basically now decoration for tourists and were no longer read.


The beautiful church:


One of the strangest things I've ever seen. In each of the side alcoves there was a small display and area for people to pray to various saints. In this one there was a glass display case with the skeleton of an actual dead guy posing:


All of us in a gorgeous archway at the front of the monastery overlooking the river:


We hiked back to the parking lot, climbed in the van, The Colonel turned the ignition and the van wouldn't start! Luckily we were on an incline and, since it was a stickshift VW, we were able to roll it back and start it up on the roll.

We took a small road along the road through several adorable villages with cobblestone streets that just barely fit a car to Durnstein.


Me and the vineyards that were stoked to get a picture with me.

Walking through the town:


The ruins of the castle on the hill:


And the famous church tower. Apparently there's some scandal that it was painted blue. For a century it was yellow (which was referred to when used in other places as Durnstein Yellow), but when they did some repair work they found out the original color was blue and restored it to the blue. The villagers were pissed, but at least it's now accurate:


And AGAIN VW Bus refused to start and again we started it by pushing it down a slight incline. Say hello to adventurebus:


Coming up: Parliament and my birthday, Prague & Bratislava.