After almost two weeks in Vienna, I had to face up to the fact that it was time to move on. This morning I took the train from Vienna to Budapest, where my friends from home who teach at the International Christian School of Budapest picked me up from the train station. It was really hard to leave Vienna. It feels so much like my home away from home, and staying with my host family from my study abroad program was so wonderful. They are certainly my european f...

Yesterday Anja, Till and I went shopping for a suit for Till. I felt somewhat like Stacy on What Not to Wear; the fashion designer in me was definitely shining through. We stopped a few times for coffee and a piece of the famous Wiener Sacher Torte, just the way shopping should be done in Vienna. We stopped in a few kitchen stores, too, because Anja needed a couple new breakfast plates. I'm having a hard time figuring out if I found everything so much cooler si...

It has been raining nonstop since I got to Vienna. I packed in preparation for this "unusually hot" summer they had been having, and the first day I got here it decided to rain. There's no sign of it stopping and they're calling for flooding in the next couple of days. So it has been an adventure trying to layer all the summer clothes I brought in order to brave the wind and rain as far as the U bahn station. I tried the walking through the city thin...

I'M IN VIENNA! My lovely host family from 2005 picked me up from the airport, and the drive through Vienna was so surreal. We went to a typical little Wiener Stuebe for dinner, and being engulfed by decades of stale cigarette smoke as I walked into the dimly lit, not so well ventilated restaraunt was about the best thing I've smelled in quite some time. It always amazes me how strongly smells stimulate memories for me. My host brothers have both gotten ...

So I don't know if it counts to write in my travel journal before I leave the country, but I'm going to do it anyway. I am sitting in SeaTac airport waiting for another three hours before my flight leaves. My first flight was delayed so I was going to miss my connection, so I'm taking a later flight. But I found out all this after the fiasco of them almost not letting me check in in the first place because I don't have a return ticket. Austria needs proof that I...