It’s that time of the week again!

First and most importantly, I bought the best hat at my new favorite store called Flying Tiger Copenhagen (I should get paid for advertising).

To start off this week, I was with my girls Virginia and Nicole and we had an afternoon at the Stadtpark. I had my summer playlist going and we bought some bubbles. 

Afterwards we ran into Derek at a Billa (grocery store) and planned to do a picnic at Schönbrunn, which is the summer palace of the Habsburg. Our group actually spent Saturday there too and took a tour. Honestly the whole property is probably as big if not bigger than downtown Salt Lake City. Here is a picture of the front. Everything is so big here that it’s hard to take a good picture and capture the entire thing.

We hiked up a hill in the back to have our picnic by the Glorette, which is...

And our view

We definitely plan to come back here plenty of more times. We rolled down the hill a couple times, shared some laughs, and Jacob got two girls numbers so that part was a success but we also had some casualties. Virginia was bitten by a bug, which ended up swelling up horribly and then on the trek down Nicole tripped and fell.  Luckily when we were here on Saturday we didn’t have any more problems. As much as I love this place though, I’ve decided it’s a little too small for my taste. The Habsburg could’ve done better.

Normally on mondays we have homework parties for our internship class, since a lot of us are frustrated with it. We make dinner at Dr. Smith’s apartment and it’s more of a group therapy session for all of us to vent.  This week we made taco salads and it was so good to have Mexican food. Virginia’s family has a Mexican restaurant in daybreak so she has all of the skills. Here’s a pic of all the chefs from this week. 

The only other unique thing that happened this week is that we went and saw the Spanische Hofreitschule or Spanish riding school, which is an arena in the Hofburg where classical dressage takes place. They have Lipizzan horses, which are worth more than my whole life, perform.  The arena is beautiful and so are the stables. The stables are one of the few buildings that are a renaissance style because in that time period, Vienna focused on building a wall to keep the Turks out.  The original stables are still used today, which is impressive considering the wear and rare of horses. The horses have been a big focus of our study abroad because Dr. Smith is obsessed with them. She had been waiting to see the dressage for 20 years. Here are some pictures from it. It’s forbidden to take pictures while the horses are out because of the risk of a flash scaring them but someone in my group who will be left unnamed snapped one.

Kemery, Morgan, Me, Virginia, and Derek

That’s all that was particularly noteworthy this week. My German class has been going well and my internship at the school is as great as ever. This Wednesday I’m going with them to a concert at the Mozart house I believe so I’m not complaining. 

Today when I tried to go to church I accidentally typed in Silberergasse instead of Silbergasse so I ended up on the clear opposite end of the town and ended up missing it all together. I found a field of flowers though so I’m not complaining. And then after that our group went to Kirche am Steinhof. This church is Jugendstil or otherwise known as art nouveau. It was such a great break from gothic and baroque. (The fact that I can even say that is hilarious) it was so clean with the white walls and marble and the art wasn’t focused on the crucifixion unlike every other church.  This one is definitely my favorite. I’m just going to throw in pictures now too for you all to enjoy.

Thanks for reading!