Around the city excitement!

Here are some pictures of things that I have done…
Tuesday I sat on a Strassenbahn, and then went wandering around the city a bit with McKay. We went up to the doors of the Rathaus, and the Parliament buildings. The picture of my roommate and I is at the Rathaus Park. For our architecture class, we went inside the Parliament and Rathaus buildings, and inside the Rathaus, I got to sit in the seat of somebody important ☺. Thursday night was an amazing concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at Schloss Schönbrunn, with an expected audience of 100,000 people!!! It was so crazy to be there with so many people, and it was an amazing performance. That experience helped me feel very European, with the smell of cigarette smoke, and tons of bottles of beer… so we did not stay very long. Friday night was “Lange Nacht der Kirche” where all of the churches in Vienna, all 23 districts, were open and had various performances throughout the night including concerts, sermons, tours, and such. I had the opportunity to be one of the very few people to climb tons of stairs up to the top of one of the towers of the Votiv Kirche, a church that was built in the 1800s as a ‘thank you’ to God for saving the life of Kaiser Franz Josef in an assassination attempt. Apparently, the only time they let people climb the tower is during the ‘Lange Nacht der Kirche’ and we were part of the last group that got to climb. It was pretty scary being in a tiny, dark, spiral staircase that was filled with tons of spider webs, and when we got to the top, there were dead pigeons laying on the platform. I felt pretty nasty after this experience. But, now I can say that I climbed a real bell tower! And, once we reached the bell platform, we climbed a tiny latter and then another spiral staircase, this time with a handrail with the thickness of a hairbrush handle (sorry I can’t think of anything else to describe it, but it was really small). It was made of steel, but was pretty high, and any wrong step would be …BAD! It was a fun adventure though, and as we climbed up, and down, we all were saying words of encouragement trying to distract ourselves from the crazy thing we were doing. I don’t have a great picture of when we were climbing, or of when we were at the tip top, but I do have a picture of when I was about halfway up. It was a really pretty view of the city!