Feb 20, 2005 - Matariki greets Wiener

Kia ora ano ra koutou e te whanau! Well what a cuLtured city Wiener(VIENNA) is the buildings give out a hint of Austrian history,and the days of Emporers.A wonderful place but such a short time to try and capture every thing. Our young performers are still in NZ time mode, very much wide eyed at night and making up for lost sleep in the morning after a day shopping and e mailing whanau. We are fast aproaching the half way point of the tour every day passing bye faster.Things are flowing well. We have met Austrian people who have visited NZ...

Feb 16, 2005 - HELLO from Vienna!

This is going to be short because I am almost out of internet time and am having a bitch of a time with this crazy German keyboard, but I arrived in Vienna safely today. HOwever, it is 0 degrees celsius (32 degress farenhiet for us Americans) and snowing! Quite a change from Thailand! At any rate Thinking of you all and miss you lots. Expect some fun stories soon.... -Brandon

Feb 14, 2005 - Vienna, Austria

Well I'm stupid and I had a whole page of really cool text here to post for you and I unplugged the network connection to plug in my camera. So you'll get some pictures but a little shorter story. We cam into Vienna yesterday and I thought we could save a little money by staying at a hostel. Well after staying in nicer hotels for the first half of the trip is was uncomfortable trying to adjust to the self-service make your own bed hostel. It didn't help much that it wasn't very close to the center of town and the receptionist was very rude....

Jan 27, 2005 - Vienna, Austria

We arrived in Vienna yesterday afternoon. Apparently, they haven't had any snow until about two days ago. It has been snowing and so windy. I think Lindsay and I truly understand wind chill factor now. The -2 we had yesterday was soo much colder yesterday with the wind than it was today without it. Man that wind can be miserable. So we spend our time trying to find things to do inside. The snow stopped today and it looks like it will be so much better tomorrow. We ended up taking a tour bus around this morning. Aparently we paid 20 euro for...

Jan 24, 2005 - Vienna and a Winter Wonderland

Well this weekend was quite exhausting. After a fun Friday night at the local tavern with the locals and a bunch of my friends, we headed for Vienna early Saturday morning. I have been looking forward to spending some time in Vienna since the day I found out I was going to be doing this semester abroad because of the rich musical history Vienna contains. Vienna is surely an amazing city. Our busses took us 2 hours from Gaming to the edge of "The Ring" (Vienna's downtown center. Across the street was a cafe that Freud spent much of his time....

Dec 28, 2004 - Vienna in a day

We started off this morning still feeling a little sick, but not too bad. We went to one of the best coffee houses in Vienna, Café Demel. It is next to the royal palace where the Habsburg family lived. We both had Café Mélange, a Viennese cappucino with cinnamon, and Sara had a strawberry torte and I had a slice of apple strudel. Mmm... delicious! Then we went to Stefansdom in central Vienna and took a tour of the catacombs, which have been renovated and are therefore not as scary as I would like. Interestingly, Stefansdom is where the...

Dec 27, 2004 - Whoopee! Sara is here!

Sara is here! I went to pick her up in Salzburg and she looked so different! She was wearing huge boots, a black "Britney Spears" hat and a giant fluffy gray-blue jacket that reminded me of a poodle. I thought she looked like an Australian for some reason. It turns out she had to wear all her big clothes because they wouldn't fit in her bag. It is so great to see her. It always feels just the same... like I just saw her yesterday. We immediately left for Vienna, and arrived there after dark. We stayed in Hostel Ruthensteiner, which was...

Dec 21, 2004 - Vienna

After a three hour ride on the train we found ourselves in Vienna quite a difference from quaint little Salzburg! I went off to a Marc Chagall exhibit (one of my favorite's) and then Sean and I met back to go to the Freud museum which is located in his old office and home. Then we went to an Italian opera that was in German at the opera house...interesting, yes there were subtitles! It was so cool because you could buy standing tickets for 3 euros, it was a steal!

Dec 16, 2004 - Budapest to Vienna

So budapest ended well with kym and myself putting up with the snow and having a look around the markets and watching a traditional hungarian dance.. we met a guy who could speak english and once he found out we were from australia all he could say was "i love woman in bikini, ahhh australiana, drink beer and take woman.. not prostitute.. just woman"... although it was -1 degrees.. i was a little too cold for comfort so we head home. My lasting impression of hungary is alot of people walking around in alot of dead things... tails and claws...

Nov 19, 2004 - Vienna

Miles and I left for Vienna early Friday morning and tried to relax while on the long train ride. We were scheduled to be there at 1, but we didn't get there until 3 because there were major delays for whatever reason. It really ruined our plans and didn't give us at much time in Vienna as we had hoped for. Anyways, while traveling on the train we passed through a variety of different weather patterns. First it was clear, then rain, then snow, and then sun again. However, when we stepped out of the train it felt like 20 below zero because...

Nov 7, 2004 - Vienna Trip!

Well, I had another amazing weekend traveling around Europe. We were going to go to Bratislava for a day and then to Vienna but everyone we talked to said there was a lot more to do in Vienna. Also it was really funny because it ended up being all K-State people on this trip. It just worked out that we all wanted to go this weekend, and the other people that were going to go ended up dropping out. So we showed a little KSU Pride in Vienna last weekend! Vienna was of course enriched with culture and the arts. So many famous people lived and...

Nov 5, 2004 - Sick of the cities!

We are finally in Slovenia! We've been looking forward to this for a while, just to get out of the cities, because they all start to look the same. Vienna was very beautfil, but our mood meant we didn't appreciate as much as it deserved. A quick walk around the city to look at the buildings and that was pretty much it. For the first time, we did spend some time in a gallery. It was very funky and showing the photos of Cecil Burton, an English photographer who worked from 1928 - 1981, taking phots of everyone from the silent film stars to a...