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Published: August 9th 2008
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crown, orb and scepter... I didn't know orbs were real! Friday, 8/08
Friday morning we watched another movie in class and discussed the Thirty Years' War as well as other miscellaneous topics. We watched another movie, but I felt like it was poorly done, as I was confused about what was going on despite being awake the entire time. After class, we got Kasekrainer (cheese sausage) for lunch. One of the girls I was out with, Melissa, can't eat pork. She pointed out that it's hard to avoid pork in a country where their national dish is sausage! We headed towards the Imperial Treasury, but stopped at a cafe so Melissa could get some lunch. The waiter was really nice, and taught us how to say "straw" (it sounds like strahelm or something like that). We went into the treasury, and the amount of gold and jewels and richly embroidered robes was overwhelming. You can only look at so many king's robes before you get a bit numb to the excitement. They almost looked like costumes! The one display I did enjoy was the world's largest emerald, which I probably took like 18 pictures of! We also saw the crown of the King of the Holy Roman Empire, which is probably
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almost looks like a costume pictured in a lot of textbooks and tourist guides. We left the treasury and trekked off to the Haus der Musik. This museum was located off a cute sidestreet, and took awhile to find. The first exhibit was about the Viennese Philharmonic over the last few hundred years, so I wasn't paying any particularly good attention. Then the next exhibit was a "re-creation of the experience of being in the womb" which was a vibrating room with weird noises and lighting. The next exhibit discussed Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, etc. Then the next one talked about the science of sound and had weird sound labs and interactive displays. It kind of felt like the exploratorium, but with music. The museum almost felt schizophrenic by jumping between classical music and loud interactive displays. We left the musuem exhausted, and saw that a bar down the street was having happy hour. I got the tiniest Bellini I have ever seen! It was kind of drizzly so we headed back home after planning our outing for the next day. I was sitting in my room when my roommate Kelsey convinced me to go out. This time, I decided that I could be more prepared.
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looks like an eggplant, but its probably worth more than an eggplant! I anticipated coming home smelling like a cigarette, so I did not shower first. I also decided that I refused to stay out as late as I did last time, so I just planned to take a cab home once I got tired. On the subway, some Austrian boys were advising us to not go to some club. They weren't inviting us to go with them, so I guess it's an improvement on the Viennese treatment if they were trying to advise us against a potentially lame club. As we were exiting the U-bahn at Stephensplatz (near St. Stephen's Cathedral and the "Bermuda Triange" for clubs), some other boys (who were drinking huge beers... no open container policy in Austria) started joking about Americans. I realized that I recognized one of the boys from last Saturday night. I asked him if he was the same guy from last week, and laughing, he admitted that he was. They asked us where we were going (like we had any idea?) and we decided to all hang out together. The conversations I had with these boys are my favorite part of the story. We asked them about going to Bratislava (the Slovakian capital
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the world's largest emerald most of my classmates are planning on visiting) and they compared it to Detroit. But they promptly proclaimed their love for Eminem, as if we were offended that they were teasing Detroit. We also asked them about the 'was soll das?' phrase taught to us by our professor. They seemed unfamiliar with the phrase, and instead tried to teach us how to say something to the effect of 'son of a bitch'. One of the words had that throaty 'r' sound I can't really replicate, and I accidentally rolled my 'r' instead. One of the boys cracked up, making me say it a few more times for his entertainment. I guess thats karma for me making fun of asians saying 'robster'. At a later point of time, one of the boys asked me how I felt about American politics, and I diplomatically answered that I felt some were good, and some were bad. I then asked him what he thought, and his response was "but I'm way too drunk to talk about your country". I was curious why he brought it up then, but perhaps it was because he was drunk. Since everyone smokes cigarettes in Vienna and we're supposed
to chat with locals, I decided to ask the boy if he smoked weed. He got kind of quiet, and whispered that he was embarrased to admit that he did. I didn't know this, but apparently Austria has no soft vs. hard drug laws, and my question was synonymous to asking someone if they smoke crack. Whoops. After leaving the bar, there were like 10 cops standing outside. The Austrian boys start chanting "F*** the police!", though nothing they were doing was a red flag to me. For some reason, (it may have been the chanting) one of them got arrested. One of his friends trailed after the police, but the last one stayed with us. Kelsey asked him if he was going to go help his friend who just got arrested, but his response was "Oh well, I will see him in half an hour, they're only going to take his name!" He then claimed that he had been arrested like 10 times and it was no big deal. Uhh...? I was tired at this point of time, and decided to head home. Some of my classmates wanted to go home as well, so the four of us shared
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crown of the Holy Roman Emperor a cab.
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