And we're off!

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After my class to the Cabinet War Rooms, I came back to Metrogate, packed up my toilettries and grabbed my passport and luggage and left! It had commenced, the last class for me for SIX monthes! Pretty exciting, eh?!?!! Well, it was a bit stressful at first because I couldn't find some of the things i thought I had packed. Then, we got on the wrong tube...Great! But then we were able to get on the Stansted express right away and were even able to use our ISIC Cards. We checked in for our flight and waited in the queue for to get on the plane. The security was hardly what I imagined. And we were off! To our gate at least....we sat and sat and finally they told us that the plane was delayed. Finally about 1.5 hours we were able to get on the plane. Now, getting on a plane in Europe is quite different than getting on a plane in the US. You see, we had to walk out to the small jet and walk up stairs, like they show in the movies and for the president. It felt really important, but I just wasn't used to it. But i did like it. Then on the plane, you just pick a seat. There are no assigned seat, so that was a bit disorganized and a little stressful as i didn't know where to sit. Finally i just parked myself and as soon as we took off I fell alseep....about two hours into the flight i woke up and began talking to the young man next to me. Let's call him Jonny, as i still cannot pronounce his real name. He was from Slovakia and helped me with some pronunciations in Slovakian. He said i learned quickly, i think he was just being nice. He also apologized for the cold weather---if he only knew! For it was only 6 degrees celsius as opposed to the minus 19 fahrenheit Green Bay was experienecing at this time.
Upon arriving at the airport in Bratislava, we first had to get out of the plane--duh! Well, getting off the plane was a lot like getting on, we climbed down the stairs and then we were bused to the airport terminal! So differerent, but i liked it, then, we got our passport stamped! I think that is my favorite thing about being abroad, is getting all those stamps in my passport! It is so cool and it makes me feel so official!!! HAhaha! We got our luggage and then walked outside! it finally hit me: I am on BREAK and in Eastern Europe!!! Just to know that is so cool! Well, we had to take a coach to Vienna from Bratislava and because we missed the first coach, we had to wait another hour or two, but it really wasn't that big of a deal because we sat at the bar and had a round or two. Which was nice because the beer that i ordered didn't even cost one american dollar!!! We got on the coach and it took a really long time to get to Vienna, about 2 hours!!! I thought the two cities were fairly close together, but oh well.
When we got to Vienna the coach dropped us off at some random tube (or metro if you will) station. We didn't know what to do because all the signs and maps were in German. My travel buddy was kind of stressing out which got me really anxious and annoyed. But finally some really nice retiree ranchers from Texas paid our fair for the tube, because all we had in Euros were big bills! That was nice. Then it was pretty much smooth sailing to our stop. On the way though, we did have to make one tube change. And luckily we caught the very last tube to the stop we needed to get to our hostel! Coming out of the tube, we ran into some American students from California who were studying in Italy and were traveling in Vienna. They had just come from the Death Cab for Cutie concert, too bad, if we had only known sooner that they were having a concert there!!! LOL! They walked with us to our hostel, but it was pretty much an easy to find place. However, there were a couple of steep hills and that was a little annoying, but whatcha gonna do 'bout those???

Check in at Hostel Husteldorff! The man at the check in desk was very nice and friendly. He said that they did not know that Jacqueline and i were traveling together, so they had put us in different rooms. So, after a bit of searching he found a room for us to be in together. Which was really nice of him because he gave a four person private room for the two of us!!! And he didn't even charge us extra for the change!!! And it was so incredibly nice mainly because it was only the two of us and we even had our own shower. After we found the room, we unpacked and just got ready for bed and did just that, caught some Zzzzzzzz's!!!!!!

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Photos

Hotel Husteldorff
our room