Wilkommen in Österreich—ohne Schnee!

I sure hope that is correct German… (It is supposed to mean, Welcome to Austria—without snow.) I arrived in Vienna, Austria on Sunday morning after an 8 hour 20 minute flight, which is a 4455 mile journey in the air, and I was fortunate enough to be seated next to my household sister and in front of another good friend without even asking anyone to swap seats! It is so much harder to sleep on a plane than I thought, especially once you’re over the ocean and flying over famous cities of history that you studied for years in school (like London). Oh, and they fed us food—dinner and breakfast, and it was surprisingly delicious—much much better than I expected for airplane food. But, when we landed, it looked like a nice spring day—8 C and no snow. Once we exited the plane (outside) we were transported by bus to the airport building and then moved on to the place where they stamped our passports (or Reisepass), we grabbed our luggage (only 3 people ended up not finding all of their luggage), and then headed by bus for Gaming. Sr. Joan Paule pointed out some interesting landmarks of interest (including snow-capped mountains and monasteries) during our 2 hour bus ride. Sister also mentioned that they had a bunch of snow, but it warmed up and rained, assuring us that the snow will come back soon. (Oh, one Kartause rule—no snowball fights on the grounds.)

When we arrived at the Kartause, we were greeted by the Kartause kids (professors’ children) giving orange roses to us while wearing their traditional Austrian clothes as they stood underneath a sign that said Wilkommen Franciscan Students. From there we checked in to our rooms and unpacked and ate lunch at the Mensa (the caf at Gaming) and looked around a bit before emailing back home that we got here. One place we found was the chapel—it is so gorgeous!!! And we had Mass there, as well. After dinner and some more unpacking, we went to our welcome meeting and social (but we only grabbed food and left—we were exhausted!).

Today we went to the Danube River Valley, but I'll post more on that later. The next post will have pictures.