Tuesday, August 25th

Night came and morning followed. The second day.

My room has a large window. So large, in fact, that the sun, peaking over the foothills of the Alps, poured copious amounts of light into my room at 5:30AM. Unable to sleep any longer I rose, too deep in a mental torpor to feel anything. That is, until I clumsily pulled back the curtains and saw this:

Thus began my second day in Austria.

At 8AM Dr. Franz Schneider gave the entire school a talk on just about everything there is to know about the country Austria. Immediately afterwards the whole student body crammed into four buses and we drove to the nearby monastery Melk in the valley by the Danube river. This is Melk:

Fun-size!

This is Melk before mass:

After a guided tour, lunch, and mass at Melk we then travelled to Durnstein, a town of enchantment dubbed by the inhabitants of Austria as "the most romantic place ever." With only little over an hour in Durnstein we practically ran up a mountain in order to walk among the ruins of Durnstein's castle - where, coincidentally, King Richard the Lionhearted had once been imprisoned by the king of Germany.

it's no wonder that King Richard didn't stay imprisoned for long. I mean, look at the place.

After racing back down the mountain so as not to miss the buses we actually had a few minutes to spare. Hot from our hike we decided that logically the best course of action would be to jump in the Danube. However, still missing my bags I had only the clothes on my back and decided that just wading up to me knees would be sufficient. Although I still plan on jumping head first into the Danube river some other time.

Then, that evening after returning to Gaming, Christmas had decided to come early. Leaving the Kartause for only ten minutes to go on a short walk, simply because I had nothing else to do, I returned to the lobby to find that my luggage had been secretly delivered in my absence. Maybe I should have jumped in the Danube after all.

me not jumping in

After checking to make sure that my extra crunchy peanut butter had made it through security it was time to go the local tavern, Urs, for the first time. This mad adventure was lead by none other than the glorious Steve Eddleson, with Will Goggins, Julian, and myself along for the ride. We all ordered half liters of Stiegal - except Will who got some girly drink I can't pronounce or spell. Not too long after drinking my Stiegal (which turned out to be the equivalent of two American beers) I decided to go back to the Kartause and go to bed. I also decided to start a beer diary. So far I've tried: Kaiser beer, which I didn't like; Weisenburger beer, which was better than Kaiser; and of course Stiegal beer which is the best I've had yet.