"Melk" It For All It's Worth!

Group at Augustiner Brau

(Sorry, title is really cheesy but it is so hard to come up with blog titles!!!)


Yet another successful weekend has come and gone! On Friday we had one class which was really boring! We listened to the Austrian director of our program speak and I couldn't tell you much about what he said. He spoke the whole time in German and really fast. Our professor would then ask questions and of course no one knew what was going on. It was just an overall pointless class. It was alright though because we were done with class by 10:30. It is so nice getting done early. We then went back to our dorms to hang out for awhile and then around 1:00pm a big group of us went to the park to play football. As random as that sounds it was actually a lot of fun! I was absolutely terrible though! Haha! So, in my usual Nickie-fashion I added the comic relief by always laughing at how awful I was! It made for a fun day!  : ) I did manage one touchdown and an interception which I thought was pretty good - just not compared to everyone else!

On Saturday, almost everyone decided to go hiking in the mountains. A large group of us started hiking and some wanted to go off the trail and some wanted to stick to the trail. We ended up splitting up. The off-trail route seemed a little too extreme for me so I stuck to the trail. It was kind of a lot of work but the views were amazing! Of course we hiked on the hottest day yet so far and after awhile I got a headache which was too bad so a couple of us went down before we reached the top. Going down was so much better than up because I found out I missed so many things! There were so many cute houses, creeks and bridges. It was nice to take a relaxing walk down and soak in everything. On Saturday night a group of us decided to check out Augustiner Brau. It is a pretty famous brewery with a beer garden. It was great! It was such a nice night so I liked being outside. When we got there we all bought our beer which was interesting. They have you pay and then you grab your mug and rinse it out. Then you handed it to a guy and he fills it up. It was a little wierd but cool at the same time! The beer was not my favorite that I have had here which was too bad. I drank most of it though! I really enjoyed the atmosphere at the beer garden. There were a lot of people and it was really fun! We are definitely planning to go there again!

Melk Monastery

Sunday was our big day trip to Melk, Austria. We were up and at the train station by 7:30am which was really hard to get up for. Everyone was pretty tired but luckily we had a 2 hour train ride where we could sleep. We got to Melk and right away had a tour of the beautiful Benedictine monastery that is there. It was gorgeous! The monastery was huge and it towered over the whole town which made for great pictures of the city! I thoroughly enjoyed the tour. Afterwards we were on our own to get lunch and see the town. Unfortunately since it was Sunday almost everything was closed. When we did find a restaurant that was actually open we instantly went in. We found a nice Italian restaurant that had really good pizza and for a good price! It is nice because when we go on excursions our director pays for lunch. It is nice not to have to worry about it. Then we went and visited the monastery's gardens. It was really nice to walk through there. We just relaxed and took some pictures. I was mad that the stores were all closed because I really wanted to get a pin from there. I decided it would be cool to get a pin from everywhere I go and put it on my backpack when I am done. Maybe I can find one somewhere. There wasn't a whole lot to do in Melk but it was fun to see another part of Austria. Tomorrow is a full day of classes but luckily I don't have class Tuesday or Thursday this week!