Today we had a little walking tour of Linz. It was arranged by the Austro-American Society, which is an Austrian/American club thingy. All the teaching assistants are being invited to join free. I paid 10 Euro to join. It’s actually a pretty neat thing with weekly discussions and intermittent events, like city tours and Halloween movies.
The city tour was our first introduction to the group. The tour itself started in the main square. We checked out the city information office, then saw a few courtyards buried in buildings. We even saw part of the original defense wall that used to surround the city. On our way over to the old cathedral, we saw this and thought it was neat:
Yeah. We went up to the Danube river and walked along that for a bit. Then we walked up the hill to the old Linz castle. It’s a museum now. They have a little viewing area that gives you a nice view of the city, and makes looking at the new cathedral quite nice.
Some crazy notes: that thing is 135m tall (443ft). There’s a little room built at the start of the tower. It was originally designed for someone to stay up there a week as a hermit. The project was so successful, they decided to continue it, so now everyone is signing up to be a hermit for a week!
After that we went to a small bakery and had some cake and hot chocolate/tea. It was quite tasty. The whole tour only took about 2 hours. It went pretty fast. The tour guide was very interesting to talk with. We asked him several questions and found out about some discounted passes for travel and museums and whatnot. We also talked with some members of the society. One thing we asked was how cold it gets in winter. The person we were talking with said it probably gets down to about -15 degrees Celsius. Yeah. That’s only 5 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m glad I packed shorts.
Once the tour was complete, we went back to the dorm and made supper with two girls Mary Jo met at orientation. The food was great, and hanging out with people was extra nice. We’ll have to make that a habit.
I thought we agreed that you were not going to make any friends over there! Imagine how hard it will be to say Good-Bye when you come home!
Seriously, we are so happy that you are jumping right in and making the most of the experience. Keep it up!
Wow, you are surely going to miss Fargo winters.
I agree, person to person socializing is nice and seems to be turning into somewhat of a rarity.