Home Away from Home :)

This past weekend was a two day weekend so a lot of students stayed back in Gaming. Friday was a visit to the Scheibbs hospital about 15 minutes from Gaming where all the nursing students learned about the Austrian healthcare system and nursing program. We had three speakers, one of which could speak no English so the whole presentation was translated (kind of took forever), and the two others could speak OK English. Then we had a question and answer time where we talked with about 20 nursing students from all over Austria who had come to Scheibbs just for us! The Austrian nursing program is 3 years with one year added if they choose to specialize in a particular area. This can be contrasted to the U.S. where nursing programs can range from 2 to 4 years with the option of further education. Each year they get 8 weeks of vacation, they take 4,600 hours of theory and practice within the 3-year period. They practice in the hospital completely separate from their schooling, for instance, they might be in class for five months at a time, and for the next five months be practicing in the hospital. We, on the other hand, have our clinicals at the same time we are taking classes. The Austrians can start nursing as soon as they finish their 3 years and after they complete four "diploma" exams as they call them in order to graduate and begin nursing. While, we can't start nursing/become licensed until we've taken the NCLEX test. Within five year periods, the Austrians have to complete 40 study hours to keep up to date - this is quite minimal considering the high amount of continuing education after school that is required for nurses in the States. The Austrian healthcare system is socialist so most healthcare is fully paid for but like most Socialist governments, taxes are extremely high. Also, every four years, politicians get together to talk about how much money will go to each Province in Austria. We ate dinner with the students in the hospital after. :) Once we got back to campus, we walked to the town pub called Urs in Gaming where all the students and locals like to go for a little evening enjoyment!

The plan for Saturday was initially to go white water rafting but we were supposed to have 40 students signed up in order to rent a bus, but we only ended up getting about 25 to sign up so it ended up being cancelled... until we got a knock on our door at 11:30 on Friday night from a determined student who managed to get our two RDs and Fr. Brad (one of the two main priests here) to drive us there! So after 10am mass on Saturday morning we loaded ourselves up into two vans and Fr. Brad's car. We drove about an hour and 15 minutes to our rafting location. Here are some locals just walking their cows on the drive over haha

We went on a hike in the time we had before we were scheduled to go rafting at 3:00. I decided that I will never truly escape hiking since most of the people I enjoy being around, love it :P - like my roommates. Hopefully I will learn to love it one day. Here are some pictures!

The rest of the afternoon was then spent on the river. We were dressed in full body wet suits and there were points where we were riding level 5 rapids. Our guide was hilarious - his English wasn't very good, and he reminded us of a hobbit haha. He and the other guides had major competitive streaks in them too because they definitely promoted fighting, wrestling, pushing, jumping to different boats, and tipping them over. It was crazy, like the whole trip was CRAZY! and the water was freeeezing but it wasn't unbearable thanks to our suits :) We had pizza for dinner and got back to Gaming at about 9:30pm - exhausted and ready for bed!

Sunday was a down day. We went into town where all the people were dressed in their traditional Austrian dress, celebrating a day of thanksgiving! The band was playing and there were tables and chairs all set up with everyone sitting and enjoying their beers, sausages and pastries for sale. It was goregous too, it was a perfect day for a town get-together :)

Tonight we leave for Poland!

Salzburg/Munich trip - DAY 3

After Munich, we drove back to Salzburg and stayed our second night in the same hostel as the night before. We drove to St. Michael's in Mondsee for mass at 10am about a half hour west of Salzburg. This church was where the wedding in the Sound of Music took place!

We ate lunch afterward in the town of Mondsee... soup, salad, pork roast, dumpling and ice cream for dessert!

mmm :) we visited the lake where most people went swimming. I didn't want to jump in though so I played frisbee instead. Everyone enjoyed it though, except that it was pretty cold!

Side note: there's a creek at the Kartause in Gaming and it's a Franciscan tradition for students to make frequent "creek jumps." In other words, if you go to Austria, you have to jump in the creek. So against my will, I jumped in. My comment is simply that it was cold and I am content not doing it again. I guess I'm glad I can say I did it though... at least once ;)

Here's a picture of the lake in Mondsee:

Before the lake, Sarah and I stopped in at some shops. Here is the traditional Austrian dress for women. They're called dirndls. so cute :)

And that's the end of our Salzburg and Munich trip!



Salzburg/Munich DAY 2

We had breakfast at our hostel and went to 10am mass at Dom Cathedral (Mozart’s church and the one with five organs) – it was completely in German, so it was very difficult to focus and I confess I spent too much time thinking about very unimportant things! The mass was spectacular though – I felt like I was at a German orchestra concert! At 11:30 the buses left for Salzburg and in a couple hours we were in Munich, Germany! Our director of student life, Mark, led us on a short walking tour and then we had free time for the rest of the day. First we visited the Munich Residence, which was the political and cultural center of the first dukes and kings of Bavaria. It was also the place where rulers kept their art collections and treasure. We had audio guides but it would seriously have taken us like six hours to get through that place if we had listened to every audio clip… It was huge and had an outrageous number of rooms

And here are some more pictures of Munich :)

Look at that architecture!

For dinner, we went to the Hofbrauhaus and the whole menu was in German, so I pulled out my Rick Steves German phrase book and attempted to decode the menu ha but it was entirely too difficult especially with a whole table of people… so with little knowledge of words on the menu we decided to pick something completely random! At least Sarah and I picked something completely random – I think everyone else had some idea of what they were ordering. Here’s what we got :)

Mine is the second picture and it was called Saftiges Bierkutschergulasch, it kinda tasted like chili and - I thought I would look it up on google but yeah.. no luck. I guess it will remain a mystery ;)
Well, turns out they had an English menu… Ha at least we had fun ;)

Funny too, the Hofbrauhaus is a big beer place (what a surprise :P) but no one at our table ordered beer, but somehow one of the guys at our table was given half a glass of beer from another table with Franciscan students who didn’t like it. It was a Radler and I genuinely liked it. So I’m pleased to say my favorite beer so far was the beer I had in Germany :)