Pisa

Classes were out for 10-day break on Thursday, but the official itinerary for our Rome and Assisi trip began on Sunday morning so we had two days of our own time to go where we wanted. It was difficult to plan a trip when we were so focused on studying for our final nursing exam though so we joined a big group going to Florence and Pisa!

There were 17 of us in this group which was huge but SO much fun. The plans were made with the expectation that smaller groups would form but we actually all did the exact same thing until the second day when we ended up breaking into smaller groups.

We left Thursday night as usual but didn't get on our night train until 1:30am from Salzburg to Venice, Italy. During the train ride I borrowed a Europe book from one of the girls and took notes about main attractions in Florence. It was very handy while we were traveling Florence on Saturday! We arrived in Florence at 10:30am and we walked straight to a hostel that we managed to get rooms for everyone for only €16 (regularly €24). I was a follower pretty much all day Friday so I don't know how it happened but it was definitely a blessing. We settled into our hostel and caught a short 1 hour train ride to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. We picked up food as we were walking to the Tower and I ordered pizza that unbeknownst to me had anchovies. It was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten, I almost couldn't finish it. I'm not very picky when it comes to pizza and toppings but I will never eat pizza with anchovies again.
When we got to the Leaning Tower, we took pictures, looked at the souvenir shops along the road, laid in the grass, saw the Duomo di Pisa

At five we started walking back to the train station. We stopped by the supermarket when we got back to Florence and picked up spaghetti noodles and sauce for dinner. Having 17 people made doing things really easy since people could just take turns with jobs. Two of our friends worked so hard to make dinner and we had a big dinner party all together at the hostel! We had a whole floor to ourselves with four bedrooms and the kitchen so it was a ton of fun :)

Pilgrimage to Medugorje

"If you knew how much I loved you, you would die of joy"

Thursday evening we left the Kartause for a pilgrimage to the tiny town of Medugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina located south of Croatia. It has become a huge pilgrimage site for Catholics and the weekend we spent there was so peaceful, eye-opening and beautiful.
We boarded our overnight buses at 8pm and arrived in Medj on Friday morning. We checked into our two houses which held our students. The lady in charge of the houses was the nicest woman, her English wasn't great but her smiles and enthusiasm to serve us communicated more than words could ever express! I roomed with Theresa and Ellie who were wonderful roommates :)

After settling into our rooms we had breakfast at the house and an introduction by our tour guide Ivonka. We then went on a pretty intense hike up Apparition Hill. The hike was all rocks, uphill, in the sun - but it was quite rewarding and we couldn't be more thankful for the gorgeous day we had :)

Here's on the way down...

We ate lunch at Colombo's Pizza which was possibly the cheapest place we've eaten all semester while traveling - the food was not only cheap but it was yummy and there was enough to fill us up! We also caught Americans talking at the table next to us and were shocked to know we could legitimately eavesdrop and know what they were talking about. In other words, they weren't speaking in other languages ;) We had free time for the afternoon and into the evening. Dinner was at 4pm every day during the weekend at the house. A little early but that's how they do it there so we conformed :) The next day we woke up at 4:45am to hike Cross Mountain. It was dark as we were walking up till about 6:00 or so but it was amazing. I've always enjoyed getting up early but I've really fallen in love with early mornings this semester. Sunrises are truly incredible! :) We did Stations of the Cross on the way up and had another gorgeous day. This hill was higher and more beautiful than the one we hiked the day before. We had quiet contemplation at the top which was freezing but we survived ;) we had the most beautiful views all around and before hiking down we had praise and worship as a group!

We hiked down the hill and were down in time for mass at 10. After mass we got lunch. I had the biggest cheeseburger for 2 euro! Medj was my new favorite place for sure ;) After lunch we basically walked through the countryside... I had no idea where we were going I thought for sure we were in private property because there were meadows and fields with grape vines, cows and goats! But Fr. Brad was leading all of us through there so I don't know, hopefully it was ok ;)

We showed up at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Retreat House, known as "the Castle." (notice it slowly emerging in the background in the above pictures). This place was heaven on earth. Here's a brief story I found online about Nancy and Patrick and how this house got started:

"In 1991, Patrick Latta, a successful businessman and car dealer in Canada, and his wife Nancy, a commercial lawyer, left behind everything they had created in their material world, and moved to Medjugorje in 1993, during the height of the war. With Fr. Slavko Barbaric, OFM as their spiritual guide and confessor until his death in Nov. of 2000.
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Retreat House was born, with a specific desire to support, renew, and foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life."

Here's they are with Fr. Brad :)

Upon arriving at the Castle, Patrick gave his conversion story which was possibly the most amazing conversion story I've ever heard. And I have never seen a woman with more joy and generosity than his wife, Nancy. After Patrick gave his conversion story, they had ice cream ready for all of us. They were completely thrilled to have us there with other pilgrims and we actually went back a second time and she gave hugs and kisses to basically all of us and had French toast with nutella, cinnamon and sugar and coffee available for all those who came back the next morning. It's hard to describe how beautiful this experience was but it was one I will never ever forget.

Then we walked to the Community House where we heard a couple guys speak about their conversion stories and life-changing experiences with Hope Reborn - an organization directed toward troubled young men and women who most have been affected by drugs and alcohol. They're life is based upon prayer, sacrifice, renunciation, faith, and work. They have a house in Medugorje where they volunteer. If you want to find out more you can read about the organization at http://www.hopereborn.org/

The next morning we heard Fr. Brad's conversion story and path to the priesthood and also heard David's story, a once professional soccer player in Ireland. The weekend was truly amazing and uplifting especially with all the life-changing stories we heard from pretty incredible people. We then visited Patrick and Nancy at the Castle again where we had our treat of coffee and French toast with nutella, cinnamon and sugar :) It was about a 20 min. walk to the Castle so Nancy of course made sure all of us were driven in the van to mass by noon so we could stay longer with them!

We left at 1:45pm and stopped in Split, Croatia on the way back to Austria where we were planned to stay till about 7pm. We walked around by the water, picked up food and ice cream. It's known to be a beautiful city and was literally on the way back to Austria so it was incorporated into our Medj trip.

Well, here comes the grand finale of the whole weekend. All of us are messin around doing cartwheels and handstands and one flip can be done with two people back to back, link arms and one person can flip the other person over. Well Andrea's done this a million times but this time falls and "splits" her head. (In Split, Croatia). Her head is bleeding profusely so we call the ambulence and Andrea takes a trip to a Croatian hospital to get three stitches in her head. It was pretty scary at first, but honestly she probably could have lived without the stitches, but we weren't sure at the time and she could have had a head injury so it was best to be safe. Andrea was in the hospital for about 2 hours so we ended up leaving Croatia at 9pm. And the night gets crazier... Sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 in the morning bus #1 decides to break down, so we're stopped in a random parking lot by the side of the road till 6am while our saintly bus drivers are working the entire time to get the bus going again. Many people slept but mostly those in bus #2 since bus 1 was the problem and everyone had to get off since the bus was spewing fumes and smelled horrible. I was fortunate to be in bus #2 but I went out and joined people outside for a little while since I couldn't sleep even though it was freezing! Everyone not sleeping or not attempting to warm up in bus 2 played soccer outside, sang songs, and danced... not joking about 50 or more students were jumping and dancing to Josh's beat boxing in the middle of this parking lot to stay warm. Definition Franciscan right there :) Took us till 10:30 on Monday morning before arriving back at the Kartause. I washed Andrea's hair and Sarah dryed and brushed it so her stitches wouldn't get wet. This routine continued for a good week with Sarah and I switching off between washing and drying before our friend Steve took her stitches out while we were in Rome.

It was a good weekend despite some of the crazy set backs toward the end!

p.s. I apologize for the lack of pictures, I thought I uploaded them all but apparently not, I will try to upload some more later. I also don't have a picture of our outrageous 2:30-6:00am adventure in the parking lot so you'll have to do the best you can to picture the event ;)

Czech us out in Prague!

So I'm a little behind again. These past two weeks have been crazy. This past weekend we were in Medjugorie and last weekend we were visiting Prague. I'm going to try to catch up this week but it might be difficult because we leave again on Thursday night for another 10-day break. This time we're off to Rome and Assisi! :)

So last weekend was a two day weekend and I traveled with Andrea and Lydia to Prague in the Czech Republic. We left the Kartause at 4pm on Friday afternoon and caught the 5pm train from Keinberg to Pochlarn. On the train from Pochlarn to Vienna, we bought a train ticket using our Vorteils card which is basically a discount card for train travel in Austria. It's a good deal and it allows us to leave earlier then 7:30 since our Eurail pass is valid only from 7:30 till midnight the next day for one day of travel, so it saves us from using another precious day of our 10-day pass! ;) We got to Vienna about 7:45, checked into our hostel, dropped our stuff off and went to grab some dinner. Prague is a 4 1/2 hour train ride from Vienna but it already takes 2 1/2 hours to get from Gaming to Vienna so the best option for us was to get a hostel in Vienna and leave early in the morning from Vienna to Prague. We booked a mixed dorm (boys and girls) since it was cheaper but we were fortunate to have only girls in our room, and we had our own bathroom!

We warned our roommates we needed to get up early (they were Chinese or Korean or something and their English wasn't great), they ended up leaving the light on all night and I don't know if it was accident, whether they wanted the light on, if they thought they were being kind by leaving the light on for us, or if they just misunderstood us. I have no idea but when we got up in the early morning it was on. Luckily I was tired enough not to notice, in fact it was a bit of a surprise waking up with it on in the morning. It ended up being helpful though haha. We were up at 4:15, packed our stuff and took the metro from one main station in Vienna to another to catch our train to Prague. There we ran into another group from Franciscan, Sarah was in the group and they were also going to Prague but they avoided the hostel situation to save money except that they ended up staying outside for six hours overnight. (They were expecting to find a place to lounge in the train station but there was literally no place to go), and apparently it was a hard, cold night for them outside :/ We arrived in Prague at about 10:20 and found a Starbucks for coffee and from there headed to our hostel. Our friend Steve went to Prague at the beginning of the semester and recommended Crib 15 hostel. It was only €7.30 per night which is a fantastic price and then it was €5 for breakfast. Anyway, we get to this place and it looks pretty sketchy from the outside but it was the cutest little place on the inside. It was the best hostel we've stayed in yet for sure! We got there at 11am but couldn't check in till 3 so we left our bags in luggage storage and headed to the Old Town Square.

We found an advertisement in the hostel for a pizza restaurant that looked pretty good and said we would get 15% off if we presented the advertisement. Ha so we went on a mission to find the place. We eventually found it and it was super yummy, except the 15% off was a little bit of a hastle with the three of us trying to pay separately, but we managed ;)

After lunch, we went to Charles Bridge hitting the little shops along the way.

When we came to the bridge, it was such a beautiful view. We couldn't have been there on a better day, the sun was out and there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

From Charles Bridge, we walked up to the Prague Castle which is in the distant up on the hill in this last picture with the "Bridge Band" (entertainment for tourists walking across the bridge) ;) At the top of the hill, was a gorgeous view of Prague!

We found a little park on the top of the hill where Andrea and I rested while Lydia went and explored a little, it was such a nice little spot!

About 5:00 we started back toward Charles Bridge and stopped for Chinese buffet for dinner. After dinner, we shopped some more and officially checked into our hostel at 8. Another bonus to Crib 15 hostel in Prague besides being cheap, was we had the whole six person bedroom to ourselves. Three free beds! It was exciting for sure :)

We walked around a bit at night to see about something to do but nothing looked appealing so we headed back to the hostel and went to bed. We woke up in the morning at 8 - took showers and ate a really nice continental breakfast - bonus #3 to my favorite hostel so far ;) We left for mass at 9:20 to allow for enough time to walk to the Infant Jesus of Prague Church which was across Charles Bridge again for mass at 10am. Mass was in Czech but it was beautiful as always :)

Here is the famous Infant Jesus of Prague and the inside of the church

After mass we did a little more shopping along the streets back to the hostel. We stopped at Subway to pick up sandwhiches for dinner since we wouldn't have time picking up food on our way back to the Kartause, and we stopped at another sandwhich shop for lunch. Headed back to the hostel and were starting to be pressed for time so we began running. We ran to platform 6 which was at the very end of the station and were a bit frantic because it was clearly not the right platform. We asked someone who told us it was leaving from platform 2! So we ran back down and managed to get there in just enough time :) Then things started to get really crazy after we got to Vienna. I had my printed copy of the train itinerary before we left so everything was in front of me, however, trains are changing all the time like our platform in Prague. Well, we ran into our first really inconvenient train change... we get to our platform where we would be catching a train to another station in Vienna and then from there, catch the train back to Gaming. Well, about a minute before the train was supposed to arrive, it disappeared from the screen and replaced with some other random destination! Well we decide to take the metro since that worked for us before. To make a long story short, we end up taking a metro, a tram and a bus to this other train station and we still miss our connecting train. So we get on a different train which we find out is a "slow" train and then the slow train decides to break down before its even out of Vienna. So we're delayed for a good 45 minutes. By the time we're close to connecting stations, the last train to Gaming leaves. We're told when this happens to get off at the Sheibbs train station (which is about 15 minutes from the Kartause) and get a taxi. Well stupid us, we get off at Ybbs which we think is Sheibbs and decide we'll just hitch hike as we walk back. We get two rides that take us back to Gaming, and we discover we would have had a long night walking since we were about 30 minutes away from Gaming... driving. Thanks to God for those wonderful people who picked us up! We got back to the Kartause about 11:30pm which was pretty good for being that far out and having no idea how we were getting back. It was an adventurous weekend :)