After Paul Ream left, I became all too aware of how close finals had crept, and that I still had a variety of papers to write as well as a significant amount of studying to do. Thus, over the next week (Wednesday, December 8 through the 15th) I was largely concerned with schoolwork. A couple notes though:
1) I attended the final concert of student performers, and they did not disappoint. I took some video and will try and figure out how to post that on this blog at some point, but they’re an amazing group of performers I was privileged to be able to hear. The grammar on that sentence seems completely wrong, but I’m now in the car on my way home from Madison so I’m not going to attempt to correct it.
2) As this weekend was our last weekend, our program contacted a local bar, the Travelshack and asked if they could support a full group of people. While we were there, they let us put up a screen to show our semester DVD, which had been compiled by my friend Allison and another guy from our program, Tom. Largely a compilation of pictures set to music with the occasional video, it was very well done. We would all receive a copy of the video after our last final on Thursday.
3) If you look back two posts, you may read a brief synopsis of the friendship that developed between my friend from Davidson, Paul Britton, and Allison Meyer, a friend of mine from abroad. Since that point, they had remained in contact through a variety of social mediums – so much so that Paul undertook a leap and flew back to Vienna (via a discount airline through Bratislava and then a bus) to surprise her. She was, indeed quite surprised when he showed up outside the Travelshack, and they spent the majority of the rest of the weekend together, though Pat and I did get to see Paul some as well.
After my two finals and papers on Tuesday, things relaxed a lot. Wednesday night most of the guys in my apartment went out to Schnitzelwirt for one last hurrah. Beforehand I met Felix, a friend of mine in Vienna who had worked with my Uncle David in New York over the summer, at a Christmas market for a cup or two of punch and to say farewell. He actually helped me pick out a couple gifts to bring back to friends.
I still had my German final on Thursday, but that wasn’t difficult, and by Thursday afternoon I had packed and was ready to get up early Friday morning and head to the airport. For dinner I actually ended up going to Schnitzelwirt with a different group of friends, and I was lucky enough to meet Annie Wolfstone’s parents. That night many people from my program convened at the Travelshack again to spend our last night together and say our goodbyes. It was fun, and relatively emotional, but I finally said goodbye and made my way home. Once there I made sure I had everything completely together, and then realized I had to wake up in about an hour, so I decided to just stay up and talk to Patrick, Tad, and Evan for the rest of the night. (David, by the way, had departed shortly after our German final was finished, so he missed out.) About 4:30 I lugged everything down the stairs with Patrick’s help, and said a sad (and later unnecessary) goodbye to him. I lugged everything up to the U3 stop Neubagasse, which I then took to Landstraße. Evidently the S7 wasn’t running on the schedule I thought it was, so I ended up just taking the City Airport Train. Once there I checked in and went through security after checking my two bags. I ran into a group of about six other kids from my program, most of whom were on my flight from Vienna to London (where I was to connect to DC and then to KC). We ate a small breakfast and then went to our gate.
The rest, as some say, is history. Some day I may write a post about all that happened in the next few hours and my 5 day delay in London. But at the moment, I’ve chosen to do all I can to look past it and remember what a fantastic time I had abroad.
Needless to say, by the time I got home, I was very, very glad to be there. And due to my delay I didn't miss Vienna right away. Not until a couple months later. But I'll save all that for a different post.
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