Vienna

We went to church at the English speaking branch. I could barely stay awake, we'd gotten up pretty early to get the train from Budapest to Vienna. The YSAs had their own Sunday school class taught by the Bishop, an Aussie. I suspect he hadn't called anyone else to be their Sunday school teacher because he likes clowning around with them too much. He was a pretty laid back funny guy. He even passed out some lollys. The class was about tripple in size with us and some BYU girls studying in Vienna for the semester. Those girls cracked me up. "Hi I'm Brittany, I'm from ____ and I'm studying to be a nurse, so I came to Vienna to learn German for no reason." Gotta give 'em credit for seeking to expand horizons. Actually, one of the girls did mention studying international relations and wanting to work for the UN. Then the bishop (working for the UN) chimes in, "Well I think I could probably convince you don't actually want to do that... Unless you're interested in arguing for a whole day whether a document should read, 'We urge you...,' 'We request that you...', 'It is suggested that you...', 'We kindly advise that you...,'" and on and on.

The coolest character of the day however, was a 70ish year old guy I sat next to in Priesthood. "I sink ouah Fahzah vahnts us to pray so ve kahn see vaht hes vill ees foah ahs." He asked me about our trip and I said that our next stop was Munich. "Ah you goeen to see ze Neuschwanstein Castle?" I didn't really know what he was talking about, so I just said, "I hope so." (That's the supposed inspiration for the Disneyland Castle) And yes we did end up seeing it.

We spent the rest of the day seeing Vienna. They even had a live feed on the wall of the opera house showing 'Carmen' being performed inside. I made a Mothers' Day card for my mom at the Schönbrunn palace. At the end of the day we stopped in a cafe, and my travel buddy Greg, channeling all of his suave starts to strike up a conversation with our waitress. I tried to say something in German then she says, "That's ok, but it's not something that you can use....How about this- 'Ein bier bitte.' Easy as that.