Vienna: Making God Laugh

“If you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans.” I’m reminded of this very often but it is entirely possible that I have already been reminded of it more this semester than in the rest of my life combined. Usually I encounter the reminder in a subtle way—in the small things. But every once in awhile He finds me in the big things (I think He laughs harder when it’s in the big things). I can promise you that this weekend, God was doing nothing but laughing at me. Thankfully, when He got done laughing he opened the floors of Heaven so I could be reminded of my Nana Frances.

Let’s start with the good stuff—because even in the midst of frustration I was reminded of the beauty and joy surrounding me. We started off going to Mass at Stift Heiligenkreuz (another translation I can’t provide), a Franciscan Church about halfway between Gaming and Vienna. I’m beginning to feel like I’m overusing the word ‘beautiful’ (Dad—you and I get each other now) but I feel like that’s the only word worthy of being used to describe what I’ve seen. The stained glass in Stift Heiligenkreuz was exquisite. Definitely the most beautiful stained glass I’ve ever seen. I’m sorry I can’t post a picture; the sun was shining through while we were at Mass so all the pictures just ended up being glares. After Mass we went straight to Vienna and got dropped off in the gardens surrounding one of the Hapsburg’s palaces. I’ve never seen such pristine and perfectly green grass. I also was not a fan of roses until I spent some time walking through this garden. It’s so expansive and there are so many different colors of roses and each of them is given its own name. It was hard not to fall in love with roses in that moment. On the tour of Vienna we saw the Opera House, St. Michael’s church, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Parliament building, and the market places. In St. Stephen’s Cathedral there is a shrine to a Eucharistic Miracle. I’m not really sure what the details behind it are, but I wish I did. If internet were easier to access here I would have already looked it up so I could include it but it looks as though that explanation will have to come at a later date. I could give an in-depth description and brief history of each of the places we saw but if I did that I think the length of this post would be comparable to Les Miserables. We went to lunch as a school at a place called the 12 Apostles Keller. Seating was 4 stories below the street and we had the traditional schnitzel for lunch and it was an all around great time. After lunch we checked into our hostel and then had free time for the rest of the evening. Free time is where seemingly everything went “wrong”. 

I think the lesson of the weekend is that girls and guys don’t communicate well with each other. But we need to be aware of that and figure out a way to combat it. Anyway I’ll make the very, very long story short. Claire and I wanted to go one place but the boys we were with misunderstood where we wanted to go so we ended up someplace else. Then it took forever to get where we actually wanted to be so by the time we got there we didn’t have much time to do anything except worry about what we wanted for dinner. We all agreed on pizza (much to my satisfaction). We had some great pizza then all decided to go the famous ferris wheel so we could see the lights of the city at night. This part of the day went really smoothly and we actually met up with another group of students from Franciscan and had a great time on the ferris wheel. After the ferris wheel we decided to go back to the hostel to figure out how everyone was going to be spending their night. There was talk of a bar crawl, a pub crawl, and a 4 story club. By the time we got back to the hostel we had come to the decision to go to the club. Again, long story short—the group that started heading out to this club somehow got separated and the group of 4 that I was with had no idea how to get there and we had no map. So we kept taking shots (no pun intended) in the dark based on what we kinda, sorta, not really remembered from where people told us it was. We spent 2.5 hours riding metros, ended up at some kind of sketchy college party (don’t worry Mom, we didn’t go in), and never got to the club or even a bar. It was an incredibly frustrating night, we were all exhausted, and we were all grumpy. The grace that came out of this was self control. Despite all of us being frustrated with the situation and, to an extent, with each other nobody took that out on other people. Proverbs 29:11 says, “The fool gives vent to all his anger; but by biding his time, the wise man calms it.” We were all able to take this advice and I couldn’t be more grateful for that. 

The next day Claire and I decided we needed an easy, relaxing day so we decided to go with the art class on their tour of the art museum. We honestly couldn’t have made a better decision. The building was stunning and the artwork was breathtaking. We were able to sit down whenever we wanted (thank God for people who contemplate art by sitting on couches) but we were also able to gain an appreciation for what Vienna holds dear culturally.  After the art museum a few of us joined up with even more people and had lunch at an Italian restaurant that had the BEST spaghetti carbonara. It was the perfect lunch because it was fresh, warm (it was pretty chilly Saturday), and it had bacon….every American’s dream. 

Overall the weekend was…okay. Do I wish we hadn’t gone to Vienna? No. Do I wish I would have just gone to bed at 11:00 before we started looking for the club? Yes. But out of every struggle comes great grace and there’s always something to be grateful for.

I’m sorry I STILL haven’t posted about how my classes are going…I guess that’s a statement on how my classes are going. I promise, promise that I’ll post all about that sometime this week. Please keep praying for me as I pray for you!