Hello family! I'm writing a new post from Starbucks on the Graben! That's a road that's like the 5th avenue of Vienna! I was really tired last night so I didn't finish my post about what I've been doing the past few days so i decided to do that now!

So on to what I did yesterday: We met up with our group at 11:15 to go to lunch at another authentic Viennese restaurant. And yet again we were missing 4 people. Gahh. The place we went was called Reinheld, I think. I would equivocate it to a greasy spoon diner in America. But it was good! I had chicken and a knoedel! Haha it's like a dense ball of potato, and it reminded me a little of Turkey Ball Soup! hahahaha but it wasn't gray. Anyways after that we walked to Beethoven's apartment! It's a museum now and we got to walk through it and see cool stuff like his piano and a "death mask" its a cast of his face that they make after a person has died. Creeeepy! But it was cool because he wrote "Fur Elise" there and that's like my favorite piece of classical music!

After Beethoven, we went meet a photographer and graphic designer named Gerhard Rihl. We met him at his flat/office/studio and got to talk with him about his work and see some of his photographs and stuff. The photos were amazing!! They were all pictures of different abandoned places in Vienna and some of the U-Bahn and like bridges and stuff. He made a book out of the pictures and that's how we ended up getting to meet him - Tate found the book in a book store and called him up and got us invited! So he had the books there for us to look at and towards the end of the talk I asked where we could go to buy the book. Gerhard said that they cost 30 euro at a store and his royalties come out to 18 euro per book so he would sell it to us there for 18 euro! So I bought it on the spot!! And he signed it!!!!! Sooooo cool!! I am sooo excited for this book it's so cool I can't wait to show you it!!

We ended up leaving Gerhard's flat and walking around with him and he took us to places where he shot some of the photos, which was really cool! I also got to talk with him about what I'm studying and stuff while we were walking around and he said I could email him and he would send us his new books as they come out! Obvi I'd have to send money but yayay!!! Anyways Tate's going to set up a dinner with him next week sometime with the whole group again which would be so cool! It's really interesting about the people we visit... they all are so eager to meet up with us again and talk with us more and take us here or there or whatever. I feel like that's so different from America, everyone at home is always too busy or has better things to do.

So after we saw the photo locations, me and Christina and Deanna went out to eat and for some reason most of the places we found werr closed or not serving dinner! So we ate at an italian restaurant and our waiter was from italy and spoke to us in italian which was cool. We've been hearing that most people here also are fluent in italian because they all vacation in Italy.

After dinner we rode the U-Bahn to this bar where we were going to meet up with the group to watch the soccer game, but it was so packed and we couldn't get in. While we were waiting in like some guys came up behind me and asked me in german what was going on or something haha so I just looked at them for a while and said "Sprechen sie english" haha and they were like oh okay! Everyone here speaks english pretty much. So we all found out that they weren't going to let any more people in until halftime so we just decided to leave. As were we walking away though the guys were leaving too and they asked us if we wanted to come with them to another bar. And they weren't sketchy because if they were we would have said no, but we said sure! And I realize it could have turned out really bad but luckily they were both really nice and we hung out with them watching the game at a different bar for a few hours. They were teaching us german and we were teaching them english ahha german speaking people can't say the "juh" soung or the "wuh" sound haha so we were trying to get them to learn it haha and we were teaching them american slang ahha anyways it turned out to be perfectly safe although I know I probably should have been a little more cautious. Not everyone in the world is nice and genuine.

Anyways I have to go but today we're going to the Opera and the violin maker so I'll be sure to tell you how that goes! Talk to you later! I love you!