Being born and raised in California, I definitely experienced a lot of culture shock. Because we went with a travel group, it was difficult to fully experience the culture and the cities since we were being shuttled off constantly.
Like seriously, we would show up somewhere incredibly beautiful and interesting, spend an hour there and then leave! We also ended up eating a lot of junk food since the tour group was a Chinese group (I'm Chinese) and a lot of the group members were older Chinese people- meaning they didn't want to eat that much 西餐 (Western Cuisine). My dad knew this fact so we ended up opting out of having meals with them. The downside of this was that mealtime was always around half an hour and the restaurants they went to would have food pre-prepared, meaning we were stuck with the faster option.
It wasn't too bad though, European fast food is honestly a lot nicer than American fast food IMO.
Thankfully, the last couple of days I was able to actually enjoy my time in Europe for a bit. After leaving the group, we stayed in Vienna for an extra two days and that was the highlight of my trip. I managed to go to three museums in one day and saw (drum roll) The Kiss!!! It's one of my favorite paintings. I first fell in love with it in high school when I was studying art history. Seeing it in person really could not compare to seeing it in photos.
The last day, I went on one of those city tour buses with my family. While on the tour bus I found out about this place called Hundertwasserhaus that looked really interesting. The rest of my family was tired, so I proposed that I would use the awesome public transport system in Vienna to go by myself. Holy moly. What a journey. I used mainly the trams, because that's how my phone was directing me. But I don't have personal data so I was kind of winging it?
The first time I got on the tram, I sat around for about 10 minutes until I realized I was going the wrong way! I immediately got off the tram, crossed the street, and took the tram going the right way. Then, I realized that I had to make a transfer, but I couldn't figure out which station to take it at, since it was at a station with multiple trams- with some down the block as well. I wandered around for a bit, ended up calling my dad asking for directions, and figured out which station to go to.
As I headed to that station, I saw a huge crowd of people looking right into the sun? It was incredibly bright and on instinct, I turned and looked. Bad idea. It turned out there was a solar eclipse and I had somehow landed right at a place where the view was perfect. I had no glasses so I just headed on my way.
Finally, I got on the right tram and got to the Hundertwasserhaus. The main area was closed because it was so late (Well. It was 7 P.M but I guess Europeans clock of earlier than our worker drone Americans.) I took some photos, and took the tram to our hotel.
On my way back, I spotted a cute cafe. It was my last night in Vienna so I said fuck it, why not spend the last of my euros, and walked in. I ended up having a lovely cup of Chamomile tea and a slice of lemon meringue.
Europe was a lovely trip, I'm hoping to get the chance to visit again sometime soon!
