August 30

Today was our last day in Vienna, so I was a little sad. I spent most of the day just walking around and shopping for souvenirs for my friends and family. I also wanted to get one last look at Stephansdom because I think that is just such an amazing sight. Later in the day, we went to Wurstelprater, the famous amusement park in Vienna. Everyone was joking that we would run into a bunch of prostitutes because the park is located in a red light district. We all met up at the Riesenrad, the famous Ferris wheel. It is one of the oldest Ferris wheels because it was erected in 1897. It used to have 30 gondolas, but now it only has 15 because the Ferris wheel was severely damaged during WWII. One of the reasons the Riesenrad is so famous is because it appeared in the film, The Third Man. In the movie, the main character, Holly Martins, meets up with his old friend turned bad guy, Harry Lime. While we were riding the Ferris wheel, we had an excellent view of the whole amusement park and the city of Vienna. I wanted to spend more time at the amusement park, but we left to go to dinner at Centimeter right after getting off the Ferris wheel. Dinner was fun though, because everybody was there and we got to eat our food (schnitzel of course) off of swords. We also got to try some original Budweiser (Budvar) beer. I still didn’t think it was that amazing, but it was definitely better than the American version. After dinner, I just tried to enjoy my last night in Vienna without getting too sad about the fact that we had to leave the next morning. My stay here was so amazing, and I hope that I get to come back someday.
The German word of the day is fremd, which means “foreign”.