The flight was long, very very long, but it was great fun too...there were some 40 FUS students on it, so we kinda took it over. The plane was huge - 10 seats wide. Juliana and I got a good eye-roll and shake of the head with a 'These American Girls!' from a German-speaking dude in the airplane. Although we did deserve it - we were trying to get into the airplane lavratory and Juliana ended up pulling the handle off the door. (It was marked in english, PUSH quite clearly.) The scenery during the bus ride over was just gorgeous... and got more and more beautiful as we got closer to Gaming. Monasteries, trees, snow capped mountains, yellow houses with geraniums and red tile rooftops, and cute little old women in pink dresses with handkerchiefs on their heads driving tractors in their corn and sunflower fields. I feel like I went both back and forward in time at once. The cars are cooler (and cuter) and technology is better, things are more expensive (I just traded in 60 USD to get back only 38 Euro - sick), and everything very clean. But on the other hand everything is so old and so much is still done the way it has always been done.
When we got off the bus, the children of the professors here ran out to greet the bus in traditional dress and gave every student roses. It just ate my heart out, they were so cute. And then all the little munchkins helped us move into our rooms. I have especcialy fallen in love with Bella Asci, whom I think is about 10. From my window, I can watch the kids play on the playground in the courtyard. My room-mates are Angela Pulaski, and an LCI student (from somewhere here in Europe) who hasn't arrived yet. I had my first "legal" beer at our opening bonfire - but I didn't like it and threw half of it away. The wine from Assissi wasn't much better. Maybe I just don't appreciate it, but thats fine by me since I can't afford it anyway. The bon-fire was okay, but it would have been a lot more fun if we sang songs to a guitar and bodhran, but nobody was offering.
Instead of staying at the bonfire I sneaked away to the chapel again. Something about it is riveting. All the lights were out except the sanctuary lamp and two candles. I flet my way up the spiral staircase and stumbled into the choir balcony. Heaven on earth. I had the place to myself for half an hour. The acoustics are amazing in there. Just softly singing a Regina Caeli fills the entire chapel with echoes. I love that chapel I go in there and don't want to come out ever. I just want to become a little church mouse and live in there. Absolutely gorgeus. I was in there earlier this afternoon and there were little girls giggling while they played on the spiral staircases that wind up and up and up. One mystery that I will have to find out is the reason why the upperbodies of Moses and Elijah were rubbed out of the fresco painting...Katherine do you know?? The Gaming parish church vies for attention too, though. Everywhere there is such beauty sometimes my heart forgets to beat.
I am utterly exhausted - I only managed an hour and a half of sleep last night on that plane. And I have been on mental overload since being here. My German vocabulary has quadrupled in one day, but that is not saying much.
Here are a few preliminary pictures from my first day...have I only been here one day? Actually, only 10 hours. Wow. It seems longer than that. It already feels like home.
The view from the steep hills on the northside. That is my Chapel!!! Maria Thron (Mary the Throne [of Jesus]) The wall in the foreground, like everything else in the picture is very old...a piece of the original wall that surrounded the palace that Josef Hapsburg II built 750 years ago.
A newer watchtower overlooking the wall. It is all carpeted inside, which I think is rather curious.
The courtyard. That is my window, the first on the right there.
Mid-day view from my dorm-room window
Ashley, Rebecca and Brie checking out village Gaming...went to the bank, Shclecker and Spar, and dropped in at the parish church
Night falls on the Kartause.The bells are ringing 10 pm. That means I can go to bed. Sr. Monica warned us not to sleep before ten if we wanted to adjust quickly to the time change. I miss all of you! Auf Weidersein!
No comments:
Post a Comment