It has been a ridiculously long time since I wrote anything here, I'm sorry. Due to general Italian chaos/procrastination (which is of course a national hobby here) I have somehow completely lost track of everything - but today is a major chilling day, so I'm catching up now! Ok...first blog here dates all the way back to pre-Christmas, and our last week in Bologna before the holidays...
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Italians aren't exactly skilled organisers. I knew this before I arrived, and had almost come to accept this until the fateful ski trip. A big group of us had booked months ago to go skiing with AEGEE (one of the erasmus organisations) for a weekend for the bargain price of 80EUR. Genius, we thought, a whole ski trip for just 80 EUR!Sign me up! We were meant to be going to Monte Rosa in the Alps, but a few days before our supposed departure we got an email saying there had been avalanches and we'd be going to Slovenia instead, staying in Ljubljana. As we'd only just got back from Ljubljana we weren't thrilled that we were heading back to the same uber creepy hostel, but were still excited for the skiing. We all arrived at the autostazione at 6pm, clad in our salopettes and goggles in anticipation, all clutching homemade punch in Fanta bottles (yes, we're that classy.Turns out all students are exactly the same, regardless of nationality). Then the chaos started. There were 2 coaches which we kept attempting to board. Two of us made it on, only to realise our friends were nowhere to be found. Eventually we discovered that due to a "clerical error" our wonderful AEGEE man had overbooked the trip and there was quite literally no room at the inn! As you can imagine, we were raging. Furious doesn't even begin to describe it, though it all seemed so unreal we kept giggling and all became slightly hysterical. We ranted and ranted at the guys who'd "organised" it, which was good practise for our italian if nothing else! We harangued them until eventually they struck us a deal, promising a full refund, free places on the next ski trip in January and free places on another trip to Croatia in the new year. Somewhat appeased but still not really believing the situation we headed home, much to the amazement of all our flatmates who'd had to endure our excitement throughout the previous week. Later we converged at one of the guys' flats, ordered in LOADS of pizza and generally got rather merry. We decided AEGEE weren't going to spoil our fun, so spent most of the evening online, trying to track down cheap flights/trains to go anywhere. We were so angry with Italy in general by this point it became Project Escape Italy. We narrowed our options down to Bratislava, Billund (despite us having no idea where it was) and Vienna - unsurprisingly, Vienna won! So the next day, again not really believing this was happening, a Dutch friend and I headed off towards Venice to get our connecting night train. As Venice had been severely flooded a week before, first stop was obviously Upim for wellies...little did we know these would make us famous in Austria! Here are our beloved stivali colorati...
The train ride was pretty uneventful at first, though got quite exciting at the Austrian border where we had to stop due to literally mountains of snow. We had a wee snowball fight with some of the guys at the station, which was hilarious! Alas our problems began when we woke up just as we were arriving into Vienna, and realised Frouke's bag was open on the floor. Alarm bells started ringing as she scrabbled through it and realised her purse and camera had been stolen. Luckily I still had all my stuff, and our tickets to get home but it wasn't the ideal introduction to Austria! First stop in Vienna was of course then the Polizei, where we met our fave guy of the whole trip - Bernhard the policeman. He was an absolute legend, and sort of became the mascot for our entire trip. After that debacle we headed into the centre and managed to find ourselves a great hostel. Having dumped our stuff, our first stop was of course the Christmas Market at the Rathaus. The Rathaus was amazing, and the market enormous. We kept going back for more gluhwein and giant pretzels! We saw a lot of the city that day, which is beautiful and especially at Christmas with all the lights and decorations. 
That evening we managed to get cheap tickets at the Volksoper so went to see Hansel und Gretel, which was hilarious. We intended to hit some bars but were so shattered we ended up heading back to the hostel and having a makeshift dinner in our room.
Still the next morning we were up bright and early, and headed back into town for some culture. First we went to the Kaiser's palace, which was great. Very informative and very fun too! We danced around the ballroom and got to "speak" to the Kaiser on a phone which was very exciting. Then after yet another *essential* Konditorei stop, we headed up to the Belvedere art gallery to see the Klimt exhibition. We wandered back through the city, stopping at every christmas market we came across for more gluhwein, naturally 
That evening we went to a great Mexican place for dinner before hopping back on the U-Bahn and heading back to the Westbahnhof. Our train this time was much more fun due to (a) the lack of robberies and (b) the fact we were sharing a carriage with 2 absolutely mental austrians. We bonded, despite our very dodgy German and their non-existant English, and had a great time. They decided the train should be renamed Der Party Zug - we ended up as the only carriage awake all night and got invaded by a random italian who came in to join the party! Sadly the fun was interrupted slightly by the arrival of a Peruvian father and son combo who sat in between us and the mental Austrians, and kept glaring whenever we spoke . Hrmph. Later, the son (who incidentally looked like a Peruvian version of a young Michael Jackson, if you can imagine such a thing) kept writing stories and then reading them out to his very bored father in an extremely dramatic fashion. Hrmph. Although in hindsight, very entertaining. We arrived back into Venice in the early morning, absolutely wrecked but having had a fantasticly spontaneous weekend (no thanks to AEGEE!)
