Melk Excursion

Well, we’ve arrived in Gaming to about two feet of snow and of course the beautiful Kartause. I’m gonna be honest, when we rolled up to the school my first thought was “this is not like in the pictures”. You see, all the pretty pictures posted by the school in the springtime from just the right angle with the perfect lighting and that’s the image you get in your head, but in reality that’s not what it’s like. Its a sprawling labyrinth of corridors and courtyards all buried under the snow and slush of the wintertime. It’s definitely a sight that will take some getting used to. The church here is absolutely stunning with its high ceilings and beautiful artwork. How awesome is it that we get to celebrate mass there every single day!

As the second day of orientation rolled around after Sunday mass we were quickly swept onto buses and off to our very first excursion. Hearing about it for the first time Saturday night we were all thinking “what the heck we just got here. I’m not even over my jetlag yet”. But that didn’t stop the school. To be honest, it was actually kind of nice because the school had planned everything out for us, all we had to do was be at the right place at the right time.

Our first stop was in a quaint little mountain town right on the Danube river where we had the best brunch of our lives. Not only was the spread of delicious meats and eggs and other breakfast foods satisfying, but the view of the foggy Danube below through the wall of windows was breathtaking. They definitely treated us well at the brunch place and Meg and I (my roommate) got our first official, posed picture together.

After just a few minutes of exploring the town and frolicking through the snow, we were back on the buses and headed to the town of Melk. Yesterday, as we were sitting down for dinner one of my friends randomly, asked “What’s Melk?”. Not yet knowing about the excursion I confidently replied “Chocolate”. Oh wait…that’s Milka, the delicious chocolate here in Austria. So no, we were not going to the town of chocolate, instead, we were going to the site of a 1000-year-old Benedictine monastery that’s still in use today. As we made the turn over the hill overlooking the city we could see the beautiful, fortress looking complex.

We had a wonderful guided tour through the abbey, getting to see some of the rooms royalty would stay at when they visited as well as the massive library and of course many of the relics the monks had used over the century. One of my favorite things we saw that really spoke to me was a wooden cross that was donated to the monastery hundreds of years ago. It showed Jesus in a very peaceful demeanor without the crown of thorns or pierced side, a representation of his Godly nature. The wood of that cross was so beautiful it took everything in me not to reach across the rope and touch it.

After our tour, we were back on the bus and headed towards campus for more orientation “fun”… really just a session about how to drink responsibly because alcohol is a new thing to many people here.

It’s a slow process, and hard to believe we’ve only been here for 48 hours, but I am adjusting. Hopefully, the rhythm of things will fall into place more and more once classes start and we can get into a real routine (and over our jetlag).