Austria Journal #2-Gaming and Settling In

Monday, August 26, 2013

The Kartause from the street

      Having been strictly warned last night to be punctual for the buses to Melk (the nearby Benedictine Monastary) this morning, Alex and I set an early alarm in order to have plenty of time to ready ourselves for our first European excursion. At 5:45am, I awoke and anxiously checked the time on my computer (life is hard without a phone) only to realize that we had nearly 2 more hours of sleep. When Alex groggily awakened me later on, however, we realized that we had accidentally forgotten to switch our clock to Austrian time and therefore set the alarm for 6 hours later than planned. Since we had already missed the bus, we went back to bed for another hour or so and woke up in time to go to noon mass with the Kartause families (the families of the Kartause professors). This was fairly awkward, since we were the only students there, but we got to see the quaint little adoration chapel off the main church and enjoyed a small reverent mass . Afterwards we decided to explore the town and find a grocery store. It didn’t take us long in such a little village to locate SPAR where we found fresh bread, cheese, liverwurst, fruit, and wine for very reasonable prices (for example, the wine was only 3.49).

A pretty village house

The Kartause from behind the wall 

          Since we had been cheated out of our tour of Melk, we meandered through the streets until we reached Gaming’s only church. Inside we discovered that even small village churches in Austria are more gorgeous and ornate than 95% of American churches. I wanted to take pictures but felt irreverent, so I don’t have visible proof of the exquisite architecture. I’ll have to work up the courage to discreetly snap a few shots from the back some day. As we made our way back through Gaming to the Kartause, Alex and I stumbled across a wooded path that leads up the mountains to a field where we ate our European lunch near a large stone wall just above the Kartause. The view was incredible and gray skies did little to dampen the breathtaking beauty of rolling green and dark tree-covered hillsides. The romance of the experience sort of fulfilled a dream of mine and left a slight ache. Too much beauty always does that to me; My mortal existence can’t handle it, I guess.

The hillside where we ate lunch

          

Alex enjoying our picturesque lunch

That afternoon, when the rest of the students returned, we had our rooms blessed, ate dinner, went running, and attended an informational session on alcohol and ministry to mom’s, a babysitting ministry for the Kartause families. Alex and I also started an Austrian Vlog (video blog), so more on that to come!

Experimentation with my new camera