Orientation/ City Tour 3.4.13

 

After a 2 am fire alarm woke me from my sleep, I had the pleasure of attending orientation bright and early this morning! During orientation we met some department heads that gave us tips on being international students, and course information, etc, etc. Everything they said was very informative and helpful, however I found it hard to concentrate when this...

and this...
 
were outside of the window. For those of you who don't know, Florida is at sea-level, with no mountains, and definitely no snow. For most people it wouldn't be distracting, but for this Florida girl it was too good to be true.

       After Orientation there was an optional city tour. Since I couldn't find my way out of a paper bag in this  city I thought it would be wise for me to attend. The tour was more educational than navigational than I expected it to be. But it was great none the less.

       Our tour guide was a sweet lady named Monica. She had a good sense of humor, so the tour was fun. She showed us several secrets that Innsbruck holds, including a secret courtyard that is closed to the public.

View from the secret courtyard

Since Austria is a Catholic country, Innsbruck has no shortage of churches; we visited two on our tour. The first church held the (empty) tomb of Maximilian.  Maximilian had this elaborate mausoleum built for himself, including erecting two dozen bronze statues of his relatives that would lay watch over him in the after life. And after all of the time, planning, and resources put into this, he decided to be buried 'modestly' near Vienna. -_-

Monica getting her tour-guiding on.

Courtyard of a Austrian Palace

The second church we went to was built in the Baroque time period (thanks Monica, I did not know that). It had these amazing murals on the ceiling. Such detail.  Random Information: These ceilings are actually flat. The painter used a technique to make the ceiling look like it was domed. Kudos to him. Because 400 years later I would have bet money that the ceiling was curved. 

  

Also in the second church that we went, there is this painting of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus insured for € 10 million.

Me in front of the € 10 million Baby Jesus.

 Here is a random street shot of Innsbruck. It's just so pretty!

And before you go, I wanted to leave you with a....

Random, But True Story

The officers crossing the street

Both officers in the picture

So today after our city tour was over, Monica, our tour guide was about to leave us in the city square to go about our business. Before she left I asked her for a picture. After searching for a passerby to take the photo for us, we joked that we should ask the passing police officers to take the picture. Monica then proceeded to hail down the police car and ask (in German) for them to take our photo. To our surprise, they agreed. Their only stipulation was that they get to be in the photo. So they pulled over the car and came posed with us, then took our picture!  True Story.