Business Class or BUST

DETROIT METRO AIRPORT--I had just sat down at the terminal for the Lufthansa flight from Detriot to Frankfurt when I heard the announcement: "Will the following passengers please come to...yadayadayada...the Lopez family......Michael something...Jeffrey Hutchins."  Thinking I was going to have to show my student ID because of the student discounted tickets I had found online, I was surprised when the man at the counter said, "Mr. Hutchins, you have been upgraded to Business Class."  Wow.  This trip was starting off pretty well.   
When I arrived in Frankfurt, I met up with two girls from my study abroad program.  We were waiting to take our short flight from Frankfurt to Vienna.  When we arrived in Vienna, it was surprisingly easy to figure out the bus system and and eventually navigate the streets to the hotel where we would spend our first night.  There were about seven people there when we arrived.  Immediately after I sat my bags down in my room, we went out to find a place to grab a drink.

Later in the evening, we followed Frauke on the streetcars (Strassenbahn oder S-bahn) to the restaurant where we would have a faculty/student dinner.  Frauke is the name of the instructer who shows us around the first days.  She's an older woman from Germany and an interesting person from the way she dresses  to the way she expects everyone to notice that she has silently walked away, has already crossed a street and left half our group behind.  She is very funny though and doesn't mind joking around with us.  Anyway, the restaurant was in a beautifully old building.  We were lead down a spiral, old brick stairway to what looked like an ancient cellar.  The walls and ceiling were a large arch made of brick.  It was a good place to introduce us to Vienna.  We were able to meet our teachers and find out a little about what our host families would be like.  I got to talk to Dany who is the Housing Coordinator for the program (AHA).  She informed me that her son was going to study in Hong Kong in a couple of days and that I was actually taking his spot in his apartment.  He lives with Philipp, a friend of his from school, and Flavia who is from Switzerland.  

Dany also let me know that I was invited to a ball.  This will be in one of my next posts.