I travelled to Bratislava to meet up with other Slovak exchange students recently, we all gathered in the train station while waiting for others to arrive. We had no place to go so we just stood in a large group and socialized, eventually we all arrived and started walking to the city center. I was nervous going into this meeting, partially due to my social anxiety, but I had also been informed that there was a talent show at some point. I have never performed music solo in front of an audience and I was making myself feel sick worrying about that. Regardless I was comforted to be with my friends and to be having fun.
We were given time to ourselves to explore the christmas market, and a large number of my close friends wanted to go ice skating. It’s important to note that I had never been ice skating before, and the one time I went roller skating I thought I was going to die. Regardless, I wanted to have new experiences and memories, so I jumped in on the plan, with some reluctance. We rented skates and set our bags aside, I had some initial false security while walking on the skates–but that all disappeared in an instant as soon as I put one foot on the ice. I was clinging to the rail failing to move at all, and quite soon a friend of mine noticed and came up to me and offered to help me get started. She was skating backwards pulling me along and it took all my focus to stay standing, (which I failed at soon enough…) I was quite frankly terrified. Soon enough a second friend came up and I had two people helping me along, I began to feel guilty about keeping them from actually skating, as well as feeling sore from falling down a lot, so I took a break to sit down with some friends. To my memory I fell down six or seven times, in the moment I felt fine, though later on I would pay the price. Eventually we headed to our lodging and everyone was feeling nervous about the language test, though thankfully it seems most everyone felt better about it than they anticipated.
The next day we headed to Vienna, where we explored the Schönbrunn Palace and it’s grounds, and then took a walking tour of the city.
We were then given some free time in the evening to walk around the christmas markets in Vienna, I spent a little time in the market, then explored the natural history and art museums that were adjacent.
Overall, I had a great weekend, despite feeling under the weather/broken. I made some new memories and did my best to keep out of my shell, staying social with everyone I was with.