The One with Sickness

If you have heard of any of my other trips outside of Alberta, you have likely become familiar with my travel curse. If my flight is longer than a couple hours, then I am going to get sick. Not necessarily on the plane, though that has happened a couple times, but eventually on the trip I am enjoying, something is going to happen.

Now, with that in mind, I am extremely grateful for my Vienna bug (hopeful for the singular): a mild case of 'pharygitis'. I am not sure exactly what medications are being swallowed each day, but they are working, so no need to question it too closely. One of them is an antibiotic, so I am not feeling fully well, but am able to participate in the daily activities which is so wonderful.

Important to note to understand my tale is that I do not believe in using emergency services except when necessary. Having been in the system before, it is frustrating to see people who have only minor injuries or coughs clog up emergency departments instead of arranging for an alternative. Even as a confused foreigner, it did not feel right to abuse Austria's system just for my own convenience. (In retrospect, after feeling so sick and lost later on, that might have been silly.)

I appreciate my camera is smart enough to take pictures as I see things at the time. Now you know what it is like to be in Mary's head when she is feeling sick. -->

If anything, arranging for treatment has been worse than being sick (only one day of a liquids only diet this time, hurrah). On Monday: I googled for English speaking doctors in Vienna, and a couple of different websites had the same doctor recommended as their number one. Seeing how close he was to the U-Bahn, it was an easy decision. Confident, I copied down the address and directions and headed off for a diagnosis. Ha. Either the doctor is not there any more, or their office is totally hidden. I found an apothecary a block away who had never heard of them! Fortunately, the pharmacist was kind and had some free time to look up the location of another doctor. One friendly police man, one harrassed business man, and one bored looking office worker later, it was found!

It was a small, cute family doctor's office with only one lady on call. They were willing to take me on without an appointment, which was great given the receptionist had mediocre English (comparative to what most locals speak, which is impressive). One phone call to the insurance company and a short wait later, voila! The doctor laughed and then made motherly cooing noises when she touched my neck. Probably should have gone in earlier...

Businesses in Austria tend to have shorter business hours. Almost everything is closed on Sundays, and most stores have no evening hours. This meant when I found the next apothecary (the helpful one was far away from the doctor), they were already closed for the night. Meep. Prescriptions in hand, I did what any sick and exhausted person in my situation would do. I broke down for a few minutes. 

Vienna is an amazing city. In the core, everything is extremely easy to get to using their transit system. The density means that most all services will be a short walking distance from any random location you find yourself in. However, at this point, having gone through registration all afternoon at the university and been lost looking for offices, how lucky I was did not really come to mind. Here I am, sick and not speaking the local language, able to pay a doctor for their services because the cost of care is so cheap here, and after many people went out of their way to help me. It's just an overblown cold, not anything serious compared to what an exchange to Africa or Asia could entail. Cried anyways.

This time, a plucky young parking attendant took a break from writing tickets to help me locate a 24/7 Apotheke. Good times miming on the map! I still got turned around (it is hard to orient yourself with tall buildings always obscuring any views into the distance), and almost had to find another police officer, but it worked out. How classy is this? When I found my beautiful pharmacy, it was like discovering a hidden castle after being abadoned to hunger in the woods. Except instead of hunger, tonsilitis and an inability to consume much more than yogurt. Okay, maybe some hunger...

Tuesday was instantly incredible, as I woke up feeling much better and ate cereal (score!) along with the yoghurt. It was also the first day of our Orientation, which was a guided walking tour of the Vienna core. Many of the places I had passed by before, but learning the history made everything that much cooler. The statues built into buildings that impressed me so much? Yeah, that place was the swankiest brothel in Vienna. It was probably 30 degrees out, so tiring, but fortunately short enough that even the sicky of the group had no problem keeping up.

After the tour, Joanne and I slipped inside for some sushi. We have now had sushi twice now, and I have yet to try schnitzel. Rice is probably better than all of the sacred fried foods available here... After resting up and filling our bellies, we wandered into H&M for some cheap summer clothes, seeing as Vienna has NOT reached fall yet. The Euro has dropped a lot the past few years, but local prices do not reflect it. The strong Canadian dollar is such a treat!