Fr. Achim, me and Felicia - thank you so much to Fr. for his hospitality and special care!! And hello to Felicia, my wonderful new friend from Indonesia!! I hope that your long flight went well!! Bye for now everyone, see you again from Paris!!

More riding

The Riding School in action!!

The walkway across the busy street that the horses take every morning.

Exterior of the Riding School

The Stallburg, stables of the Spanish Riding School

The Hofburg, home to the Spanish Riding School among many other things!

St. Michael's church, near the Hofburg palaces

Another Vienna street

Vienna street

Statue of Empress Maria Theresa - the Austrians loved her apparently.

One of the old palaces, they are everywhere here it seems. Many are now museums of one sort or another.

Old Roman ruins - Vienna is very old, over 2000 years since it was officially founded, but there were settlements here long before then.

Horse cabs are everywhere here, I guess they are the equivelant to Venice's gondolas (and just as expensive!)

Interior of St. Peter's, the "round church"

Down the way from the Cathedral is St. Peter's church - beautiful church in a kind of baroque-Byzantine design.

The high pulpit is very cool, intricately carved, including a relief of the sculptuer himself in one of the little side slots!

Looking back towards the loft and organ.

The main sanctuary of the Cathedral - beautiful! I attended the feast day Mass here for St. Bartholomew - splendid.

Another view of the Cathedral, the roof is distinctive, but the colors do not show up well here.

Vienna's Cathedral, St. Stephen's.

Typical Vienna street

Arriving in Vienna, with our local tourguides (a family who was on the WYD trip with Fr. Achim, our priest host)

"Follow the flag" - after the final Mass, I said goodbye to my Emmanuel friends, and went to find the Austrians again. It was a LONG trek back to the bus, but it was easy to stay together with this huge double flagpole swooping ahead to lead the way!

They had English translations over the radio, if you could find it!!

Closing Mass - on the screen you can see the big "Cathedral hill" that the Pope celebrated Mass on.

Very very chilly night.....

Early the next morning.... this is how we slept!! Brrrrrrrrr....

The Austrians and Bavarians were particularly excited to see Papa Benedict!

Everyone is excited when the Pope comes! He did not pass through our way though, oh well.

Stacey journaling on the field

We were excited to be at WYD!!

I was so happy to find Fr. Williams, Katie and the others!! (I forgot to mention, the night before I had left the group to go find the Austrian group that I would be traveling with to Vienna...it was a very stressful night and so I was very happy to see my friends again!). I tried to meet up with the Cathedral group when I got to the field, but it didn't work out, they did not arrive until late and were very far away from where I was. Too bad.

Marienfeld!! Yikes. We got there early, and it was already jam packed...

Archbishop Levada gives some closing remarks at the Mass.

The final Mass at the parish for me, with the bishop from Canada and 4 other concelebrating bishops (including Archbishop Levada, soon to take over Cardinal Ratzinger's old spot as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith!)

The bishop of St. Katherine in Canada - I don't know what his name is, but he is a ROCKING bishop!! He gave us some stellar catechesis on Thursday - we loved him!

It was very hot that day, so a lot of people were playing in the Cathedral's fountains!

The Cathedral in Cologne - I never did get to enter it, because I came to Cologne too late to go with Fr. Williams' group... when I did find time to get down there, it happened to be just after the Pope was leaving the Cathedral himself, and they were not letting any more people in. I guess I will have to see the relics of the Magi some other time!

Next day, the Pope's arrival in Cologne by boat - some of us went to one of the stadiums instead to watch because of the huge crowds down by the river.

Cristoph Cardinal Schonborn gave us a wonderful catechetical talk on Wednesday night at Nightfever.

Eucharistic procession through the crowds

Adoration at Nightfever - now that is some monstrance!!

Watching Fr. Stan Fortuna rappin' away at the Emmanuel WYD event "Nightfever"

Some of us like Nutella more than others!! Anna for example pretty much wears it!

Here are some random WYD photos, this is our group's "lunch" outside of the St. Pantokratius parish... WYD's food serivce record is quite blemished at this point, and no one expects to get any food from them anymore -- we just hand over our meal tickets in the morning and then go to the minimart across the street for fresh bread and Nutella!!

Enough of Milan, here is a familar face!! Fr. Joseph Williams gives a homily at one of the Emmanuel WYD Masses at our "home parish" in Cologne Germany. I was SOO happy to see Fr. Joseph the night my plane came in from Milan to Cologne, I cannot tell you! :) Thanks Fr. Joseph for everything!!

St. Ambrose himself is buried here with two other early Christian martyrs. Ambrose founded this church to house these martyrs, but after his death he himself was buried here. He is in the white, between and above the other two martyrs.

Interior of the church of St. Ambrose

Church of St. Ambrose in Milan.