These Are a Few of My Favorite Things!

I started my Fall Break travels in the one and only Austria!  After flying into Germany and taking a train to Salzburg, I met my high school friend Joe and we spent Friday night and Saturday morning exploring the city!  It was absolutely breathtaking!  There actually weren't that many people around which made me feel like Salzburg was my own little world.  All the cobblestone streets are impeccably clean with bright buildings and storefront windows lining them.  There is a castle in the middle of Salzburg that overlooks the entire city from the top of a high hill and at night it is illuminated so that it seems to share its light with the streets it watches over.  The morning was the exact opposite.  There could not have been a brighter blue sky. The air was crisp as we walked through the streets peering at the different shops and houses.  We even walked through a cute little market.  One of my favorite moments was passing a house and then noticing a huge plaque on the wall with Mozart's name. Standing in front of the plaque was a little girl posing or a picture with her Mozart manga book.  I may have snuck my own picture...  

Of course I can't talk about Salzburg without mentioning The Sound of Music.  While we didn't go on an official tour, Joe and I went to the gardens where they filmed a few of the scenes.  You may remember Fraulein Maria running down a tunnel of green.  Well, I was there.  I was also on the steps they jump up and down and near the fountain they run around.  If you watch the clip on youtube you can see what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjobdArtiA (start watching at 3:55 to see the gardens and if you start watching at 2:00 you can see the castle atop the hill in the background).

After seeing the gardens, Joe and I caught a train to Krems where we rented bikes and cycled along the Danube River Valley toward Melk because we wanted to see the monastery there.  There is a highway for all the cars to travel on, but running parallel to that is a road that winds through all the quaint little towns.  The day was a bit overcast, but the ride was absolutely beautiful.  There were tiered vineyards placed precariously on the sides of the hills and castle ruins reigning over them at the very top.  We stopped in the little town of Durnstein for a cup of hot apricot cider (this region is famous for their apricots and apricot wine etc.) which was spicy and delicious!  We continued on and I became an expert at riding my bike and simultaneously taking pictures.  Unfortunately we underestimated both the distance and our cycling speed, so after about 20 kilometers (or 12 miles) we ditched our bikes, caught a ride to Krems (I got to see the monastery lit up at night at least!), and hopped on a train to Gaming where Joe goes to school.

Joe goes to Franciscan University in Steubenville but they have a second campus in Austria.  The Austrian campus is in an old Carthusian monastery built back in the 1300s.  The buildings are gorgeous!  It was a maze to me at first but I quickly learned how to find my way around.  On Sunday we celebrated a very peaceful mass in the ornate church at the monastery.  Afterwards, we got our hiking shoes on and went up Book Mountain.  It was a tough climb at some parts, but well worth the effort!  At the top you get to sign a book that they keep wrapped up in a box.  The students also carve their names into the trees.  There is a cell phone tower at the the top as well, so of course we had to climb that.  The view from the top was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.  The pictures I took can't even begin to show you how magnificent it all was.

We went to bed early that night because I had to get up to catch the 4:30 bus to the train station.  I then spent the next 17 hours on various trains trying to make my way to Amsterdam.  It was a miserable day, but I did appreciate seeing the German countryside.

The mist is enveloping the mountains.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was meeting random fellow travelers.  As we were walking to the hostel, Joe and I met Liz, an American au pair living in Vienna and visiting Salzburg for the weekend.  She heard us speaking English and immediately asked us for help in finding a hostel.  Unfortunately the one we were in was full, so we couldn't help her out.  However, we ran into her again later that night, so we all hung out at a bar chatting.  She is a kindergarten teacher who studied abroad in India and also visited Ecuador before coming to Vienna to take care of a distant relative's kids.  She had the most interesting stories!  I can't even imagine living like she does!  We also got to chat with a Salzburg native when we took the train to Krems.  She would point out churches or towns that we passed and give us little tidbits of information on them.  She was heading to Switzerland to visit her grandchildren, so we helped her practice her English since that's the only language she and her grandkids have in common.  I also got to bond with her over our mutual appreciation of Jane Austen haha!

Austria was better than I could have ever imagined!   When I have more time I'll write about Amsterdam and Copenhagen, but for now tschuss!