Hey howdy hey strangers, long time no update. As it is, officially, (my time anyway) 11:15 am GMT I will, officially, be home in approximately 11 days and 12 hours and 40 minutes. Am I excited? Maybe just a little bit.
I just got back from my fantastic Austrian adventure on Monday night, and since I was requested by Rachel herself to please update the blog with our new stories, I will proceed to do so:
I left here on Wednesday morning (After saying the first of many "for good" goodbyes to some friends here) and after a backpack adventure literally walked down the stairs to my platform at the rail station and right onto my London bound train. I arrived in London 3 hours later and went to the Underground so I could get to the airport--which I discovered isn't really IN London, but 45 miles north east of it. So that was fun, of course. I got to the airport pretty early for my flight and checked in, which gave me the thrill of being seating 12th out of 129 people or something, so I got a window seat and the views were amazing. I got into Salzburg at about 8:30 and followed some nice British boys to the bus station, then got to my hostel and discovered to my dismay that my toothpaste had exploded in Zoie's backpack that she let me borrow. So, yes kids, I spent my first night in Salzburg cleaning toothpaste out of a bag and mistaking German girls for Americans because they were singing "Hot Stuff" REALLY loudly in the bathroom. And then later some R Kelly. They can sing that stuff perfectly but apparantly didn't understand a word I said. The next morning I got up early and went out to explore the city, which was absolutely beautiful. I walked all the way into the pedestrian market, then to the cathedral and the katacombs and to the Schloss Mirabell (where parts of "the Sound of Music" were filmed. And incidentally, doesn't "schloss" sound like a name you would call someone? Like "oh wow, you are SUCH a schloss" or "gosh, would you stop being a schloss"?). I went back to the hostel around 7 and prepared to go meet Rachel and her friends at the train station (just because I thought it'd be romantic). But FIRST I enjoyed the first half of "the Sound of Music" because our hostel played it every night at 8.
Rachel's train pulled in right as I walked to her platform and I saw her standing in the window and I couldn't stop smiling! She jumped off the train and as I was hugging her, there were two main thoughts going through my mind: 1. It's so good to see you! and 2. I forgot how short you were! both of which I verbally expressed shortly. I got a punch in the arm for that one ;) The friends Rach brought are both from her program so they go to school in Kentucky, one at EKU and the other at Murray State. The EKU girl, Linda, has a mutual friend of mine and Rachel's from Berea, and happens to have a Relient H shirt with my picture on it, so that was a little crazy! We went back to the hostel with no problems and got the other three girls checked into the same room as me, then we proceeded to stay awake too long talking and eating paprika pringles, and it was lovely.
The next morning I woke up early and took a shower then woke the other girls, and I was standing there almost completely naked, and our door opens. This little old man sticks his head it and says "Maria? No, no." and walks out. That was the beginning of a day of randomness! After breakfast we headed to the train station again so we could go to Berchesgaden, a little town in Germany where the salt mines were. For the record, my 3 hours in Germany made my country count 10, which excites me simply because of it's well-roundedness. While the other girls went to the salt mines (and very much enjoyed it) I headed for a walk around the town, which was lovely. We ended up not getting back to Salzburg until 4 but good travellers that we were managed to see almost all of the city that we wanted to (I had the advantage here) before getting on our 8:00 train to Vienna.
In Vienna we went our seperated ways from the Westbahnhoff to hostels that we hoped were still open. Rach and I checked into ours, which was open, and went to sleep, since it was about 12:30 by this point. The next morning we walked around Vienna until our feet were sore looking for the opera house, which apparantly is really big and easy to find but took us ages! On the walk though, I did see a poster of Manchester Utd's
Cristiano Ronaldo and started semi-screaming (it was the most girly thing I've done in quite sometime kids) and the other girls started semi-pretending-they-didn't-know-me, but I just had to tell them that if they'd been living in northwest England for the past 5 1/2 months they'd understand too, and took a picture. Eventually we found the Opera House, but it wasn't open because there actually was an opera that night. But this was where the fun began: We discovered that in this particular region of Austria, much capital gain is made off of the name of Mozart, since he was born in Salzburg and died in Vienna and all. This past weekend the city of Vienna was holding a few "Mozart" concerts aimed at tourists, and in a really bad move to sell tickest TO tourists, they put out people, both men and women (who were SCARY, let me just tell ya) dressed AS Mozart, to pretty much annoy tourists into buying tickets. The first lady was annoying, and the second two men were downright pushy (they actually asked me "why not?" when I said I didn't want tickets. My head almost exploded. Apparantly when faced with pushy sales people I get angry. They had to tell me what happened later). So we started the Mozart game, which pretty much meant Mozart dodging at all the major sights we visited. It never got old, because they were always there! And as soon as you let your guard down one of them pops up and starts chasing you across the square, white pony tail and all. We learned to not make eye contact and not to go within 3 feet, whether they were already engaged with another customer or not!
While developing our Mozart skills we headed to the Schloss Belvedere to see Gustav Klimt's "the Kiss." I'm a big fan of that museum. It's set up inside the Belvedere Palace which is just cool. The bottom floor is just a mix of paintings, some Reniors, Monets, Manets, Van Goghs, and some Austrian painters, and the current exhibit upstairs is Austrian history during and since WW2. The red and white Austrian flag was draped through the whole exhibit. It was history muesum meets modern art exhibit and really well put together, and "the Kiss" was everything I had hoped it would be, and bigger. After the museum we were faced with another pushy salesman, this time in the form of a Greek resteraunt owner whose brother lived in Seattle. Even though we made it clear that none of us were from anywhere near Seattle, he insisted that we come inside for some free apple juice. Why he though apple juice would entice us in I have no idea, but we left pretty quickly. My head was about to explode again.
After this we went all around the city seeing the sites, and ended up standing over a canal of the Danube wondering why the famous river wasn't as big as we thought it would be, only to discover (using the infamous and much mourned Mappy) that it wasn't in fact a canal and the river was about 5 miles away. We gave up and headed back to the hostel where my cell phone, which I left plugged in accidentally in my room, was no longer waiting for me. Yes, that's right kids, in all my hostel travelling I've never had one thing stolen, but no more phone for me. I was pretty angry at first, then I realized that it's a pre-paid phone so after about 5 minutes of talking the credit would be gone and they don't have my top-up card so they can't ever make it work again. And the handset is locked. So it's of no use to the girls who took it now, and it never will be. And I won't need it after the next 11 days! Anyway, that was just another adventure.
The next morning we got up way too early, took our stuff to a locker in the station and headed to the Hofberg palace, home of the chapel where the famous Vienna choir boys sing every Sunday morning, and we heard them there. They were amazing, of course. The catholic mass in German was NOT as amazing though, and we headed out after 5 songs. This time we really DID make it to the Danube, which was beautiful but not as blue as I had anticipated. I'm sure it's a lot prettier outside of the city though.
On a side note here, just to give your immature side a moment of consideration, the German name for Vienna is Wien. And everything that is OF Vienna, or Viennese, is Weiner. Which means that the word Wiener is printed ALL OVER the city, and it never stopped being funny to me. There was the Wiener Plaza hotel. Wiener, the newspaper. Wienerwald, some sort of store (which unfortuantly had a rooster perched on it). The Wiener Akademie. The Wiener Choir boys. The list goes on, and on, and on, and I laughed for the whole time I was there. Also, there was a bookstore chain called Frick, which never ceased to make me giggle as well.
3 hours later I was back in Salzburg on my own the other girls had 5 more hours of train ride to get back to Bregenz by 9. I said goodbye to Rachel in a hurried fashion and it was not nearly as sad as the last time we said goodbye-- since we're sure to see each other before too long! Since I was lacking a clock at this time (watch battery died, phone got stolen...) I started trying to make my way to the airport and ended up there about 4 hours before it left, which makes it about 2 1/2 hours before I even needed to be there. So that was fun. I just love airports. I read for a few hours, checked in, then went through the duty free store and sprayed mens cologne on those little strips of paper to decide which one I liked the best. I got bored with this pretty early on but essentially landed on Lacoste for men. I sat back down, got bored some more, and tried on 7 different expensive lipglosses. By the time the flight was boarding I was trying to scrape it off my lips, somewhat unsuccessfully.
I got back to London at 9:55 and made the 10:45 train into London from the airport. I literally also made the last train in the underground headed for my stop by 3 minutes. Otherwise I would have been stranded at the Liverpool Street station all night, baby. Thank God my flight was early! I checked into my hostel and tried to not wake up the others who were in there while checking my toothpaste (no problems this time). I spent Monday morning in London seeing the rest of the things I wanted to--Notting Hill, Charing Cross road (for my mom), and the National Gallery, which was free and full of good things. I headed out from the London Paddington station at 12:30 to see Oxford, and said my goodbyes to London, currently my favorite city in the world. Oxford was lovely, despite the fact that I was carrying the weight of a 6 year old child on my back all day. I walked through the university and went to Magdalen College, where CS Lewis and Oscar Wilde lived. It was beautiful, as expected.
After a long train ride home I got back to the lovely weather of 10 degrees celsius and rain in Lancaster and stayed up late watching Sex and the City on DVD with Zoie! The trip was overall a great success, and now Rachel and I can reminice about "that time we were in Vienna together."
Today I'm working on cleaning my room so I can start packing-- my room inspection is in a week. Last night out with Kim and Zoie is happening tomorrow, and I'm going to the Lake District on Saturday and hopefully Edinburgh for the day on Monday.
I miss you Rach, can't wait to update with you again---our SENIOR year, baby!
