Salzburg, Austria

So Stuart proposed this trip to me awhile ago, said he'd been there a few times but wouldn't mind going again. My first question was 'What is there to do in Salzburg?' and his very unsatisfactory answer was 'It's just really nice'.

Wunderbar.... sounds boring.

WRONG!!

This trip was one of my best, one of my most fun, one of the most jaw dropping trips ever.

It turned out to be immensly cheaper to rent a car and drive there despite gas being around 1.30 euros a liter, so Stuart, Denis, Jarrett, Nina and I did just that. Cost us each just 35 euros INCLUDING gas each from Friday to Monday with 10-12 hours of driving. SU-WEET.

Bonus, they ran out of the cheapest little golf we booked online so we got a BEEE-UTIFUL black BMW with all the trimmings. The navigation system became our God. The speedometer went up to 260 kmph...although the computer topped it out at 210. And it had a sun roof :D I learned to drive stick in said gorgeous car, and I am so so proud of myself. It's something that's been on my list of things to do in life ever since I remember having such a list. Ok, so I just cruised around the various campus parking lots, and I burned the clutch a little BUT I picked it up in about 10 minutes, and I can shift pretty smoothly and I can park and even go backwards. YES, GO ME! Actually I had a really good teacher. Props to Denis!

Picking up said car didn't go so smoothly.. We left from work and our train just didn't come. Then there was a fire or something so the trains weren't running where they were supposed to. Then Denis got lost on the way back to Universitat to pick us all up. BUT, we made it.

The drive down was fun, we started with the wine and sangria drinking about an hour from our destination (again, this is allowed for the passenges here!) and sang some Tenacious D at the tops of our lungs. Ohhh Tenacious D. He got us in trouble later that night when we thought it'd be a good idea to sing some choice songs on the way home from checking out the nightlife. A man disguised as a pilon shhhhh'd us. I'm serious, everything from his pants to the straw cowboy hat was screaming orange.

Day ONE: We head to a town called Werfen about 50 km from Salzburg to go to the world's largest ice cave. The drive there was phenomenal. We were literally driving through the mountains and the view was the most breathtaking I've ever seen. We hiked 20 minutes up the mountain, took a cable car up some more, and then hiked another 20 minutes to the entrance to the cave.To the right of us is the mountain we climbed to get to the cave, and over our left shoulders you've got yourself a pretty little castle sitting on top of a shorter mountain. Phenomenal.

Let me just remind the audience that it's about 35 degrees outside, and -1 inside the cave. We came prepared and quickly bundled up. It was so surreal having cold fingers and toes...I'd almost forgotten what that felt like. And what ice looked like... They really don't believe in that here.

The tour was about 70 minutes and 1400 stairs long and really really cool. No really good pictures because it was so dark though.

Next we booked it to Hallstatt, another town another 60 km or so away and made it JUST in time for the last tour to the worlds oldest salt mine. This was also awesome, they gave us suits resembling prison wear and there were big wooden slides to race down and we got to take a little train back out of the mine.








We headed to the center to grab some dinner and my goodness was it not just the cutest little town I'd ever seen. It was cuteness overload, it was almost nauseating how cute every single thing in that town was. It was along the edge of a lake with mountains surrounding it, and all of the houses....SO cute. They were typical german style and all of them had flower boxes and were covered in flowers. Even the cemetary was adorable.









Then all of a sudden I turned around and got a big shocking jaw dropper. An old man with a long white skullet and a beer belly and his...girlfriend (?) got out of big white van. The girl's skirt..well...lets just say it was more of a glorified belt covering nothing at all really... She started posing with the view telescope thing and he was taking pictures, it was absolute trash and completely clashed with the surroundings. Wunderbar.

So we book it home, shower and change... oh no wait, we skipped those steps. We got into the wine and commenced story telling at the picnic table outside the hostel, molested a hedgehog,and headed downtown again.

We stood on a windy bridge overlooking the beautiful river for awhile. We called it the arguing bridge as 3 of our group members got into a spirited debate over who knows what for a good long time...I was busy not paying attention.

We hit up the strip of bars, and even though apparently nobody dances in Salzburg, well...we did anyways. No dance floor? No problem. We'll make our own. This sometimes proves problematic when we set up our booty shakin in the middle of the flow of traffic... whoops.

DAY TWO:
This is the castle day. We start off our day with a very sweaty hike to the top of a big mountain, or hill, whatever, in the middle of Salzburg to it's fort. Took a guided tour, saw an awesome view of the city, and moved on to the more exciting palace a little ways away.

The archbishop who lived here seemed to be a bit of an ass. A total jokester at heart, but used his power to force people to suffer through what he found to be entertaining. This guy loved water. There were trick fountains all through the gardens, and when you least expected it water would come shooting out of the wall of a grotto at you, or up from under your feet, or down from the roof.

The worst was a dinner table by an outdoor theater. There were all these rules, such as the guests couldn't stand until the archbishop was finished his meal, and there were little fountains all around the table, including in the seats of the chairs. So the dinner guests would essentially have water squirting up their derriers and there was nothing they could do about it.

All in all it was one of the most fun weekends I've ever had and one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen! I highly recommend Salzburg to anybody wishing to travel Europe!