Gruppenfahrkarte (to Salzburg)

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Friday, 8/15
After going out Thursday night, I came home and tried to sleep for the last portion of the night that I had left. For some reason, I was too anxious to sleep and felt like I was awake the whole night. I woke up early to make sure everything was packed for my trip. We had to meet at the Belvedere for another Dr. O tour at 10am. We took the streetcar over to the museum, and got our tickets and headed into the first exhibit. The first room we spent some time in was a display of a variety of heads with all sorts of weird expressions on their faces. The oddest part of this exhibit was the names of each expression, which were made up by a museum curator instead of the artist himself. We also saw a Van Gogh and a Monet, but the highlight of the museum was the Klimt exhibit. Gustav Klimt has kind of a weird personal life, but we got to learn about his 3 phases of style. We got to see The Kiss, but a security guard was eagle-eyeing our group for people taking pictures. When the tour finished, my traveling group hightailed it home so we could get on the road. We got to the trainstation and boarded our train to Salzburg. While we were on the train it was pouring rain, as the weather forecast for the weekend said rain rain and more rain. We took a cab to the hostel, which was decent, and trekked out to find a place to eat. We went to what felt like the only open restaurant (Friday was a national holiday) and had a delicious dinner. What did stand out in that memory was how loud we were compared to everyone else at the restaurant. Granted, there were few other diners, but they were practically whispering to themselves, while we were the group of loud Americans. One of the girls at the table identified that if we were at any American restaurant, our volume would have been absolutely normal. There is a very evident difference in volume between Americans and Austrians. We went back to the hostel, watched a bit of the Sound of Music in the lobby, and headed to bed.

Saturday, 8/16
We woke up Saturday morning headed down to breakfast. Some of the girls complained that the hostel was too noisy for their taste, though I had earplugs in an slept like a rock. I don't understand why light sleepers expect their surroundings to always accommodate their needs. If I were a light sleeper, I would make it my own responsibility to bring earplugs, because you can never depend on others (especially foreigners at a hostel) to stay quiet as you try to sleep. I bring earplugs despite the fact that I am a heavy sleeper, because it's still possible for me to be woken up by someone crashing around. We enjoyed a good breakfast and asked the lady working at the hostel's front desk to help us with the tickets for the tour. The hostel website, as well as a huge blackboard behind the desk, claimed to be able to sell tickets for the Sound of Music tour at a reduced price. Nevertheless, when we asked for tickets, the lady said it was not possible. She then proceeded to charge us for a combination ticket for the dinner even though the dinner was not happening on that night. Meanwhile, some random dude in line was butting in and trying to confuse the desk attendant further with matters of his payments for the night before. This lady, who clearly had a low level of intelligence, decided to try to handle both matters at once which only confused her more. It was then that I got a sudden homesickness for American efficiency. The lack of structure here drives me a little crazy sometime (especially as being a list-loving person). We finally figured out our plan for the tour, and since we had about 4 hours before we were to leave, we decided to tough the rain and explore the city. We passed by the shopping area at lightning speed, and I am not quite sure why my group was walking so quickly. It didn't take long to get to the other side of town, where we stopped to get coffee at a konditorei. With the rain finally letting up, we headed over to Mirabell Park, where the tour started and several of the garden scenes from the Sound of Music were filmed. There were about 15 people on our tour, and it was in English. We first headed to the gazebo and the road where "I Have Confidence" was filmed. The location of the current gazebo is not the original location, as the original location currently lies on private property and the tenants were having problems with Sound of Music fans swimming across the lake and dancing in the gazebo at night. We also saw the house where the backyard scenes were shot and the church where the wedding scene was filmed. We drove out to a mountain luge (which I am not sure had anything to do with the movie) and got to try that out as well. I was a lot more scared than I thought I would be- but if I had been wearing a helmet and a mouth guard I would have felt a lot more comfortable. But as usual, the Austrians have no sense of safety or liability. With the tour coming to a close, we returned to Mirabell Gardens to take some pictures on the stairs the children danced on. We filmed a video of us jumping up and down the stairs (

) and hopefully we will get extra credit for it! We grabbed dinner at an international restaurant, and were pleased to find out that Rick Steves had dined there before. We headed back to the hostel to get ready for the evening, though not everyone wanted to rage it up in the Salzburg night scene. We played some drinking games in the lobby (they serve beer there and this is all socially acceptable) before heading out. Our group began to dwindle as the night wore on, but 3 of us stayed out till 4:30 dancing and drinking and chatting it up with whoever spoke English. I came home exhausted, and decided to just go to bed smelling like cigarette (I have gotten in the habit of saving my shower until after my night out- the people here smell bad anyway). As I was brushing my teeth, I saw an insect that resembled a bee but was about 4 times bigger! I was terrified of it stinging me and opted to do a mediocre job of washing off my eye makeup in lieu of closing my eyes long enough for the ''bee" to get me while I wasn't looking!

Sunday, 8/17
I woke up the next morning, jumped in the shower and headed down to breakfast. We still didn't have a reservation for the night in Hallstatt, so we tried to give a hotel there a call. Without any success, we jumped into a cab to get back to the train station. We took two trains to get to Hallstatt. On the way, I was sitting near an Austrian fellow, and entertaining him with the ridiculous German phrases I have in my phrase book, like "Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?". The German words I have picked up while here are more or less useless, like the word for "straw". We arrived in Hallstatt and had to take a boat across the lake to get to the town. It was about 4pm and no one had lunch, but our first objective was to find a place to stay. This is where the tempers started to flare, as some people were fine with spending on a hotel and others were willing to walk around town looking for the cheapest option. Seven people is a large group for a hotel to accommodate at the last minute. Tired and homeless, we decided to split up, and half of us went to a hotel and the other half to a hostel. I picked the hotel (princess that I am) which provided me with a towel, soap and breakfast. We met up again for dinner, but again this lead to another argument. Some people wanted to spend minimal amounts of money on kebab, and some of us wanted to try the (Rick Steves-endorsed) local specialty of fish from the lake. I got the fish dinner, and was heartily suprised when the whole fish was served to me. Three of us had an entire fish on our plates, and we called the waiter back over to explain how to eat a fish in a non-fillet form. The fish was fantastic, and I probably ate about 10 fishbones in the process. Concerned about choking (but who knows why, because Austrians never worry about safety) I ordered some bread to have alongside my meal. The dinner we had that night was easily the highlight of the entire weekend. The setting was truly relaxing, the meal was delicious, and the service was amazing. The company wasn't bad either 😉 We were entertained by the restaurant's pet cat, which slowly inched his way towards someone's fish dinner before snatching a bit off of her plate (she was done eating). A small town like Hallstatt sure closes down after business hours, and since we were all exhausted, we decided to tuck in early. Believe it or not, I was in bed at 8:30pm! Melissa and I watched a Minnie Mouse cartoon program (who knows why) and were thankful that a children's program is easier to understand in a foreign language because the pictures do a lot of the storytelling.

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Photos

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exhibit at the Belvedere

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the gazebo

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"I Have Confidence"

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the house from the Sound of Music backyard scenes

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the Church at Mondsee, where the wedding scene was filmed

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interior of Mondsee

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stairway from the Do-Re-Mi song

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this may be the doorway from the abbey

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nice geology picture

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our waiter Gary (who taught us how to eat the fish)