SALZBURG, AUSTRIA

This trip has taught me a lot of things about myself, one of them being that I am no good with night trains. The one we took from Vienna to Venice was not terrible, but leaving Venice, we decided to save paying a night at the hostel and take another night train. This time it was only 6 hours, which is not a night’s sleep, and put us in Salzburg, Austria at 4am, which is not morning. Our entire night was filled with tiny, interesting men. In our reserved cabin we found the first short man, but we got in our top bunks and turned the lights off. He felt the need to wake us both up to say “Goodbye” when we got to his stop, and that’s when small man number two came and sat in our cabin. We tried and failed at falling asleep, but must of dozed off for a second because we both shot up around 1am to the police at our door and the strange, small man arguing with them in a language other than German, Italian, or English. We had no idea what was happening and once Aubrey Anne and I proved we had passports and were not with him, the policeman kept speaking Italian to the man in trouble. Once, the policeman tried to tell me what was going on in Italian, but I didn’t understand. We interpreted it as the man was an ax-murder and we were going to be in the news in the morning. When our alarm went off at 3:45am, we found the third little Asian man sleeping on my jacket on the seats below us. 

There is not a lot happening at Salzburg at 4am and once we got to our hostel, the nice attendant let us sleep in the lounge and use the computers since we couldn’t check in until noon. Around 5am, the finally scrawny man, this time from Ireland, stumbled into the computer room wearing only white underwear. He proceeded to talk nonsense to us about Yogi Bear and how he couldn’t believe his cell phone fell in a hole, and then shortly returned with the grey tube he’d broken in order to get his phone out and introduced himself as “the greatest”.

 

The best thing about our hostel was the fact they played The Sound of Music movie every day in the lounge at 10:30am. Once Aubrey Anne and I made it to 10:30, we knew we’d be OK, and the musical helped us stay awake until April got in at 12 and we could check in. We were so delusional from no sleep that when we were trying to find a place for lunch, we kept miss reading signs and could have sworn that one sign that ended up being a long German word had read “Al’s Chinese Palace”. April explored on her own while we napped, and after I talked to my parents for the first time the whole trip and met the boys from Iowa that were making faces behind me while I was talking to my parents, we met up with April and saw how beautiful Salzburg is. Salzburg is the smallest city I’ve visited on this trip and I really liked the feeling of knowing where we were (especially after Venice) and being able to walk to everything. 

The Sound of Music Tour took up most of our Monday and I am not embarrassed to admit that I loved it! Even though April, Aubrey Anne, and I were the only ones participating in the Sing-A-Long part, it was still beautiful to drive out into the country and see the hills that are “alive with the sound of music”. At the suggestion of our fantastic tour guide, Gary (who would laugh at his own jokes in a similar manner to the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz) we had the best apple strudel I’ve ever eaten in the tiny town of Mondsee. The rest of the day was filled with visiting a fortress from around 1000AD, an abbey from about 650AD, and an Augustiner Monastery that has been turned into a beer hall, which served the beer that the Monk’s brew themselves. A cute, 85 year old man with his own personalized beer stein vigorously waved us down to sit with him, since all of his party had left early, and spoke in German to April for a long time about how lovely we were and that we have our whole lives ahead of us so we’d better make it good. Later, a super nice couple from Colorado heard us speaking English and came to sit and talk for awhile. We had great conversion and they were very worried for us traveling alone, and kept asking us about European boys, about if we felt safe, and telling us they felt sorry for our parents. They gave us their email, phone number, and address in Colorado, and now we all have a free place to stay when we ski the Rockies. 

Two days was the perfect amount of time to see Salzburg, and it would be a great place to go on a weekend retreat to relax. The beginning of the Alps looks breathtaking, the shops and streets are so quaint, and hiking, caving, and skiing would be perfect there. April and I are on a train in the Czech Republic on our way to Prague, and so far no strange, little men yet. We can only hope.