More Strudel? Vienna and Salzburg, Austria- March 20-23, 2009

So after taking a well-needed break from traveling, I headed to Vienna, Austria to meet up with Kellie. I have been excited about this trip ever since Julie told me about the AMAZING Sound of Music Tour she went on while in Salzburg. Kellie and I started planning our little excursion as soon as we found out we were both accepted to our respected programs. Lets just say I was excited…I watched the movie twice in preparation.

So after my afternoon class on Thursday (March 19, 2009), I walked to the train station. Like so many times before, Maastricht decided to be absolutely beautiful the day I left her. Anyways, I took my bus to Aachen and took an earlier train to Koln (Cologne). When I exited the train in Koln, I had approx. 2 hours to kill before my overnight train left for Vienna, so what is a girl to do? Well, THEY HAVE STARBUCKS IN KOLN! And even better, they have salted caramel hot chocolate at the Starbucks in Koln!! (Anyone who knows me understands thisJ). So killing two hours in the train station wasn't so bad after all. And as an added bonus, when you exit the Starbucks, Koln's beautiful cathedral is right there…it was very nice scenery.

Now this was my first overnight train experience, and let's just say I survived! No…it wasn't bad at all. I had a seated compartment all to myself for about 3 hours (enough to watch the Sound of Music once), and then…some kinda creepy man came and sat in my compartment. No big deal right? Well, I later find out that he DIDN'T have a reservation (so basically he just picked to sit in my compartment), he didn't speak a lick of English (very rare in Germany), and his mustache kind of looked like Hitler's. Now I am sure he was/is a very nice, respectable man, but I really didn't want to spend my night alone in a train compartment with him (and I knew my parents would agree). So after talking to some very nice Austrian ladies who were in line for the bathroom (they spoke little English, but could tell I looked worried), they came and sat in my compartment with me for the night. People are so nice! We arrived in Vienna and I headed to the hostel to meet my friend/fellow AOII Kellie.

We stayed at one of the Wombat hostels in Vienna, and it is one of the coolest places to stay! It is soooo clean (like 10x cleaner than the AOII Palace floors and bathrooms). Kellie and I had really cool suitemates from Norway, and we paid for a 6-girl room and got a 4-girl room….Sweet! The hostel was in a great location and free internet (and I even got it up in our room). It was pretty much amazing and I would recommend any Wombat hostel to anybody.

So enough for my marketing plug, we met at the hostel at 9 am (eek), but couldn't check-in until 2 pm. So we cleaned up a little, and headed out to the beautiful streets of Vienna. Now, Vienna was a little colder than I expected (windchill probably in the high 20's), but the city is beautiful. It is so imperial and elegant, and you can tell that people with LOTs of money live there. Now, I LOVE that I was the last Schieferstein child to go abroad, but I have reaped the benefits of travel experience. Julie (because she went on basically the same trip back in the fall) sent me her travel guide that she compiled for her trip. She had the tram lines to get to places, the student prices, what's worth it and what is not….thanks Juj you are awesome! So since we are in Vienna, the obvious thing to do first was to see a castle, so we headed to the Hofburg where the Hapsburg emperors and empresses called home during the colder months. Smack dab in the city center, the Hofburg Palace is beautiful. It is so imperial and grand, and I would definitely live there! Unfortunately, the Sissi part was closed for renovations (but all of the important stuff from that was moved into the palace), so we toured the Palace Apartments and the Silver collections (yes the rooms and rooms full of all of their dishes, silver, candlesticks). It was very interesting to see all of these amazing (and expensive) things, and cool to learn the history of the Austria-Hungary empire. After the tour, we found a really great little Austrian restaurant and had a really good and cheap meal…kraut and noodles (yum).

After visiting the Hofburg, we played tourist and ran around Vienna taking pictures. We went through the Volsgartens gardens, the National Library, the Rathaus (city hall), the parliament, the Maria Theresa buildings… We took an amazing tour of the Berg Theater, and our tour group ran into a really famous German producer/director that had his show opening that night. Then we had strudel…delicious apple strudel.

We decided to try to see an opera at the Vienna State Opera house, because when you are in Vienna, you have to at least try. So we waited in line and got 1st row ground level standing tickets for 4 euro! They were really good spots (can't say seats because there were none), and we could see that the seats right in front of us were 100 euros a pop! The opera performed was Falstaff and it was interesting. I don't know much about opera (ok I don't know anything about opera), but this one was weird. At intermission, we had experienced the opera (it was really cool, but our feet killed) and decided to call it a night.

The next day we took the tram to the Schonbrunn Palace, the Hapsburg's summer residence. WOW! It is so amazing. We bought the winter pass so we could have access to the entire grounds. We took the 40 room grand tour of the palace apartments…Marie Antoinette lived here! The rooms were all decorated beautifully and there was a hall that reminded me of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

We toured the gardens, the Palm House conservatory, and went to the Tiergarten (the zoo) and saw koalas, pandas, lions, and sea lions. We then set out to see the famous Strudel Demonstration that Julie said was a must-see. We headed to the "Desert House", which like total geniuses we thought it was the Dessert House…bahaha! So it was surprising when we walked in and it was full of cacti. Julie moment. So after asking a million people at the Schonbrunn, we found out that the strudel demonstrations don't start until April…sad day.

So we were both exhausted, so we went back to the Wombat and took a nap. Kellie went to the Belvedere to see the Klimt collection, but I passed because I was sleepy. I needed the rest for our exciting excursion to Salzburg the next day!

We awoke at 4:30 am on Sunday to catch our train to Salzburg. It was a nice train ride with views of the Austrian Alps. We arrived at the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof (central station) and headed to the St. Andra Kirche, the meeting place for our Sound of Music tour. OMG! What an awesome tour! This is hands down the best thing I have done in Europe so far (The David in Florence, The Last Supper in Milan, The Musee D'Orsay, the Parc Guell in Barcelona, and Heidelberg Schloss come in close after)!

At the beginning of our tour, we met our tour guide, Gary (we think he was native to Salzburg), and Evil, the bus driver. Then we set out. Gary told us all about the history of Salzburg and the history of the von Trapp family (and how their were actually 10 von Trapp children and the eldest was named Maria not Liesle). Our first stop was to the palace that served as the back of the von Trapp family house, the Schloss Leopoldskron. We took a lot of pictures and walked around the lake (which is the lake the kids fell into) and walked down the road where they climbed the trees.

The Sound of Music tour then took us past the Frohnburg Castle which was the yellow residence that was the front of the von Trapp house and the walls that Maria danced by when coming from the abbey. Then we went to the national park on the Hellbrunn Palace estate where they have moved the gazebo to. Unfortunately, I couldn't live out my life goal of dancing in the gazebo because they have locked the doors due to injury. We then got back on the bus and headed up to the mountains. We drove through and visited the lake villages of Fuschlsee and Mondsee. In Fuschlsee, we just got off at on overlook and took pictures of the beautiful lake and Alps.

Then we stopped in Mondsee where the church where Maria and the Captain were married is at. The film crew only used the inside of the church because it is far more beautiful than the one at the abbey. We also had a chance to buy souvenirs (of course I did that) and eat strudel and sandwiches at a little café. The café owner's dog really liked me and really wanted a piece of my sausage…we were good friends. After Mondsee, the tour sadly was over and we headed back to Salzburg. I would recommend this tour to anyone who will be in Austria even if you hate the Sound of Music because you get to visit some really cool little towns and see the beautiful Austrian Alps.

Once we were back in Salzburg, Kellie and I decided to check out Mozart's birthplace. It was a cool little building, but we had already spent way too much money that day and decided to pass on the tour and go to the Augustiner Monastery Brewery and Biergarten instead. We drank amazing bier, ate schnitzel and kraut, and met a very nice group of older people who guess what!?....were dairy farmers from Lake Mondsee! I have decided that I want to quit school, move to Lake Mondsee, and pick up the dairy farming trade…what a life!

I had an amazing and very eventful weekend, and was sad to say goodbye to Kellie. Salzburg is absolutely one of my favorite places in the world (I can say that now) and I hope I can one day come back again.

This week is my last week of classes and I am off Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh) and Ireland (Dublin and Galway) on Friday.

Love and Auf Wiedersehen,

Betsy