i've failed you all a.k.a. "SALZBURG"
*melodramtic sigh*
it's about time i put the "travelogue" back into this blog, right??
that said, i'm listening to the kings of convenience song "homesick" at the moment, and as y'all have probably noticed, i've been miserably homesick on and off over the past few weeks, so i've spent a frightening amount of time online looking for flights home. rather unsuccessfully. but if i can't go home, i'm at least going to go somewhere right? i sure as hell wasn't going to stay here, so... the question was, of course, where to go. vienna was on the list, which got me looking at various flights, trains, and MFGs (mitfahrgelegenheiten--the online rideboard thing...) to Austria. long story short, ended up finding an MFG to salzburg and figured i'd stay there for a couple of days and either head somewhere else for a couple of days or just head back, but i hadn't worked out the travel details for the return trip yet. typical. but whatev. have a plan. going to salzburg. cool.
GETTING THERE
meeting up with the guy i was supposed to ride with was kind of an adventure in itself. i live in the middle of nowhere, as you all know, so the bus connections are, well, sketchy at best on occasion, and as it happens, there was exactly ONE bus that travels to this particular stop--a parking lot along the highway--in the afternoons. great. so we arrange tentatively to meet at 5. but seeing as there's only one bus, i'm going to be getting there shortly after 4 and just hanging around. fine. so then the guy calls a bit after 4 and is like, umm, i'm going to be a bit later, maybe 5:30. i'll call you when i get closer. sure. so now i've got well over an hour to kill, and you know, why not explore the area a bit. so i wander into the nearby, umm, "town"--consisting of about 20 houses, a church the size of my bedroom, a playground for the kiddies-and there are several-because there can't be much to do in this town other than procreate, and... a barn full of pigs. yes, that's right, a barn full of pigs. just hanging out on an otherwise residential street. right. ok. so i walk up and down the main drag a couple of times. i mean, it took about 3 minutes, you know. then sat on a bench near the playground and read in the remains of the afternoon sun for a good 45 minutes. still not having heard from MFG guy, i'm beginning to get a little nervous. i mean, if he doesn't show, i'm kind of screwed, because there's not another bus heading anywhere near a place where i can catch a bus back home. fabulous. then a little after 5:30 MFG guy calls. he's in the parking lot. cool.
so we take off. first of all, could hardly understand the guy. to avoid propagating any sorts of rumours about dialects in germany, i'm not going to tell you where he's from, but daaaaamn. plus, he's a guy, and weird as this sounds, i sometimes have a harder time understanding guys in german than girls. don't really know what that's about, but yeah. after the initial adjustment period--me with my accent, him with his, what a pair!--we were cool. had a nice chat about all the places i still need to see in germany, which other european cities i should visit, where i should go on vacation--when i'm rich and can afford things like vacation, that is!! patagonia, anyone!??! then he asks me when i'm heading back. not sure, i tell him, maybe sunday or monday. he's like, oh yeah? i'm heading back sunday, if you want to ride back with me then. cool. he's not sure what time exactly, probably in the afternoon, so i'm supposed to text him sometime and let him know if i want to ride back on sunday. he drops me off, and i head to my hostel.
THE HOSTEL
get to the hostel, check in, head to my room. it's about 10 p.m. someone's already sleeping. there's another american girl in the hallway, who's also staying in the room--and also about to go to bed. ok, guess i'll go to bed, too. granted, it's not even 10:30, but hey, sleep is never a bad idea, right? try telling that to the 3000 pre-teens running up and down the halls screaming all night!! =) seriously, wasn't that THE COOLEST, when you were in jr. high, and you went away on a school trip for the weekend?!?!? man, those were the days... props to the teachers who chaperoned us. seriously.
anyway. i drift in and out of various stages of not quite sleeping until our finnish roommate comes in around 11:30 and turns on the light. the other american girl does not like this and makes that quite clear. i'm hiding under my pillow, pretending to sleep. finnish girl leaves the room for about 10 minutes. returns and turns on the light again. american girl: "are you going to be doing that a lot???" finnish girl: "obviously, you've never lived in a dormitory before." american girl: (pauses) "actually i have, that's why i brought a FLASHLIGHT." (this is the part where i'm stifling laughter, still pretending to sleep with my head under my pillow.) i make up my mind to avoid american girl at all costs during this trip.
THE CITY
get up the next morning, breakfast with the aforementioned 3000 preteens, and head out into the town. the short version: you know how sometimes you walk into a city, and you just fit? you just love it right from the beginning? you know you could LIVE there? this did NOT happen with salzburg. it was..nice. i mean, i liked it. it was an interesting place, full of history and architecture, lots to see--and lots of tourists, of course. but it wasn't someplace that really grabbed me the way some other cities have. i don't know.
so yeah, i spent most of the day wandering around, checking out some of the tourist sites--the house where mozart was born, lots of churches and cemeteries, an exhibit of old russian icons, a few of the sites from The Sound of Music--i'm not hardcore enough to do the whole Sound of Music Tour!!--exploring little side streets and peering into shop windows, hiking and admiring the views, sitting by fountains writing postcards, drinking coffee. you know, the usual.
get back to the hostel to find the american girl has also returned. we end up chatting for quite a while. decide i don't need to avoid her after all. so we eat dinner and wander around the city for a bit in the evening. watch part of the sound of music in the lobby when we got back--they show it every night, believe it or not!!
the next morning i have to tell the nice hostel people that i want to stay another night, because i had only booked two nights ahead of time, because i wasn't sure what my plans were. but there's a whole group moving into my room, so they move me to another room, but i have to check out and then check back in sometime in the afternoon. whatev. wander around the city some more, check out the Festung ... check back into the hostel in the early afternoon. get my stuff settled. in walk two more american girls. they're pretty cool and have just spent 3 weeks in italy. we end up walking around the town for the rest of the afternoon. they want to go for a run, and at this point, i'm about to fall asleep standing up. so i go back to the room to get something to read. run into former american roommate in the hall. she's had a bit of hostel drama and was randomly moved to another room as well. i grab my magazine and find a bench outside in the sun and read for bit in town--because it is GORGEOUS outside. i even got a baby sunburn!! then head back to the hostel again. am about to fall asleep reading, when two more american girls walk in. semester abroad. great. of the "yeah, i've been to england, france, italy, germany, umm, let's see, oh yeah, spain..." type. but what they really mean is that they spent about 24 hours in a major city within that country. so they spend a weekend in paris, for example, and come home and say, "yeah, i went to france." ok, i know i'm not being entirely fair, but you know what i mean, right?!?!?
end up watching another part of The Sound of Music--from the beginning up until "sixteen going on seventeen"--i just couldn't handle it at that point!!
another american girl joins our room later in the evening. seriously, do they put us all together on purpose!?!? (to spare the poor europeans from the torture of our company, probably... *rolling of the eyes*)
GETTING HOME
sunday, more of the same, text MFG guy, wander around town for a while, do a bit more hiking. don't hear anything from MFG guy, find an internet cafe and look for trains back home. wander around some more. still haven't heard anything from MFG guy, kind of assume he didn't get my message and head to the train station.
this is where the real adventure begins! but i'm tired of writing, and you're tired of reading, so in true cliffhanger fashion (oh, don't worry, it's not THAT exciting), "to be continued..."
it's about time i put the "travelogue" back into this blog, right??
that said, i'm listening to the kings of convenience song "homesick" at the moment, and as y'all have probably noticed, i've been miserably homesick on and off over the past few weeks, so i've spent a frightening amount of time online looking for flights home. rather unsuccessfully. but if i can't go home, i'm at least going to go somewhere right? i sure as hell wasn't going to stay here, so... the question was, of course, where to go. vienna was on the list, which got me looking at various flights, trains, and MFGs (mitfahrgelegenheiten--the online rideboard thing...) to Austria. long story short, ended up finding an MFG to salzburg and figured i'd stay there for a couple of days and either head somewhere else for a couple of days or just head back, but i hadn't worked out the travel details for the return trip yet. typical. but whatev. have a plan. going to salzburg. cool.
GETTING THERE
meeting up with the guy i was supposed to ride with was kind of an adventure in itself. i live in the middle of nowhere, as you all know, so the bus connections are, well, sketchy at best on occasion, and as it happens, there was exactly ONE bus that travels to this particular stop--a parking lot along the highway--in the afternoons. great. so we arrange tentatively to meet at 5. but seeing as there's only one bus, i'm going to be getting there shortly after 4 and just hanging around. fine. so then the guy calls a bit after 4 and is like, umm, i'm going to be a bit later, maybe 5:30. i'll call you when i get closer. sure. so now i've got well over an hour to kill, and you know, why not explore the area a bit. so i wander into the nearby, umm, "town"--consisting of about 20 houses, a church the size of my bedroom, a playground for the kiddies-and there are several-because there can't be much to do in this town other than procreate, and... a barn full of pigs. yes, that's right, a barn full of pigs. just hanging out on an otherwise residential street. right. ok. so i walk up and down the main drag a couple of times. i mean, it took about 3 minutes, you know. then sat on a bench near the playground and read in the remains of the afternoon sun for a good 45 minutes. still not having heard from MFG guy, i'm beginning to get a little nervous. i mean, if he doesn't show, i'm kind of screwed, because there's not another bus heading anywhere near a place where i can catch a bus back home. fabulous. then a little after 5:30 MFG guy calls. he's in the parking lot. cool.
so we take off. first of all, could hardly understand the guy. to avoid propagating any sorts of rumours about dialects in germany, i'm not going to tell you where he's from, but daaaaamn. plus, he's a guy, and weird as this sounds, i sometimes have a harder time understanding guys in german than girls. don't really know what that's about, but yeah. after the initial adjustment period--me with my accent, him with his, what a pair!--we were cool. had a nice chat about all the places i still need to see in germany, which other european cities i should visit, where i should go on vacation--when i'm rich and can afford things like vacation, that is!! patagonia, anyone!??! then he asks me when i'm heading back. not sure, i tell him, maybe sunday or monday. he's like, oh yeah? i'm heading back sunday, if you want to ride back with me then. cool. he's not sure what time exactly, probably in the afternoon, so i'm supposed to text him sometime and let him know if i want to ride back on sunday. he drops me off, and i head to my hostel.
THE HOSTEL
get to the hostel, check in, head to my room. it's about 10 p.m. someone's already sleeping. there's another american girl in the hallway, who's also staying in the room--and also about to go to bed. ok, guess i'll go to bed, too. granted, it's not even 10:30, but hey, sleep is never a bad idea, right? try telling that to the 3000 pre-teens running up and down the halls screaming all night!! =) seriously, wasn't that THE COOLEST, when you were in jr. high, and you went away on a school trip for the weekend?!?!? man, those were the days... props to the teachers who chaperoned us. seriously.
anyway. i drift in and out of various stages of not quite sleeping until our finnish roommate comes in around 11:30 and turns on the light. the other american girl does not like this and makes that quite clear. i'm hiding under my pillow, pretending to sleep. finnish girl leaves the room for about 10 minutes. returns and turns on the light again. american girl: "are you going to be doing that a lot???" finnish girl: "obviously, you've never lived in a dormitory before." american girl: (pauses) "actually i have, that's why i brought a FLASHLIGHT." (this is the part where i'm stifling laughter, still pretending to sleep with my head under my pillow.) i make up my mind to avoid american girl at all costs during this trip.
THE CITY
get up the next morning, breakfast with the aforementioned 3000 preteens, and head out into the town. the short version: you know how sometimes you walk into a city, and you just fit? you just love it right from the beginning? you know you could LIVE there? this did NOT happen with salzburg. it was..nice. i mean, i liked it. it was an interesting place, full of history and architecture, lots to see--and lots of tourists, of course. but it wasn't someplace that really grabbed me the way some other cities have. i don't know.
so yeah, i spent most of the day wandering around, checking out some of the tourist sites--the house where mozart was born, lots of churches and cemeteries, an exhibit of old russian icons, a few of the sites from The Sound of Music--i'm not hardcore enough to do the whole Sound of Music Tour!!--exploring little side streets and peering into shop windows, hiking and admiring the views, sitting by fountains writing postcards, drinking coffee. you know, the usual.
get back to the hostel to find the american girl has also returned. we end up chatting for quite a while. decide i don't need to avoid her after all. so we eat dinner and wander around the city for a bit in the evening. watch part of the sound of music in the lobby when we got back--they show it every night, believe it or not!!
the next morning i have to tell the nice hostel people that i want to stay another night, because i had only booked two nights ahead of time, because i wasn't sure what my plans were. but there's a whole group moving into my room, so they move me to another room, but i have to check out and then check back in sometime in the afternoon. whatev. wander around the city some more, check out the Festung ... check back into the hostel in the early afternoon. get my stuff settled. in walk two more american girls. they're pretty cool and have just spent 3 weeks in italy. we end up walking around the town for the rest of the afternoon. they want to go for a run, and at this point, i'm about to fall asleep standing up. so i go back to the room to get something to read. run into former american roommate in the hall. she's had a bit of hostel drama and was randomly moved to another room as well. i grab my magazine and find a bench outside in the sun and read for bit in town--because it is GORGEOUS outside. i even got a baby sunburn!! then head back to the hostel again. am about to fall asleep reading, when two more american girls walk in. semester abroad. great. of the "yeah, i've been to england, france, italy, germany, umm, let's see, oh yeah, spain..." type. but what they really mean is that they spent about 24 hours in a major city within that country. so they spend a weekend in paris, for example, and come home and say, "yeah, i went to france." ok, i know i'm not being entirely fair, but you know what i mean, right?!?!?
end up watching another part of The Sound of Music--from the beginning up until "sixteen going on seventeen"--i just couldn't handle it at that point!!
another american girl joins our room later in the evening. seriously, do they put us all together on purpose!?!? (to spare the poor europeans from the torture of our company, probably... *rolling of the eyes*)
GETTING HOME
sunday, more of the same, text MFG guy, wander around town for a while, do a bit more hiking. don't hear anything from MFG guy, find an internet cafe and look for trains back home. wander around some more. still haven't heard anything from MFG guy, kind of assume he didn't get my message and head to the train station.
this is where the real adventure begins! but i'm tired of writing, and you're tired of reading, so in true cliffhanger fashion (oh, don't worry, it's not THAT exciting), "to be continued..."
posted by be at 10:30 AM
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