salzburg!

Our adventurous weekend began early on Friday morning at 540am. The 623 train to Salzburg that we thought was leaving from our local train station was in fact leaving from a station further away. Because of this, we literally ran through U-bahn stops and across the train station to make it on time! Eventful wake-up call for sure. (By the way, when I say "we," I am referring to the following people I travelled with this weekend: Melissa and Jaren Swann, Sarah, Cari, and Ricki). We all dosed in and out of sleep on the train ride and woke up to SNOW-capped mountains in Austria!! Our main objective in Salzburg: The Sound of Music Tour! We had a wonderful and amicable English tour gude who graciously showed us particular scenes from the movie strewn around the beautiful and quaint city of Salzburg! Such sites include: the gazebo where "16 Going on 17" is sung, view of the von Trapp house and lake, the gardens where Do-Ray-Me is sung, the church where the wedding between Maria and Captain von Trapp is filmed (from the conclusion of the movie), the tree-line where the kids hung and sang (forgot what song...forgive me), The Abbey and castle, and the scenic overlook that is found in the beginning of the movie. The tour was absolutely spectacular! Because we had watched the movie the night before we departed Vienna, everything was fresh on my mind, which made the tour that much enjoyable. Salzburg surprised me with its beauty and tranquility. I wish I could spend a whole weekend perusing through the beautiful part of God's creation. After the conclusion of the tour, we walked into the city in search of lunch. We arrived at a hole-in-the-wall type cafe, where I ordered a delicious bowl of warm, hearty chili and toast. We purchased a few cups of overly thick and rich Italian hot chocolate before departing for the train station to our next destination: Munich, which is by far the nicest, cleanest, and most spectacular station I've yet to see.

We transferred from Munich to Fussen, which was our final destination for the day. However, we got off the train to realize we had gone far past Fussen (accidentally) and were thus an hour away from our hostel. We had to wait for 45 minutes in a sketch train station, where we saw 3 undercover cops and a drunken bar fight break out. Quite interesting entertainment at 11pm to say the least. Instead of arriving in Fussen at 10pm, we found ourselves walking to our Fussen hostel at midnight. Our hostel was a short walk from the train station; we had two separate rooms: one containing a set of bunkbeds, and the other with a set of bunkbeds and a queen size mattress. Don't get too excited...it wasn't as nice as I depicted, but that's all part of the experience, right? We all went straight to bed because we were absolutely drained. However, in the middle of the night, Jaren and Sarah both woke up to several girls wailing/screaming/shouting/chanting/ etc. They both believe it sounded like someone was getting raped. Although we are not completely sure what the real story was, the next morning we saw two puddles of throw up sitting right outside our door. We have NO idea what was going on, but Sarah is traumatized to say the least. I'm honestly surprised I didn't wake up in the middle of the night to all the chaos that was happening right outside our door...I guess I really was exhausted. With this being our first official hostel experience, we were all a little on edge as to the nature of the rest of our hostels.

It's currently 750am here in Vienna. I will continue the blog later about the rest of our weekend adventures. God kept up safe and protected, and that is all that truly matters!