April 17th was a lovely day. It was really all things Austrian that I'd want to fit into one day. Well ideally I would have had a kasekrainer but my stomach simply would not allow for so much amazing food in one day.
We started the day at the hostel - checked out - went to the train station, booked our overnight train back into the Netherlands, locked up our bags and headed into the city.
This time we walked across the river and up onto a path that took you along the top of these cliffs that edge the city offering great views of the city and the surrounding mountains. It was a lovely sunny day so we could see very far. We walked all the way to the the Hohensalzburg Castle. It was a great walk. The entire city is green and the path took you through a green - rather untouched looking - forest area, and while you walk you go through city walls, see mountains, and other such historical wonders.
Coming up to the Castle - which is visible from almost every point in the city - was pretty spectacular. Its high on a hill and you walk up and up and up. The view was wonderful. I could have stayed there all day, and we almost did. It was really well set out with little museum installments throughout and a few great cafes. We were there for a few hours at least. We sat at one of the cafes to have some apple strudel - as you do in Austria - and coffee. It was great. We were at the edge of the castle wall overlooking rolling hills and high snow covered mountain peaks. I also got a fabulous sunglass sun burn so raccoon eyes have been haunting me since then.
On the way down we grabbed a couple giant pretzels - which seem to be something all the bakeries/markets have here. Well really they only have some giant pretzels, the rest are more like doughnut dough shaped like pretzels, or even more tempting doughnut pretzels dipped in chocolate. I think these places sole purpose is to fatten up tourists. Ridiculous!
We walked down from the castle and into the town meandering the streets. Being a Sunday not much was open. We did stop to buy a chocolate. You see there are these chocolates all over the place, from what we could tell it was a kind of truffle. So middle the centre is some sort of nut puree - well puree is the wrong word but I don't know how to explain it, it is soft like truffle but tastes like nuts, then surrounding that is chocolate flavoured truffle and that is all dipped in a chocolate coating. We went to the one that said it was the original - it looked pretty legit and also was priced like it was the original. It was delicious. There were, however, tons of other stores selling other variations of the chocolate all over. We were served a free one by a guy dressed up like Mozart.
Eventually we decided that we should head over to this brewery we'd heard about. It said it had traditional Austrian food and drink. We figured that'd be good. It was a bit of a walk but it was well worth it.
We came upon this brewery with a patio under many trees serving beer in cooled 1L or .5L clay steins. Naturally we went for the 1L, how could you not. It was heavy. Heavy enough that it was easier for me to drink it with two hands but hey, I'm a weakling.
Sitting under the trees with our giant beers we made friends with a guy from Salzburg. His English wasn't great but he could talk a lot about sports so it wasn't too bad. It is nice that Calgary had the Olympics in '88 because - although this doesn't help people my age - it means that most people actually know where it is. Well at least, when I say Calgary, the middle agers and up that I meet say "oh the olympics."
Eventually, from need of food and a bathroom we went inside to have a schnitzel. Not really sure what we were getting ourselves into we were both pleasantly surprised by the simple and tasty dish. We also started to notice that we were quite young for the crowd at the brewery. Seems like Austrian people our age didn't really think the brewery was that cool of a place to hang out. It was alright though, we made friends with some 60 something year old men at the next table. ha. Well really they tried to make friends. There were three of them but only one of them spoke any English and it wasn't very much.
It was entertaining because they just kept speaking German to us, giving us their food, and asking if we spoke Italian because they spoke perfect Italian. We figured out that one of them was a professor of economics and another had recently went on a Caribbean cruise. They served us their food and generally chatted at us while I laughed my head off at the oddity of it all. Wonderful.
We left the brewery for the city centre around 6:30 say to head back up the path we walked earlier in the day. We wanted to see the city with the sun shining on it instead of shining on us, this allowed for a few better pictures. Basically the rest of our time was wandering a little before realizing we needed to rush to catch the train back to Munich.
The train from Salzburg to Munich was great - I wish it had been a longer ride. We had our own compartment, most trains unless they are 1st class don't have compartments, and the seats reclined into an almost fully laying down state. We relaxed with an episode of True Blood - Tess is just getting into it.
We arrived in Munich with a little time to kill before getting on our overnight train to Utrecht where we would catch a train to Groningen.
The sleeper train was fine, better than the seat but I still didn't really like it. It was weird and not really comfortable. I woke up early because my back hurt and had to get up but then you don't really have a seat because you are only allotted a bed. So in this little compartment there are six beds stacked 3 and 3 with the top one being pretty high. It was alright but I prefer regular train riding. That said sleeping through the night makes the 13hrs spent on trains pass considerably faster and you get to wake up in a different country.
The next morning we met the German and Japanese guys who was in our compartment with us. The German guy tested solar bikes and cars in Australia every year for a few months. He seemed like quite a character.
We got back into Groningen late due to the train from Munich being slow and train troubles in the Netherlands. Basically I showered, got groceries, and worked on my two papers that were due today. Glad those are out of the way.
Recently we've been having some pretty amazing weather, mid 20s everyday and the heat sticks around all day. It is still nice and warm at 9pm every night. Makes staying inside to write papers a real punishment - well it is worse because my room faces the afternoon sun so it becomes a stuffy sauna. I tried to buy a cheap fan today but seemingly WalMart prices/products aren't really a thing here and the cheapest one I could find was 20euros.
This weekend I'm sticking around here. I think we're going to hang out in the city to see what it is like when it is nice and then some of us were thinking about biking to a lake that is near by on Sunday. This weekend is also Easter so I don't know if there'll be much going on downtown or not. Next weekend is Queen's Day - a celebration of the Queen's birthday, and then I'm going to meet my cousin to tour Berlin and Prague, then I'll be doing Vienna by myself for a few days before I head back to write a final for one of my classes.
Also - just put a bunch of pictures on fb so check there if you'd like to see what I'm talking about.
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