Dirndls and Climbing

This is my Dirndl. It is the traditional outfit of the area. Liederhosen would be the guy equivalent. I'm fairly certain every family owns at least two or three pairs. People thought I was a local when I wore it. It was awesome. I've gotten to the point where almost everywhere I go the people initially speak to me in German and only when I falter do they speak in English. It is pretty cool!

Eiskogel is the name of the mountain we climbed this weekend. It was the highest yet.

We left Salzburg at about 10 in the morning on Saturday and started climbing around 11:30. We made it to a hut called Aton-Prosch Haus at about 4pm where we stayed the night. The evening was so much fun! There were some Germans in the "restaurant" area (it was the bottom floor with tables set up) and we talked with them for a good 2 hrs. One of them could speak decent English, but would humor us and speak some German with us. It was great to just sit around, us college kids talking with the generation above us. The man that spoke decent english also knew a few Zauber (magic) tricks and they kept us entertained. He was definitely a hit at the bars back in his day : )

The stars were spectacular that night as well. We stayed outside for about 30 just looking at them and admiring the fact that the mountains on the horizon were the Alps, but the stars we were seeing everyone back home could see as well. We were able to pick out the Milky Way and the Big and Little Dipper!

The ten of us in the class all slept in the same room. It had a giant bunk bed in it. We shared a mattress on the bottom and everyone shared a mattress on the top, 5 and 5. It was like a giant slumber party until we realized we had to get up at 7:30 the next morning and hike.

Sunday morning we began the trek up the mountain to the summit. It was steep and rough going for a solid 3 hours. This mountain was definitely the most physically demanding. However, the view from the top was by far the best. The clouds gave us a little bit of grace and we could see some of the distant mountains. It was the farthest we have ever been able to see.
There was a guest book at the top! Yes, Leonard, Oklahoma will forever and always be in the history books of Eiskogel!

Fussball and Festival

We went to a Professional Soccer game! The guy that owns Red Bull lives right outside of Salzburg and owns the Fussball (soccer) and Ice Hockey teams, so we rooted for the Salzburg Bulls. Their colors: red and white. The game was a blast! There was rowdy a section that was standing up and cheering in German the whole time. The opposing teams fans were sitting behind a net and we found out later that it was because at a previous game fireworks had been shot off by the opposing fans.

Today is St. Rupirts Day. It was a holiday for all of the kids and there is a big festival going on. It reminds me a little bit of the Green Corn Festival back in the day when there were a lot of rides and more than a few booths.

Leopoldskron

This is Leopoldskron, the place. Leopoldskronweiher is the lake/pond that is reflecting the house. In the background you can see the castle/fortress that is located in the main part of town. This incredible view is where I was trying to study yesterday. It is about 5 min from our house and I love just looking at it!

I am an official European, because I have a basket on my bicycle!

Zwoelferhorn

This hike was a total of 4 miles and a lot steeper than yesterday. It was more physically demanding, but it felt more rewarding making it to the top! It wasn't even as tall, just a lot harder to get up.This is the group within the big group that I hiked up with.

Kara, Jordan, me, Tim, Chris

We all walked at about the same pace. At the time of taking the picture we were in a cloud. It had been really hot climbing up, but when the cloud passed over it dropped a good 20 degrees instantly.

This isn't quite at the top, but is one of the best views I have. The cloud kind of made taking pictures a little difficult.

So far I've decided that I want to become a bum and summit every peak in the Alps. Ok, maybe not every one, but hiking up these mountains has been unreal. The view is spectacular not just from the top, but all of the trees and flowers and random stuff on the way up. To just be able to go climb on the peaks when every you feel like it. These people are so lucky! I can't wait until next weekend to see the next challenge.

An update on the bikes: They are awesome. It makes getting around a little easier, because we don't have to go by the bus schedule. I went to the Billa, local grocery store, and bought some chocolate and an apple juice spritzer, apple juice and mineral water, and then headed to the Leopoldkronesweiher. It is a pond near our house. The house that is on the pond is the one in the Sound of Music. As I sat there I considered taking up painting. The trees surrounding the house were being reflected in the water and the sun was hitting the house just right. It was so cool to just look at and admire. The mental image will be there forever. It made reading for class very difficult. I haven't figured out how people get anything done here. With the Alps and the beautiful scenery there are so many other things to do.

Eisriesen Welt

Today we hiked to the worlds largest ice cave! We started the morning off by meeting at the train station. The joke of the semester is how we just show up place and somehow we always wind up going some where. So your instructions were to meet in the main area of the train station at 7:50 in the morning. All ten of us are there by 7:30, but our instructor is not. It gets to be 7:45 and we are a little worried, but eventually he made it. It was then another hourish train ride. It was cool, b/c we got to go past part of the river we rafted on. When we got off the train it was another 30 min bus ride about half way up the mountain. From this point it took us 2 1/2 hrs to hike up to the path that lead to the ice caves. A total of close to 3 hrs to just get to the caves. However, the weather was amazing, the sun shone all day! And the view, I hope the pictures can show even half of what the Alps looked like. It literally took your breath away to see such a beautiful landscape! The ice caves themselves were just as amazing. We walked inside the mountain into darkness, thank goodness for the old school lamps that you could shine on the different parts of the ice walls and structures. The song that kept going through my head was "Shine your light and let the whole world see. Singin' for the glory of the Risen King! Jesus, shine your light!" Once we got out of the caves back into the sun light the song was, "Into marvelous light I'm running."

Today was truly a great day! I couldn't imagine spending it any other way. The people are fun, the scenery breath taking and hiking is just fun in general!

Pictures from Rafting

The story: Our guide thought it would be absolutely hilarious if all of would rush to the front of the raft. Us just enjoying the ride thought this was just a way to enjoy it even more. Little did we know that we were coming up on a giant wave. With all 5 of us in the front of the raft we hit the wave and it completely covered us (image 2). Our instructor was in the back of the raft just laughing, he thought it was so funny. After the initial shock of having freezing cold water soak us, we found it almost as funny : ) If you notice we aren't even visible in the second image. The wave completed consumed us!

A Bike!!!

I know have a bike!

Our host family found some bikes for us. They are old 1970s models and they have bells and lights. Both are required to ride a bike or you can get fined. The light is really cool, the power to make it turn on is from pedalling, so no batteries required. Our first adventure was going into town this evening. It was great! The evening temperature was perfect for a bike ride. And it made a 20 min bus ride a 15 min bike ride. The town has opened for me! I can't wait to start exploring the town even more on my bike.

I hope everyone is doing great back home!

Foehn

Funny story:

In Understanding Austria we actually discussed why today was so sunny and why the mountains were glowing. Our teacher used that exact term almost exactly how I described it. It is the actual term the book uses, believe it or not. It is called Foehn, there is no English translation, because it doesn't really happen in America. It is a fall wind that brings dry warm air across the Alps from southern Europe. It is suppose to have an actual physical affect on people and doctors refuse to perform surgery on these days!

The View

I woke up this morning with the sun shining through the windows only to look out and see it glowing on the mountains out my window. For the last 3 or 4 days it has been cloudy and gloomy outside. Still beautiful to look at, but the clouds were low enough you couldn't really see the mountains. So this morning it was a wonderful surprise to wake up and be able to see them. So I decided to share with you what I saw! : )

Random pictures

The first image is hiking and the second image is me with Leona. She is the daughter of my host family. We love legos!

This is my room : ) With a view of the Alps!

Rafting

Today: Sunday

We went rafting on the Salzach. This is the river that flows through Salzburg, but we went about 50 kilometers north. Our guides for the day were typical college age guys that enjoy extreme sports. Dreads and looking like they had been out all night. When we made it into the river they were amazing and really knew the river. It was a class 3, which means there were some rapids, but all were managable. It made it fun and a little more challenging than rafting down the Illinious. The atmosphere of the group was about the same though. We had splash wars and nicknamed one of the other rafts the pirates, because everytime they got close they tried to knock one of us off of the raft. At one point in time the guide on our raft had all of us rush to the front of the raft and lay out like we were looking out, so we did. At that exact moment we went down and this giant "wave" came crashing over the raft and all we can hear is him laughing. The whole purpose of us doing that was to get us completely and utterly soaked. It was hilarious!

There were ten of us from Salzburg College, we had two rafts and a group of Austrians that had another raft. The three rafts stayed together for the 2 hr trip. The outside air temperature was less than 20 celcius, so roughly 70 f. We wore wetsuits which definetly helped, but the water was still like ice when you got in. And get in we did, willingly and sometimes not : ) There was one place in the river that had a giant rock sticking out and we all took turns jumping off into the water. Cannonball!!!

The most unusual part of the day was when we got out of the water. They had us take all of our gear off, helmets, lifejackets, outerjacket and actual wetsuit and put them in an organized fashion in the rafts to be taken back to their storage area. It was a good thing we had swimsuits on, because that was all we had left on... We felt very European as we changed into dry clothes in the parking lot behind towels. Girls on one side and guys on the other. We somehow managed.

The view was spectacular. The river was in a valley with mountains all around. At times there was a fog over the river and it felt like we were in Lord of the Rings. So not only was the river fun to raft we had the most amazing view as well.

The most unusual day, aka Salzkammergut

The first image is from the Wolfgang See. It is the lake we visited and the second image is the Rauchenhaus or the smoke house.

All week long our main professor, headmistress if you will, Dr. K has been hyping up the field trip we will be taking on Saturday. She keeps telling us to wear good shoes and warm clothes and to have our host familes pack us a lunch, because we will be hiking in the Salzkammergut. This is a region in the Alps near Salzburg. So Sat morning comes and we all make it to the bus at 9am sharp like we are told expecting to go hiking arounds some mountains with lakes at the bottom. One of our other professors is there, she counts to make sure everyone is there and tells us to have a wonderful time and there will be someone to meet us at the first stop. So it is us 25 and our bus driver Eddie. Eddie is the most amazing bus driver ever. Mom he gives the guy we had on the tour with Frau a run for his money. He owns the rode and can drive a bus anywhere anyday. So we make it to the first town and are just hanging out on the bus debating whether we should take our lunch, how long we will be here and where in the world the hill we are hiking is. The woman who is to be our guide for the day turns out to be one of the German teachers at the school. She informs us we will only be at this stop for an hour and to just grab our jackets. We ended up going to a church that is in the Sound of Music and up to a house build ages ago. The cool thing about the house is that it has no chimney and when you light a fire the whole house fills up with smoke. Not sure how that works out for the people living in it though.

On the bus again. The second town we head to is right on a lake, our guide informs us not to eat at the Weissen Rosl, because it is a famous restaraunt and tourist trap and that we need to be back on the bus in 2 hours. By this time we have realized that this is not a hiking trip and that we have been highly missinformed. We are also beginning to wonder if we missed an assignment. None of us could remember hearing about one, but we felt there was something we were suppose to be doing besides just wandering around. The lake was beautiful and we wished we'd had time to take one of the ferries around the lake. The mountains all around were covered by clouds, but be could still see a few of the shorter closer ones.

The last stop of the day brought us to Bad Ischl. This was the summer home of the Emporer and his famous wife Sisi. Only later after talking with my host family did I find out he was a Habsburg. The Habsburg's before WWI were one of the most wealth and prominent families in the area. They owned most of what we know today as Austria, Hungry and the Slovania area. The famous Emperor ruled from the end of the 1800s up until he was defeated in WWI. Not very long ago for Austrian history. Most of the things we have seen have been hundreds of years old not just a few decades.

Overall, the day was nice and relaxing, we just never knew quit what was going on. Our tourguide expected us to have known things about the cities. We didn't know a thing so we just wandered. We were laughing later that we put a lot of trust in these people to just hop on a bus with Eddie.

Day 2 of Class

In Austria you have to register with the city if you are staying longer than for a vaction. To do this you have to fill out a form and take it to a specific building in town. Schloss Mirabell is pretty much a municipal building, and in Austria and Germany you have to have a municipal wedding and then if you so choose can have a nice fancy wedding in the church. Being a municipal building, just a pretty place in general and 9.9.09 it was a popular place for weddings, 36 to be exact. A service every 15 min. It was a pretty crazy place to be.

I had International Public Relations today and I'm pretty sure this class is going to be very interesting, but a lot of work. We have a paper due almost every week. However, we will be taking field trips and PR is a form of Marketing and I'm a Mktg major this stuff is interesting.

Lunch was amazing as always! We nickname the food Austrian enchiladas, because that was what they resembled, but we weren't 100% sure what it was besides delicious.

Intercultural Communication: Not sure what to think. This also will be interesting and on the plus side not much work. The instructor has been to over 40 countries and lived in Asia for a while. He seems like he knows his stuff.

When I got home this afternoon I played Lego's with Leona and then we worked on a puzzle. Since she is 4 we can kind of communicate. She is teaching me knew German words. I also helped make dinner! It was really cool, because I was learning German words and how to add flavor to health food.

Day 1 of Class

I had my first day of class today. My only class was Understanding Austria and we have 4 long books to read by the end of the semester : (

Then lunch! and a breif meeting with my hiking and rafting instructor. He speaks little English and with a thick German accent. He is a legit lumberjack!

Afterwards a group of us walked around the city b/c the boys wanted beer. Mind you it was 3:30 in the afternoon and they had a specific pub in mind. It took walking up to the castle/fortress and then back down and realizing we turned a 10 min walk into a 30 min excursion, but we eventually made it to Stiegl Keller. Stiegl is the local beer and Keller means basement, however, we were on the roof of the building : ) We were able to have a table that overlooked the city and the view was amazing. Moments like these are amazing, sitting around with good friends laughing and joking and looking around at a beautiful old city. It takes your breath away sometimes, but in a good way!

I went for a run yesterday afternoon, because the weather is fantastic, shorts and a t-shirt are perfect, a light jacket in the mornings and evenings. My run took me across an open field that was a straight shot view of the mountains with nothing in the way and then down a local street with kids playing, elderly people chatting and goats in someones front yard!

Tomorrow my host mom is going to start showing me how she cooks some of her food. We are just making spaghetti, but if her sauce tastes like the rest of her food when I get home everyone will want me to make it for them. lol I found out today she also makes her own apricot jam! no wonder it tasted so good

Since writing last I have met my host family! They are younger with a 15 month old boy and a 4 year old girl. She is going to teach me more Germany than anything else on this trip. We went through an ABC book yesterday and I could read the instructions well enough that we could do the activities together. It was so much fun!

My family also took us hiking in Germany. It was about a 30 min car ride. We packed lunch and hiked up to a small building used as a summer cottage for the king of Bavaria ages ago. It was a lot of fun and felt like a European thing to do!

All of the food has been amazing so far! Breakfast is awesome, Muesli is like a granola type mix with dried fruit and sometimes chocolate bits and you mix it with a little yoghurt or milk and enjoy! Bread and cheese are also a staple as well.

We had orientation today, so we spent a few hours learning about what our class schedules and days will be like and then the college serves lunch every week day. Schpatzel and Schnitzel and Apfel Strudel for dessert!

Afterwards we toured the city and saw some places that are more local than just the main tourist attractions. Afterwards a few of us girls went out on our own to look around and get some snacks. We ended up sitting outside a coffee house and watching the people and talking about our expectations for class. We all hope there isn't a lot of homework. It's weird to think I'm actually sitting in Austria sometimes and not just at home. But then you look out and all you see are old buildings cramed next to each other and cobblestone streets and in the distance a mountain range and the people next to you on either side are not speaking english and I realize, yeah, I'm really here! Couldn't ask for anything more!

Day 2 video: TBA

Day 1 & 2 Videos

This is short, but sums up the first day.

I'm not a great video recorder, but later videos are getting steadier.

I wanted to put music to this, but all my music is mp4 and movie maker is only compatible with mp3, so maybe later I'll figure out how to change them.

There are many more side stories than what I wrote, but it was long enough as it is.

So far

So far...

Day 1: Both flights were great. We arrived early in Chicago and left on time for Frankfurt. On the flight to Frankfurt I sat next to a couple that had lived in Germany for a few years and they were very nice to talk to and let me have the window seat. It was so cool to fly over Europe and see the lights from all the cities. Our plane landed right on time and I made it through the airport and through customs easily. I was actually the only one going through customs at the time. The airport was almost deserted at 7 am. I got my bags and headed to the meeting area. Once there I got my stuff on the bus and started talking to the kids already there. I was so worried about not getting there on time for nothing. We didn't even leave the airport until a little after 9. And we drove to Cologne, Germany. This town is awesome. It has a giant cathedral and a lot of Roman ruins. The first day there we just walked around and looked in the windows and had a beer. The local beer is Kolsh, which is also the dialect of the area, so the joke is that its the only language you can speak and drink. That night we were all pretty tired, so we just hung out until about 10 and went to bed.

There are 24 of us in the program 18 girls and 6 guys from all over the US. We all have gotten along really well so far.

Day 2: We started off with a tour of the city through the biggest catholic church and a lot of Roman ruins from the 1st (ish) century. Then lunch. Afterwords we toured the Dom (cathedral) it is larger than Notre Dame and is the resting place of the 3 wisemen. We got to walk up one of the towers and get a birds eye view of the town and then some free time before dinner. I headed off with one of the girls, Amy, to look around...and we got incredibly lost! We wondered around Cologne on our great adventure for a few hours and saw some of the coolest stuff. We loved it! Later that evening a group of us headed out to enjoy the local entertainment : )

Day 3: An early morning and off to Bonn. There we went through a museum of the history of modern Germany. Then to Worms...make sure you roll the "r" as you say it. There we had toured a Jewish synogogue and cemetary with tombstones dating back to the 10th century. After Worms we drove to Heidelberg to stay the night. Our hostel was right next to the zoo and we got to see all kinds of animals from our windows. It was also very far from the altstadt (old town) where all the touristy things are. So our first adventure on the public transportation. It turns out I've been to Heidelberg and didn't remember until we got there. It has a huge castle over looking the town and when I came to Germany in high school we visited the castle. When the group of us from Salzburg go into town we stick out as Americans. We are loud, because we are enjoying ourselves and being in another country. So far we have decided that this week since we are touring we will just except the fact that we are tourists and not care that we acting like it. When we get to Salzburg we can try and acclimate ourselves more. Because of this we met another group of Americans studying at Heidelberg and spent some time talking with them.

Day 4: We toured the castle and some of the old city. Heidelberg was for the most part not destroyed by WWII. Most cities in Germany were demolished after the war and have since been rebuilt. So most of what you see when you go is new cities built with old rocks. However, Heidelberg was spared and most of the buildings are still standing in their original form. It started raining on us on our drive to Rothenburg, so we only stayed long enough to walk to the main square and back to the bus. The rain was nice though, it was more like a mist and it wasn't freezing cold nor did it make it hot and sticky. We arrived in Nurnberg just a few hours ago. Nurnberg is where many of the trials after WWII took place (I'll know more tomorrow). So far this evening I've had dinner a kaffee and the internet. It's been a slow evening compared to the last few. However, I figured ya'll needed to know what I've been up to.

I also found out that the school is a little different than I first thought. It will only be the 24 of us taking class together, so basically there will be about 7 people in each class. I'm not really sure how I feel about this, I've never had such a small class in college.

The host family situation: Most people are staying in a double situation. I'll be with Amy in a third story loft with a balcony, bay windows, a great view and our own bathroom. The family is younger with two kids 4 and 1 1/2. The mom stays home and the dad works for Sony. They are suppose to know a good bit of German, but are ready to challenge our German skills as well. They are a little farther from the school, but only about a 10 min bus ride. I'll meet them tomorrow evening and should have wifi from then on out, but we'll see if the house really does or not.

So far the best part of the trip has been getting to know everyone. We all come from different places and have different personalities, but it works so far. We can all just sit around and talk and laugh and have a great time. I am known for my laugh and it's been heard a lot on this trip.

I can't wait to see what else there will be to come!