We had a nice and new Thanksgiving experience on Thursday. IES brought us all out to the outskirts of Vienna to Baden where we ate lots of pretty Americanish Thanksgiving food.
Now, the next day...Friday...we had planned to head to Salzburg for a day or two. We reserved a hostel in Salzburg for that Friday night but had not purchased any train tickets. Right before we left for Thanksgiving, the boys and I began talk of hitchhiking to the western city of Austria. Maybe I should leave out that "I" because it was really the boys who were considering it. Since there were five of us, they realized we'd have to split up into two groups; thus, the hitchhike turned into a hitchhiking race. Ordinarily, I'd be up for something this ridiculous but I was hesitant for a few legitimate reasons. The first was that the forecast was snow/rain in Vienna and Salzburg all weekend. The second was that we were going to attempt to find Gustav Mahler's summer house in the middle-of-nowhere-Austrian-countryside on Saturday. The third, well, for those of you who don't know, Salzburg is about 310 kilometers away from Vienna. Despite my doubts and little desire to hitchhike, the others were as excited as little schoolboys on a snow day.
Thursday night and early Friday morning were devoted to making "Salzburg" signs. Chris and I, the unmotivated group, took no part in making signs. About 7 hours later, we were up and about leaving 28 Liebhartsgasse. The others, Schweppe, Stones and Adam, were left in the apartment scrambling to get their stuff together. As we neared Wien Westbahnof, our plan was to take the fast train all the way to Salzburg. We didn't realize it until about half past 9, but we ran to buy tickets and we raaan to the train that....oooooh....was just pulling away. After a moment or two of despair, we started to think about the others, the troopers who were dead-set on hitchhiking across the country. We then went outside the train station and took a stab at hitchhikin'. After about a half hour of no success, I lost steam, but Chris did not. He kept at it until a blue Volkswagon pulled up. In it was an elderly couple. Seconds later, we were in their car heading toward Salzburg. How bout that? Unfortunately, I don't have much time at the moment I must start speeding this story up.
The couple was an Austrian/Italian one. Stefan was an Austrian economist and Maria was a shoemaker from Bari, Italy. They were lovely folks and it was a smooth and snowy ride.
Upon arrival in Salzburg, Chris and I sped walk to the hostel hoping the dudes didn't beat us there. They sure didn't. In fact, they were not even halfway there. Before Chris and I left to see the town, I ran out to purchase a few Ices to welcome our pals into the room. At around 6 or 7pm, they had arrived. They weren't too happy with the Ices but they were happy that we had all made the 300 km trek. That night was an early one after having a few snowball and pillow fights prior to our Italian dinner.
The next morning, we saw the city once more except this time it was as picturesque as can be. At around noon, we embarked on our journey to Mahler's summer house in the middle of the Austrian countryside. Perhaps it was my pessimistic ways, but I did not believe we were going to make it there with ease. I was dead wrong. It took just about two hours, one of which I spent listening to the music Mr. Mahler composed while at the very house we were soon to be standing outside of. The bus that we took dropped us off about 10 meters away from Mahler's front door.
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| Icing has recently become a theme of our daily life. Adam is our prime target. We got him as he slept on the bus, but thought it'd make for a nice picture with the Alpine mountains the background. |
After taking in the Mahlerian history surrounding us, our stomachs grumbled. The only problem was that we were truly in the middle of the Austrian countryside in the early winter when nothing is open. We asked a townswoman if anything was open. She let out a chuckle, but she also told us of the only place open - a restaurant that was 4 kilometers into the base of the Austrian Alps. We had almost four hours until our bus back so we started our walk. Early on in the walk, we met a woodsman - yes a woodsman. He was a man with lots of wood and an electronic saw. He asked (in German) if we'd like to help. As you can tell, our group is all about fun stories so we agreed instantly. His advice was to go eat and drink lots of wine, then come back and help him because we'd be much stronger. That sounded a-okay to us. The walk was just about as gorgeous as one can imagine. Just as we began regretting the decision to walk, we stumble upon the restaurant. I don't believe there were any pictures taken of it, but it was actually at the very base of the menacing snowy mountains. The food was delicious and the Glühwein was piping hot.
The snowy walk back was a little colder and much darker but still incredible. Somehow, we made the correct bus back to some Austrian town. There, we got on another bus filled with some Austrian countryside ghetto high schoolers, and this took us all the way back to another Austrian town where we hopped on the train to Vienna. Everything had worked perrrfectly. Aside from a few crazies on the train, our ride home was delightful and as music-nerdy as possible. If you'd like me to expand on the crazies, let me know. Nah...I'll expand on them right now:
The five of us got on the crowded train and were forced to search for five seats together. We soon gave up on that so Drew and Chris found two seats together. That left Adam, Stones, and I to find a few others. We found a compartment with a few empty seats, but Stones was pretty set on finding a completely free room. After a minute or two of settling into my semi-comfy seat, he called us into the compartment next door. In it, was one man. This one man smelled like fifty homeless people eating sardines and gorgonzola cheese in a sauna. But hey, it was too late to back out now. I sat one seat away from him hoping he wouldn't breathe on me too much. In his hand, he had a cheep Austrian beer can which he proceeded to chug. Within a few seconds, he was off talking (crazy crazy German) to Adam and I. Adam was a tired little boy at this point, so that left me to pay attention to this insane fellow. Even after he realized I had no idea what he was saying, he continued to babble on. I tried desperately to pick up any words I knew out of the cacophonous, incessant mishmash of sounds and noises that came out of his decaying mouth. When Stones returned from scoping out any free seats, he unfortunately had to sit right next to this crazy, crazy man. Luckily (unluckily), Stones has the most German out of all of us so he made a nice effort to figure out what this man was saying. All we could understand was that he was trying to tell us there was another man sitting in our compartment who was "crazy." This nutso man was telling us some other guy was crazy. That other man ended up coming in for a little bit - he did talk to himself a little bit, but that's fine compared to this gross, black-nailed Austrian. Stones took out a book to read, but our new friend continued his blathering. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, the ridiculous man and his less-ridiculous pal got there stuff together and left the train. Thank the Lord.
Back to the trip as a whole, listening to Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony could some our 36-hour adventure up...to an extent. For the real thing, just ask one of us. It was incredible.
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