The One With The Wild Berries

Hallo!

Due to the lack of wifi for the last three days, I haven't been able to upload any posts. I guess being in a tiny village in a valley in the middle of Austria doesn't provide you with very good reception. So I apologize that I'm uploading so many in a day, but that just gives you that much more to enjoy! ... right? This post will be three days in one, so prepare for an epic long post.

Side note that connects to the previous post: Remember how Garen and Brock wanted to lick everything in the Salt mines? They both got massive cold sores the day after. So if anyone else goes to the salt mines, DON'T LICK STUFF. I feel like that probably should be a general life rule as well... but you know. Better say it and be safe than sorry.

So the day after the salt mines and getting lost in the alps, we left Hallstatt (sad face for sure). We headed to Salzburg. We were only going to spend about five hours in Salzburg before we moved on to another town so we were all pretty excited to make those hours count. We arrived and took a tour through the main areas of Salzburg and saw a few of the famous places where "The Sound of Music" was filmed which was pretty fun. We also saw the oldest restaurant in Europe (it opened in 803), the oldest cemetery in Europe, and the oldest bookstore in Europe. Apparently a lot of old business are in Salzburg.



The day we were visiting Salzburg it was an anniversary for their founders/founding. It was basically like a giant carnival! They had rides, food, games, and everyone was dressed in traditional Austrian clothing which was really fun. However at this point, Delanie, Lizzy, Brock, and I started to realize how tired our muscles actually were from the hike from the day before. We had all started to feel it. We visited a few churches and ate some snacks by the river but we were happy to take it easy for a few hours.



After that we all packed back into the bus and headed to Hellbrunn Palace. For those of you that haven't been there, I won't ruin the surprise for you. But those of you that have been there will know how surprised I was when we took our tour. Our director gave us NO heads up whatsoever. It definitely wasn't what I thought it would be. Ha!



Right outside Hellburnn Palace is the gazebo from The Sound of Music! Of course we all had to take pictures with it.



We then drove to Dorfgastein, a very small village a little south from Salzburg. We went to bed soon after we got there. Here's a picture from our hotel room on that day:



The next day was a Sunday. It was also Dorgastein's Thanksgiving so they were going to have a special mass at the Catholic church and a parade afterwards. So we went to the mass. That was the first time I've ever been to a mass. I liked it... thought it was cool. Of course I didn't know what they were saying because it was all in German. And Garen leaning over every few minutes to ask what was going on definitely didn't help the confusion. But It was cool to see a way that people worship and what they are passionate about. I still love my church though. :)

The parade outside the small church was cute, they were all dressed up in their traditional clothing and just marched down the street to the band music. There was a gun fire at the end that made most of us jump out of our skin. So that made it exciting.



After that we all went back to our hotel rooms and changed into pants. We took a cable care up the mountain (like the very top) and I was absolutely blown away because of the view. It was incredible. There was also a restaurant at the top of the hill which I thought was pretty funny. I can't imagine because a worker for that and having to go up the cable care everyday for work. After we ate we had the decision to walk halfway down the mountain and take the cable car the rest of the way, or to walk the whole way. Garen, Brock, Delanie and I decided that we would walk the full way because, heck, we were in Austria and we didn't have any other plans that day anyway.



I think it's very important to point out now that this is just two days after our big hike in Hallstatt, which I was still pretty sore from and my muscles were still recovering.

We started our descent and we found blueberries and raspberries on the way which was really fun to have wild berries. (Don't worry we made sure they were safe to eat). Even though the decline was doing a number on my hips, knees, and toes, it was incredibly fun. Brock, Delanie and I had a good time laughing and making jokes with each other. I was the only one that successfully didn't fall down between the three of us, so that made for some laughs too. This was also the first time that I've ever had to duck under an electric fence during a hike too, so that made the hike even that more exciting.



Eventually we did make it down the mountain successfully after about 4 hours. Even though the hike was hard it was one of the best bonding experiences I've had thus far. We all headed to Lizzy, Delanie and my room after. There was about 12 people or so in our room and we decided that everyone needed a massage after the hours of hiking. So we all laughed, talked, and gave each other massages to try to release some of the tension that was building in our backs and heads.

The next day, on Monday, we went to the Ice Caves. These ice caves are the largest ice caves in the world. It was 700 stairs up and 700 stairs down. (Can we just talk about the state of our legs here... plus we had to hike to get to the ice caves, so there's that.) It was super cool though! The ice mountains in their were beautiful and incredible. I'm afraid it's one of those things you'd just have to see to really understand and I wasn't allowed to take pictures in there.



But for all of my fellow rexburgians, the cave itself was about at freezing point, and everyone was complaining about how cold they were, even after climbing all of those stairs. But after climbing those stairs I was ready to take my coat off! It was so hot! The only thing that was cold was my nose but I was fine everywhere else! I guess it pays off to be from a colder place, it builds your immunity to it.

After hiking back down from the ice caves we drove over to a castle near by. It was fun to be there. We saw a bird show then took a tour of the castle. I may be a little spoiled when it comes to castles because of the castles in England and Wales, because to me this one wasn't very impressive. However, it did have a bell in it that over 400 years old and weighed over 10,000 pounds! So that was pretty cool to see. It had survived both world wars which is very uncommon.


After that we went home to pack up our stuff and the next day we headed back to Vienna!

My internship starts tomorrow. I'm helping to plan an art show for the next four days or so and I'm so stoked about it! It will be a really great opportunity.

Wish me luck!

The One When We Got Lost In The Alps

Hallo!

Today has been another crazy full day, and A LOT OF WALKING. We started off the day with going to the salt mines. The Hallstatt salt mines are over 7000 years old! They’ve been mining salt out of it since then. And because salt preserves things, they’ve been able to find so many artifacts from as old as 1000 BC! So cool!

We took a cable car up the mountain and had to hike a bit to get to the entrance of the mine. We had to put “scrubs” on over our clothes so our clothes didn’t get ruined/dirty. We looked super stylish. After we were all dressed, we headed into the mine!

We walked down the passageway for the mine for a few minutes with this kind of creepy music that they had playing in the background. I’m not sure if they were trying to create a certain effect, but Brock, who was in front of me, said, “They really need to make this into a haunted house.” So that’s the kind of vibe it was giving. We got to the end and our tour guide told us a little about the history of the mine. It was really interesting and awesome to learn about! Especially since it wasn’t from a textbook, we were there experiencing it! Every so often, Brock and Garen would ask if they could lick the walls and if they’d taste like salt (Don’t worry, they did it… Multiple times).

They had these slides throughout the mine that would help miners get from one cavern to the next, we got to go down two! They were so fun! Some people got up to over 15 miles an hour, which is pretty crazy fast for a slide. The first one was about 25 Km long and the next was over 60km! So fun!

The whole experience was super awesome! I feel like I learned a lot, and it’s absolutely incredible what they have discovered in those mines. It has Europe’s oldest staircase dating back to 1100 BC. The salt had preserved the wood so it barely looks old! They’ve also found tools, clothing, shoes, etc. that have all been preserved.

We rode out of the mine on a little train, being college students, we decided to make it a massage train as well which was awesome. You can imagine a bunch of college students in a massage train… on a train. Epic.

We walked around the grounds of the mine for a bit, there were some incredible look out points. There was one that was a little scary to go on, but being there, you have to do it! Here are some pictures:



After we got down from the mountain, naturally we decided to climb back up another one. Our professor had told us about a waterfall about an hour out and some glacier pools that you could jump in if you want. So we got changed and set out.



There were a lot of forks in the road that we weren’t sure which way to go, so we made our best guess. … You can probably guess what happens. We ended up climbing straight up the mountain (no switchbacks) at a very intense incline. We had walked for about an hour before we questioned our direction. But we decided that it was too late to go back now so we continued forward. We came across BEAUTIFUL scenery. The incline was rough the the nature made it so worth it. We climbed all the way to the top of where the river started coming out of the mountain and decided to turn around (after taking a few pictures of course). The quote of the day for that hiking trip came from Brock who looked down into the valley, pointed to an open field saying “Look! They have a playground!” Then paused and added, “Wait… no. Those are sheep.” He had thought the sheep were children. #welcometoeurope



Before heading back down the mountain, Lizzy and Garen were determined to get into the water. We found a place that had calm enough waters and they put their feet in. They didn’t even last 30 seconds before they were out again with the reddest toes I’ve ever seen. They said that there was no way they were getting in, it was way too cold. After calling them pansies, Brock and Andrew tried. They both only lasted a minute at most.

Garen was still determined though, so he ventured back out and took off his shirt and attempted to get in, he only had sat down and decided it was too cold. He came back only to discover that he had forgotten his shirt on a rock. So, he went back out just to grab his shirt, but then surprised all of us when he fully submerged into the water!! Thankfully, I got a video of it, so we have evidence he actually did it. But he was pretty cold coming down.

The way down the mountain went a lot faster than on the way up, but I still know that I walked/hiked over 10 miles today, and I was checking the altitude and we had gone up 1000 feet from the bottom to the top of our hike! Crazy! I’m sad we missed that certain waterfall, but it was kind of fun to get lost in the alps and take our time looking at things.



You’d think that after that we’d go to our hotel room and crash, but no, we went out to tackle Hallstatt again. We wanted to go into the churches and see the Bone House, which is famous. We ate a quick dinner at one of the many restaurants and went to the bone house.

I honestly don’t know what to think about the bone house, it has over 1200 skulls in it. Like real people skulls. Each skull is decorated and has the name of the person who it had belonged to and the year they had died. Apparently it was started because they were running out of room in the graveyard, but they have basically stopped using it. The last one was put in in 1995, because the woman had requested for her bones to go there after she died. There was a weird feeling in the room that I’m not sure I liked. Pretty creepy. I’m glad to say I went there, but if I never went back to that house, I wouldn’t be mad/sad.



After all that, we finally went back to the hotel room and crashed. Ha! It was a good productive day, and Lizzy and I even did pushups at the end of the day! Haha! Love it.

I’m sad to leave Hallstatt because the last two days have been absolutely amazing, but I can’t wait to see what Salzburg and Dorfgastein has in store for us!!

Until next time!

The One With All The Silence

Hallo!

Wow! Today has been incredible. There were so many moving and beautiful things in today that I just can't even process all of them at once. Today started really early. We had to get up about 5am to get over to the institute by 6:45am. We packed all of our stuff and I just hoped I didn't forget anything (don't worry, I forgot stuff). We loaded up the busses and took off!

Our first stop was Mauthausen, a little town with a concentration camp/memorial in it. It was very moving. I was pretty nervous on going because I heard that so many people had such a hard time with concentration camps. It was really hard to see and know about how many innocent people died there (about 80,000 at this specific camp), but there was a sense of peace and reverence that I felt. I had the overwhelming feeling of how much Heavenly Father loved every single one of those people, his children. How sad it made him to see them suffer so greatly, but I think that most of them (if not all) are a lot happy now.



There were a few specific stories that were told around the camp that stood out to me. The first one consisted of about 500 people. They were all put into a certain part of the camp that was known as "The Death Block" because people died so quickly and readily there. They knew they were going to die soon. So they all came up with a plan to escape. They did it in the middle of the night, took out some guards, shorted out the electric fences with wet clothes and ran. Out of the 500 of them, only 11 survived. Eleven.



The next story was about three men that escaped from the camp. They too knew that they weren't going to live long in the camp so they might as well try to escape. They escaped with two bikes. If you do the math, that's not quite enough bikes. But those three men road those two bikes from Mauthausen to Poland. They all survived the journey.

It also blew my mind learning about some of the guards stories. One particular guard, after the end of WWII, he ripped out all the evidence in his journal about the camp and got rid of it. It wasn't until the 70s that he got caught and was sentenced to prison. It came out that he had murdered 51 specific named people, but he was responsible for over 1,500 gassings in the gas chamber. Absolutely horrible. I just don't understand.

It was really moving to see all the memorials, graves, flowers, and plaques for the people that lost their lives there. The camp was hard to see but we all had a sense of reverence about us after we left. Life is a precious gift, and we all could use a reminder.

After Mauthausen, we headed to Hallstatt. Hallstatt is a little village that was built on the side of a mountain by a lake. It hasn't expanded because there is literally no room to expand. It is a mining village with the oldest salt mines in the world, over 7000 years old. (which we will be going in tomorrow.)

We had to go through SO MANY tunnels through mountains to get to Hallstatt. It was a little scary on a huge tour bus but our bus driver was a champion and made it through. There was one point were he had to turn a very tight turn and the stop sign was less than an inch away from our bus, but he seemed to make it work. Haha! Champion.



The beauty of Hallstatt totally overtook all of us, we were all blown away. It's so hard to describe, it's definitely a village that everybody needs to see in your lifetime because I've never been to any place like it. The quaint little houses, the huge, steep, green, mountains, the clear lake, the old churches, just everything. It is so beautiful. Even our hotel view is absolutely beautiful.



When we had checked into our hotel, Lizzy, Delanie, Brock and I hurried out to explore Hallstatt. We started walking down the road and Brock noticed that they had boats shaped like Swans that you could rent for half an hour to an hour for just a few Euros... We had to do it. There were pedals in the swan for the two people in the front seat (Brock and I) and Lizzy and Delanie got to enjoy the view from the back. It was so fun! I'm sure my quads are going to be stiff tomorrow, but it was completely worth it to get a view on Hallstatt from the lake. So beautiful.



After that, we explored more. The cute buildings, shops and stores were so fun to look at and through. It was starting to be later in the day so all the churches and museums were closing but we still enjoyed looking around. We stopped to eat at one of the restaurants right next to the lake. It was expensive but it was so yummy! Below is a picture of our food (Deer, Fish, Schnitzel, and ... unknown. We still don't know what Lizzy's was.)



We walked up and down Hallstatt, visiting church sites, climbing SO MANY stairs (once again, my quads though) and taking in the views. There were multiple times that all four of us were staring into the lake and mountains in silence. We would do it for 15 minutes or so then go to the next sight. But there was definitely a lot of feeling of awe between us. This place is so incredible.



I'm back at the hotel now, and I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. I'm excited to explore Hallstatt even more, and to be back down a mine. (yay for claustrophobia! Ha! Just kidding, I'm sure it'll be fine).

I'm loving this!!