Salzburg - the city of salt

(9/09/2010) Salt mines, birds of prey show at the castle, and hike to see the river.

On Thursday we went on tour to the Salzkammergut.  First, we visited the salt mines.  At the salt mines we had to wear big white shirts and pants.  It looked like we were wearing giant white jump suits or members of the KKK when we put on our hoods.  We all lined up and sat on this long train bench.  We rode underground for a while before we got off and walked in the tunnel.  We had a funny tour guide who told us how they used to work the salt mines and all this other stuff.  At the end of the tour we got little containers of salt to keep.  When we had free time at the salt mines we played around on a playground and looked at little huts in a Celtic village. 

          After the salt mines we went to a castle.  While waiting for the tour to start people tried using the stilts.  Jamie and Erin were actually really good at walking with the stilts.  I tried it, but I couldn’t stand on them for more than 3 seconds.  We went on a tour of the castle and afterwards saw a birds of prey show.  The show was all in German and I was really tired so I couldn’t focus.  The trainers were dressed as Robin Hood and then they would let the bird fly around the castle.  There was one super huge bird that was actually interesting to watch and they had a bald eagle, but all the other birds were really small.  On the way back from the Salzkammergut we stopped the bus and went on a tiny hike to see a part of the river that had lots of rapids.  It looked like it could have been about class 3 or 4, I actually don’t know.  But I could clearly see the “V” in the river, which I learned about when I first started kayaking.  I was super exhausted from the scavenger hunt the day before and from all the touring that I just went to bed super early that night.

Salzburg at last

I've only been in Salzburg for a week, but it already feels like I'm been living here for months.  Salzburg is absolutely amazing.  The flight over was very long, but I was asleep for most of it.  I think the longest I stayed awake was for two hours to watch the movie on the flight from SF to D.C.  On one of the lay overs a bunch of us played cards, so that was a really fun to get to know the others.  Landing in Salzburg was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.   The view was incredible, we were surrounded by the Alps and the land was just so green.  Landing in San Jose or Oakland is nothing compared to this.  On the bus we were given chocolate Mozart balls, which the driver joked about an called them our bus tickets.  When we first got to the center we had a short orientation meeting with the director, Rene Horcicka.  He told us a few general rules of the center and then gave us our rooms.  My roommate for this year is Jamie Jakstis.  She was in my german class last year and she's super nice.  Jamie and I have a room on the 3rd floor of the main building.  We have our own little balcony that looks over the courtyard.  The room is the same set up as everyone else's, but it's still really cute.  I really feel like I did not bring enough clothes though because my closet and shelves have tons of empty space.  It's also really hard to decide what to wear because I only have about eight choices.   

(9/08/2010) Lunch at the cafeteria, Scavenger hunt in the city, and karaoke night at O’Malley’s

The second day we ate lunch at the Salzburg AG, which is a big cafeteria that serves all these Austrian business people who work there.  I ate the schnitzel and soup for lunch and it was really good, way better than the commons ever was.  After lunch we went on a scavenger hunt throughout the city.  That was our first opportunity to really explore Salzburg.  We walked all around the old town taking pictures of places like Mozart’s Geburtshaus (birthplace) and the old churches.  We walked everywhere around the city and after about 3 hours of walking my feet really hurt.  But in the end it was all worth it because my group won and we got chocolate balls.  That night was also the first night the whole group went out together.  We all went to O’Malley’s, an Irish pub across the river, for karaoke night.  The non-smoking section was mostly filled with UP students, but we did also meet a couple students from Redlands too.  Karaoke night was really fun; everyone was singing and dancing.  They even played a Spice Girls song, which was awesome.  It was just a great night because all of us were there together.

Auf Wiedersehen America!

Hello friends :)
So this is going to be my blog about all the adventures I'll have in Salzburg and all over the rest of Europe.  I don't know how good I'll be at updating blogs, but I'm going to try my hardest.  It'll be pretty hard for me to stay in contact with everyone over the next year so hopefully this will allow us to stay somewhat connected.  Well here it goes, enjoy!

The last couple of weeks I've been (somewhat) focused on getting everything together for Salzburg.  It was pretty exhausting work.  I'm pretty sure I've gone shopping everyday for the last two weeks.  I probably set a record number of visits to the mall.  Buying new clothes was really nice, it just made it so much harder to pack everything.  When I first started packing it really wasn't that hard.  I though packing my stuff up to leave Portland last year was really difficult.  As my UP friends know I had tons of extra stuff then.  But this time I just looked in my closet, took out what I wanted to bring, and then put it by my suitcase.  Well the hard part came when I had to eliminate clothes.  Oh it was so painful! It took me about 2 hours to decide which two shirts to take out and I had to cut back from 13 pairs of shoes to only 6.  The space really wasn't even a problem for me.  I used space bags and they were miracle workers, I just wish they could eliminate the weight.  Once I had packed everything in it was only 5 lbs overweight, and again I had to make more sacrifices with my clothes.  I finally got my suitcase to weigh 45 lbs and I hope that in the next 4 hours before I leave that I do not add anything.  I'm waking up at 4:00am tomorrow to leave for SFO.  From San Francisco I'll fly to Washington D.C. and then to Vienna and finally take a flight from Vienna to Salzburg arriving at 11:20am Wednesday!

I'm super excited for the adventure that's ahead and I'll miss you all!