Road Trips!

Hallo!

School has started so as you can imagine, I'm a bit more busy than I was at the beginning on my European adventure. They school system here is very different than the system back home, and I am still not used to it. To give you an idea...back home I take five courses for one semester and my weekly schedule is the same for those four months. Here at Fachhochule Salzburg I am taking ten courses that all start at different times, are different lengths and at different times. So this week I only had class on Monday and Friday, next week I only have class on Tuesday and Thursday and the following week I don't have any class! To say the least... it is very different and hard to get into a routine.

For one of my courses, we went on a field trip to a few nearby villages. If you have ever looked into skiing/snowboarding in Austria you must of heard of Bad Gastein. This is where we went for our field trip :) It is one hour south of Salzburg and has two villages before it, Dorfgastein and Bad Hofgastein, which each have their own mountain. But Bad Gastein is the biggest of the three! It was so incredibly beautiful.

One view of the village of Bad Gastein. You can see how the valley shapes this village. The weather was phenomenal! 

The village itself amazed me with its unique architecture, the waterfall in the centre of the village, and the character that each street and building had. Bad Gastein is not new by any means, so there are some issues that the village is struggling with (which is what my assignment is about!), but I was still in awe of the entire village. Bad Gastein has a unique feature, with their thermal springs. If you were to put your hand over a manhole in the middle of the street, you can feel the hot air pressure. It's so interesting! Bad Gastein is very well known for their health and wellness treatments, with a couple spas located underground that use the combination of radon, heat and alpine elevations to cure diseases and conditions of all sorts. Doctors will actually give you a prescription to go sit in this one 'spa', once or twice a week for a couple months. I think it would be interesting to see this village in five or ten years, to see what changes have been made and the progress that has been made.


I haven't done nearly as interesting things as my first few weeks here, but one thing that was personally interesting was going to a hockey game! It is not that common here, and it is usually the younger leagues that people watch. I went to a playoff game with Salzburg and another Austrian team playing. Of course, Salzburg won!! I was so happy to go, it made me feel a little bit closer to home. I went with a group of the incomings, and for some of them this was their FIRST hockey game. I couldn't believe it. So they were all very excited when a tiny fight broke out or if there was a good hit, all you could hear were the cheering and rantings of the incomings :) One new mini-experience was we were right at the front, right by the glass! I guess in Europe, you can get cheaper tickets if you want to stand. And the bleachers to stand in are right at the glass! I was pretty excited about that!

Not the best picture...but it gives you an idea of how close we were! The Salzburg team is called "The RedBulls" (go figure) 

Another adventure within the past couple of weeks was a road trip to St. Gilgen Wolfgangsee! We first made a stop in a village on the way to Wolfgangsee, called Fuschl. Fuschl is basically owned by Red Bull (well... the guy who owns Red Bull). The headquarters are located in Fuschl, and we walked around the headquarters, I don't think we were supposed to...but there were no fences or signs or anything! We were curious! The building looked like a very luxurious spa...but no, it was offices. Complete with a massive uniquely structured fountain and a whole garden that you have to walk through to get to the entrance. As well as a man made pond/lake surrounding the front of the building with sculptures of bulls running out (or into) the building. When we went inside one of the 'office' buildings we asked if we could look around and take pictures. The receptionist very politely said "Oh I am very sorry these are closed to the public, but would you like a Red Bull?" Ahhh yes. Yes I would.

Red Bull Headquarters in Fuschl, Austria. You can see the sculpture of the bulls running out of the building! This small village is almost completely owned by the owner of Red Bull. 

After Fuschl, we headed to St. Gilgen - Wolfgangsee which is about an hour east of Salzburg. There are seven lakes within the area, and we took the gondola up the mountain and then went for a mini hike. The view was outstanding! (Again, we had perfect weather). I was told its a huge tourist attraction in the summer, and it is very crowded, so I am happy I went earlier! Once we took a break at the top of the mountain we hiked back down, had my favourite dessert kaiserschmarrn (STILL SO GOOD) and enjoyed the view for a bit. The view was so perfect, almost too perfect. It was one of those "is this real?" moments.

View from the top of a mountain looking down on Wolfgangsee in St. Gilgen. Just one of the seven surrounding lakes! 

After taking the gondola to the bottom we went for a little drive to the village of Hallstatt. This village was actually 'copied' and rebuilt in China, so there are a lot of tourists that come from Asia to come see the real deal. This village is right on the lake, with wooden and brick houses along the shoreline. As we climbed the many many cement steps that are as wide as your foot, with vines running along the railings and up every house side, and almost every house having a tiny hand crafted walkway from the top floor window to the ground for the cat to come and go as it wishes...it was hard to believe what I was experiencing. You could never capture the full essence of elegance and character of this village in a photo. It was outstanding. I tried to capture it...but my photos just don't do it justice!!

Village of Hallstatt. As you can see, my picture does not do this beautiful magical village justice. It was too perfect to be captured in a photo. 

That about sums it up...besides the fact that I'm slowly getting more and more freckles as the sun starts to shine. More freckles makes me happy. I'm also slowly learning German, through tandem learning sessions. Tandem learning is when I meet with a partner, usually once a week, and we learn the others language; I learn German and my partner improves his English. Win-win!! I am learning just the basics that I need to have a very casual and short conversation with people.

I will try my best to have an exciting week to make my blog a little more interesting next time!! With Easter break coming up I'm sure I won't have any problems doing just that. I think that's all I can come up with for now folks.

And as always, I thank my family and friends for the endless support and love. So, till next time...

Tschüss!

Hello Germany! Adventure to Köln and Berlin

Hallo!

It's been a while since my last post, and oh my goodness... I have done so much! I had my first trip while in Europe, ending up in Germany. I flew to Köln (us North Americans know it as Cologne) to see a friend I met at Thompson Rivers University as well as partake in the annual event Karneval. The best way I can describe Karneval is a mix between Canada Day and Halloween. Everyone - and I mean everyone - is dressed up in all different types of costumes, including the traditional dirndl to full body gorilla suits. Since Europeans don't celebrate Halloween to the extent we do in North America, this was their time to dress up. Karneval actually starts in November, and on weekends there will be mini-events. But the weekend that I was in Köln was the biggest weekend of all. I arrived on Thursday March 27th and that was just the beginning of the 5 day city-wide event. (It also takes place in the surrounding villages outside of Köln). It was an amazing experience and I don't think I will ever experience something like it again. This event was a real awakening into the European 'party' culture. Being able to drink on the streets and trains, and clubs staying open till 9AM was all VERY new to me. Coming from Canada where you cant have an open liquor bottle outside a licensed establishment and you have to go home at 3AM latest. To say the least - I had SO MUCH FUN. I don't want to get into details that may worry family and friends...but it was just a lot of fun :) Just know that I'm safe and back in Salzburg!

Now, I didn't just drink and party for the five days I was in Köln, I actually got to see the city and surrounding areas too! From inside the city to the countryside, the scenery was so picturesque and so unbelievably gorgeous, everything was green and lush and quite incredible. I also went on the infamous Autobahn, as it was the main highway to take from the airport to my friends house I was staying at. It is quite fun to not have a speed limit...why isn't this in Canada?! One of the weirdest thing I experienced while in Köln was probably going to a Australian Outback restaurant for dinner, complete with kangaroos and wallabies outside in a fenced in area. Unfortunately, the kangaroos and wallabies were not there since it is too cold outside (where do they go for the winter?!), but I hear they are very cute! You are also able to order kangaroo meat from this restaurant. I was not brave enough to try kangaroo meat and I doubt I will regret that decision.

Friends in Köln! Nico (left) is the friend I met at TRU, when he was studying abroad in Kamloops. And his friend Patrik on the right. This gives you a bit of an idea of the costumes in Karneval! And you can kind of see my traditional dirndl.

After a great visit in Köln, it was time to relocate to Berlin...

A large portion of my time in Berlin was taken up by the International Tourism Berlin (ITB) Conference. It is the largest tourism expo in the world, and it had exhibitors from literally every single country in the world. (Canada took up a good chunk of space but it wasn't that great and they could have done better!)  This conference was part of a class I am taking in Salzburg. It was a really nice way to become aware of current issues and events in the tourism industry, as well as what the up and coming markets and products are. I mostly attended the lectures, but if you were working int he industry then it was a great time to network and schedule meetings with other businesses. It was a great experience for students though! As a student, you can only get so much out of a business conference that was set up the way ITB was.

One interesting point of our Berlin class trip was that we got to visit the Berlin (BER) airport. This airport has a huge back story (if you have time to google it...do it). This airport is supposed to be the largest airport in Europe, and was supposed to open in 2012 but has failed to open so far. Supposedly due to "fire regulation issues". But with this airport costing 5 billion euro (YES billion) so far, and it costing 1 million euro per week to maintain its current status, you can only think that there has to be more than fire regulation issues. And even the soft-opening date is unknown...who knows if it will ever open! One bonus of the airport being closed, is we got to stand on the runway! It was pretty cool to walk the runway...probably the only runway I will ever be on! hehehe

Standing on the BER Airport runway! Can't fly away yet....

After the conference was complete, we had to see the rest of Berlin! We hit up all the typical touristy places, and it was all so amazing. There is just so much history, too much to take in. Hearing all the history was fascinating, depressing, unimaginable and so surreal. Sites such as the Jewish memorials and the Berlin Wall death strip were so surreal. It is hard to explain it otherwise. The East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall is a favourite attraction amongst the tourists, as well as locals. The local artists work on the wall turns this wall into more than a structure with history, and into a symbol of positive change. This stretch of wall continues for 1.4KM and is covered in amazing art work.

Me in front of my favourite segment of the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery!

The list of attractions we saw seems endless, and I could write forever about each one as it is all so beautiful and unique in its own way. Other sites we visited included Checkpoint Charlie, Hitlers Bunker, Brandenburger (The Gate), Knzerthaus Berlin and Humboldt University, and more!
It was interesting to find out that Albert Einstein actually attended Humboldt Universtät. There have been around 70 Nobel prize winners, and countless nominees that have graduated from this University. 

Some of the group that were in Berlin! We got our 15 seconds of fame standing on the red carpet leading into the Knzerthaus (concert hall) in Berlin. 

After an amazing ten day trip, I was ready to come back to Salzburg and get into school. After being out of classes for almost three months and the classes just beginning, I look forward to getting back into the classroom and learning new things within the tourism industry!

I am so grateful to be able to travel and have such amazing support from back home. I could not have had the courage or the ability to do this trip without the incredible love and support from my family and friends, so thank you to all those who are close to my heart! I miss all of you dearly! <3

Until next time...Auf Wiedersehen!

(I am too tired to proof read this entry...so I hope it makes sense haha)