Austria: Day One & Two

The rooster crows, "Time to fly away little chickens." And with that call, we do fly away to Austria.

Due to pricing, we decided to fly into Linz, Austria last Wednesday. We landed around 4:00 PM and had to take a bus into the center of town to find our hostel--which I did not get directions for in advance. The bus took us to the train station where we asked the information booth for directions. The nice lady told us, in her German accent, to take the tram four stops. After wandering around a bit, we did eventually find our hostel. We had two rooms--one with three beds for the three girls, and one for the one boy. We were exhausted, but our tummies were angry at us, so we asked the receptionist for a recommendation for dinner. She suggested Josef's which was a nice restaurant with traditional Austrian food. We had to take the tram to the restaurant, and we had trouble figuring out how to pay for it, so we just hopped on without paying. Since I'm always worried about getting in trouble, I was VERY uncomfortable and convinced the group that we should pay the next times because I saw a sign saying there was a 50 euro fine for not paying for your ride. Now, I'm surprised the group believed me because the sign I saw was completely in German, and I was only guessing at it's message; however, we payed for our trips after that.

Dinner was amazing. Spinach strudel. I was in absolute heaven--I'm going to figure out how to make it because it blew me away.

After dinner, our sweet teeth started kicking, so we stopped at a McDonald's for McFlurries. One comment: foreign McDonalds' are incredibly nice. They are clean, classy, and have a coffee bar that looks like a mini Starbucks inside of a McDonald's. It's the greatest thing! So we ate our desserts and headed to the Danube river to see Linz at night. The buildings were lit up in different colors which played on the water and the sight was beautiful. Exhausted and cold, we trammed back to the Youthotel Linz to retire for the night. I drifted to sleep to the sounds of German reporters commenting on women's Olympic speed skating.

The next morning, we woke and packed our bags. The hostel offered us a complimentary breakfast which was incredibly hearty and delicious. Following breakfast, I checked us out and we all started for the train station to go to Salzburg. The trip took about an hour, but we arrived in the beautiful city around 11 AM. Our hostel was much easier to find this time around, so we checked in and then hit the town.

Salzburg is amazing. I suggest that any and everyone who ever has the opportunity to visit, snatches that it up like a lizard snatches a fly. Everywhere I walked, I either saw mountains or fabulous architecture. I cannot even begin to describe the beauty of the place. This is the city where Mozart was born and where "The Sound of Music" was filmed--not to mention the city where the actual von Trapp family lived. As we walked through the town, scenes from the movie played in our heads. In the Mirabelle Gardens we saw the children and Maria running around singing "Do, a deer, a female deer..." and in the market we saw little Gretel accidentally drop the tomato. We knew that we had to go on the famous "Sound of Music Tour," so we bought tickets for the next day at 2 PM.

After meandering through the city and its shops and interesting streets, we eventually returned to the hostel for naps and for dinner. We were tired little children and did not feel up to exploring the city any more that day, so we went to bed relatively early. We were sharing an 8-person room with 4 girls from Michigan, so it was fun to have some Americans there.

We closed our eyes and dreamed of yodelers and lonely goatherds, excited for the adventure the next day had in store.