Austria!

Listen please!

Austria. Salzburg.

Ahhhh.

Completely Christmas-ed out. My HEAVEN.

I went to visit my best friend, who, lucky girl, has been living in a castle in Salzburg in the middle of a Beauty and the Beast-esque forest.

There’s the beautiful girl enjoying HOT HONEY WINE, aka one of the best inventions involving warm drinks, in our opinion.

Austria is very different from Italy.

For one thing, just about everything is much quieter. From the train stations, to the trains themselves, to the people walking around.

Probably the loudest place I went to while there was the Augustine Brewery, for obvious reasons.

Now, to be legitimate, like those Austrian men down the hall there, you take a mug from the shelf, and as tradition tells go and wash it out slightly in the fountain that is right next to the Austrian men and the wet floor sign…all the while silently praying and knowing deep down that the mugs have already been washed and the quick baptismal dunk from the fountain is just for traditions sake. Then you go and get filled up from a legitimate Austrian man manning the barrels of beer.

Another different thing, is coffee, which coming from a country who’s caffè is of the upmost importance and finesse, this is something I noticed right away.

Now, keep in mind, I said different, not bad. Though, the coffee was longer and filled an the entirety of a standard cup as opposed to a cup that thirteen years ago, I would have kept for my dolls, it wasn’t too bad, much less strong. More resembling American coffee, which was nice because it had been a while. Something they are doing so incredibly RIGHT, however, is that glass a water that accompanies your cup on the silver platter. Of course you need water while drinking coffee! Genius. Nice work Austrians.

After spending a wonderful couple of days eating Mozart balls, sausage, pretzels, and Gluvein and spending time with this lovely lady

she had to get back to the world of studious student who goes to class and on class trips, and so I and two other Californians who are also studying in Padova decided to be Sound of Music pilgrims.

Task one: Run through the gardens singing Doe! A deer! (and maybe have other tourists laugh at you)

Crossed off bucket list!

Task two: find the Von Trapp House.

Done! Then, goodbye, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight! Off to find

Task three: THE gazebo.

So. For both of these we took buses, and to find the Gazebo, we had to go outside of Salzburg and in broken English and German trusted our bus driver to tell us where to get off.

He didn’t. BUT we got off near the zoo and spent a good half hour watching goats.

I took their Christmas family portrait, only because they asked oh so nicely.

Then, back on track for Task three, we found our way back into the edge of Salzburg, wandered the ghost town of a Christmas market because it wouldn’t open for a few more days, and…there it was!  gazebo!

Unfortunately, all enclosed because of too many pilgrims jumping from bench to bench. Oh well.

Captain Von Trapp: “You brought music back into the house. I had forgotten.”