Sleigh ride = wonderful!

So many things happen here abroad it's hard to pick things to talk about....I'll try and hit the high points since the last post... (in different posts)

MONDAY - We drove about an hour out of the city into the mountains to go on a sleigh ride. I was so excited for this - and it was every bit as good as I expected and better. We rode in the sleighs for about 45 minutes up to an alpine hut to eat, then back down the mountain as well. It was AMAZINGLY AWESOME!! Here are some cool pics to show you!

View of the mountains from the bus

Look at the snow on these roofs! There was even more on some that I couldn't get pictures...

Macy and I with the sleigh driver! haha. He gave our sleigh some Schnapps...what a nice guy

The horses that took us up the mountain

The sleigh behind ours

An awesome view of the mountain

Sounds of the babbling brook were in the air!

The alpine hut we ate at!

Our group's table!

Goulash Suppe before

Goulash Suppe after - so freakin good as you can tell :)

The dessert that we all got to eat

My individual plate with the different jams on top - cranberry, apple, and plum!

My plate afterwards - I was SOOO full

Picture of me in front of the mountains

Picture of a group of us in front of the same mountain!

Another wonderful picture of the mountains

I will post later other pictures and adventures that I've had, but as of now it is midnight and I'm going to the Untersberg Moutain and taking a cable car up there so it will be another great experience that I'm looking forward to!!!

First Weekend...

My first weekend in Salzburg was pretty much great. It started Friday when most of the group headed out to the Augustiner (where monks brew their own beer). We ate pretzels as well and they were amazing. haha. This was featured on Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown and was every bit as good if not better. You get your stein and rinse it out/cool it down at this fountain. Then go up to the monk to get it filled. We then sat at big long table and basically drank and told stories. Good times. Oh and a monk hit on me! Shame on him!

Picture of the inside sign and stein

What it looks like on the inside (there are lots of rooms like this)

My little stein

Caitlin's BIG stein

Part of our group there

Me rinsing/cooling my stein - haha

We then wanted to head to Republik for an 80s party, but when we got there the cover charge was 10 Euros and we had already spent a lot before this so we decided to go to Shamrock where there was live music. It was absolutely packed and we got a small table in the back - well I was standing. Macy of course saw this guy and wanted to take a picture with him, he could barely speak any English. All he could say was "Dance on the billard table" we were like....umm NO. But anyways themusic started back up we went to the "dance floor" and were smushed together dancing to American music (they play that a LOT). I then couldn't breathe and was getting tired so we worked our way out of the mass of people and went home. Last thing I see is Macy getting swallowed into the crowd. We waited outside with Emily until her bus came (25 minutes) and we see Macy come out of the bar with those guys about 10 minutes later and they are screaming PARTY!! What a sight...

I thought this was hilarious - Macy dancing and singing - Pretty much the looks we get all the time

On Saturday we woke up and went to Europark (the mall) again to buy some food. We decided before this to have a taco and margarita night, but there is basically no such thing as Margarita mix and the tequila is really expensive... Sad face. Macy gave us directions to her house (She is living in a home stay and was here last semester as well - but living somewhere new) and we started off on a bus journey to find her house. We took the bus like 10 stops and got off at some really long German word. The only thing we knew after that was to cross the road, go around the Tabak-Trafik, keep walking for a while, see a church on the right, its across from that and wait by the green sign outside the cafe.....HA. It was basically awesome - walking around Salzburg at night in a place where we had no idea and then we just started cracking up because...well I dont really know. We only had to call her once to make sure we were on track...impressive. We then went up to her and Carly's flat. They have like their own apartment type thing and the family lives across the street. Pretty sweet deal huh?

We then all climbed up the stairs to her place and started making tacos. They obviously don't have refried beans here so we got some type of chili/kidney bean....yeah. It was cool though. We ate soft tacos and it has never tasted so wunderbar (wonderful). Then we got a huge kick out of watching "Do you want to be a German superstar?" - like American Idol....wow. Someone that Macy knows makes their own wine so we just drank some of that and it was excellent! We then headed to our favorite place - O'Malleys and met some other American students going to Salzburg College and also some other people from America just traveling. They were pretty nice and bought us some drinks as well. Oh! and I didn't have any money on me (it was in my wallet back at the table) so I was like "all I have is 1 Euro left" and our favorite bartender Danny-boy gave me a drink for 1 Euro that had RedBull in it. Nice deal right? AND I found out that RedBull is made here in Salzburg!

Emily and I cooking tacos!

Around the dinner table

Caitlin, Natalie, Emily at O'Malleys

This past Sunday I went to the Hohensalzburg Fortress - basically it was built a long time ago in stages and it looked over and protected the city from high above. Long story....hahah. But here are some pictures from the top of it (you can see mostly the whole city) and it was basically awesome - like everything else around here.

The elevator we were going to go up - but it was closed because it was Sunday

So we went up the tram instead!

Us inside the tram cart thing

Me inside the torture chamber...haha
View of the city from up above

Scary marionette museum inside

One of the state rooms

The Majolica Stove in the Golden Chamber Room

Just a quick one...

Just a quick update - that number that I put down is correct - my phone is working. haha.

AND I got SKYPE - my screenname is emily8705 - so if you get an account too we can talk for free!!!

I'll write more later about what has happened recently! :)

First Week in Salzburg...

First things first: I GOT A NEW # IN AUSTRIA. MY PHONE BROKE ALREADY. :( HERE IT IS: 011-43-0664-588-35-98 (That is the number calling from the US to Austria.) But now this one is barring calls - so I'll update everyone as soon as I know what is going on. GRR.

I know that I haven’t written much about being in Salzburg so far; it has just been so busy that I honestly haven’t had the time to sit or if I did it was doing homework or updating about London and such. Things might be kind of settling down soon, but probably not! haha. I’ll try to just sum up what has happened so far here in Salzburg, but it still might long because I’ve done so much (& I have pictures). So on Monday and Tuesday I had orientation with all the other people in the program (about 50 from all over the US) and it was just kind of business stuff (registering, trips, housing, etc). On Monday after the orientation we went on a walking/hiking tour of Salzburg and man was it a hike – part of it was up a mountain basically. haha. Andres (works for AIFS) took us around and the views were great, even though it was a little cloudy. (Side note: but the first 5 days I’ve been here everyone has been saying what GREAT weather we’ve had. Normally it would be foggy, rainy, snowy, etc, but it has been cool and sunny. It’s awesome. Today is the first day that it hasn’t been like that and there are little snow flurries coming down. I like that too though!!!)

Mozart's birthhouse

About the food, I’ve eaten döner kebap which is kind of like an Austrian gyro. YUM. and I’ve made lots of salami and/or turkey sandwiches. I also bought some pasta to cook. We have oranges and carrots for snacks, cereal for in the morning, and juice/water to drink. I also visited the frankfurter stand and it was good!!! I had Kaiser____ something I can’t remember that had cheese and mustard served with a roll. It’s like the fast food of Austria. Although today I broke down and had a cheeseburger from McDonalds and some coke. Wow that felt really good. All I could think of was Alexis wanting Dr. Pepper so badly.

My first Austrian "hotdog"

Then after the second orientation on Tuesday I went to my first German class. I’m obviously in the lowest one (beginning German 101). It has its ups and downs. Most of the kids have already had some; there are around 12 in our class. Bad thing – I didn’t know anything and I can’t really do anything by myself – well conversing with people – I can get around and whatever. Also the teachers’ first language is German and their English isn’t great so sometimes it’s hard to understand what they mean. (I guess I’m kind of used to that at UT when ¾ of the teachers are foreign…anyways!) But the plus side is that the teachers that we have for the beginning German are super nice and we also have “easier” homework since we are just starting. It’s not like we have to remember things from previous semesters. So about that – it’s basically an intensive course in which we go for 3 hours a day and learn German. It’s pretty hard, but I can definitely say I am getting better!

Ex: Ich bin Emily. (I am Emily.) Wie geht’s (How are you?) Ich spreche Englisch und bisschen Deutsch. (I speak English and a little German.) Ich wohne in Texas. (I live in Texas.) Ich koome aus den USA (I come from the US.) Ich möchte _____ (I would like a ____.)

There are more, but I will spare you for now. haha. On Wednesday we had a pastry tasting, which was awesome. Austria, especially Salzburg, is known for its pastries (also coffee and music). We tasted Esterhazytorte, Rigojanschi, Apfelstrudel, Sachertorte, Guglhupf. HAHA. Those names are awesome. I also drank hot chocolate which was such a good little treat, although half of it was filled with whipped cream (Hannah – you wouldn’t have liked it…haha). We also went to Ikea (the first time I’ve been to one) and it was so big and had all this stuff for really cheap. I bought 2 pillows for .99 Euros each and also some Tupperware. Caitlin got some jeans and then the four (me, Caitlin, Emily, Clayton) of us also got some groceries.

Caitlin and Emily at the pastry tasting

First plate

Second plate

Half of the group standing outside the shop

Oh! Another thing that is crazy is at the grocery store. It’s so stressful going because it is always crowded and you have to know what you want, know how much it is, have your money ready and basically throw it at the person checking you out. Everyone behind you is waiting and there aren’t bags (unless you buy them) so you have to shove all the stuff in your backpack and go. Most of the time I just say: “Groß Gott” when I’m checking out and “danke shön” when I leave. If they say other things to me, I don’t answer because I don’t know what they are saying. Other times they can tell straight away that I am American and don’t even try to talk to me in German which is sometimes frustrating if I want to see if I can do it. Oh well!

On Thursday we had to go sit in this registration office to get our University ID’s and then of course they were like “our printer is broken.” We had been sitting there for an hour before they started calling us up. Mind you, it’s a small building and there was no one in there – all of us were scattered all over the floor. A man walks in proceeds to say, “What are you all doing?” We just looked at him and said, “waiting.” I was lounged back on my backpack with my IPod on and he said in German to one guy who worked there, “What does she think this is? This isn’t a couch” and then he stormed away. He then just stormed back out when he left too and gave us all horrible looks. It’s not my fault that the printers sucked. This is also coming from a man wearing white clogs! haha. I wasn’t offended, but it’s just a story to look back upon.

Yesterday (Thursday) was Valentine’s Day so we got some Swiss chocolate, wine, pasta, bread, gouda, and pesto sauce, made dinner in our kitchen, and ate it in our room. It was really fun and we also tried to guess everything about each other based on the little stuff we knew about one another. (stereotype game). It was pretty fun because we guessed and some of the stuff was right but other things were way off. We just got to learn a lot about one another (mind you this was just about 7 – me, Caitlin, Clayton, Emily, Kendra, Natalie, Michelle of us) and have a good time. We then headed to O’Malleys our favorite bar so far about 7 minutes away. (I went there Monday night too). I think our group half the time is taking up the whole place. haha. But we do have to be really careful though because someone from our group already got her phone, wallet and camera stolen.

Our pasta for Valentine's

Some of them eating in our room

Some of the group in O'Malley's night 1

Group of girls in O'Malley's night 1

Tom from our group (middle) playing some guitar

Matt and Zach

Caitlin, Brynna, Matt, Zach

Me, Jessica, Matt from NY

Speaking of phones, I don’t know if it’s just mine or what but now my row of 3,6,9 on my phone doesn’t work as of today. I have to go back to the place to get a new one (thank goodness it is within 6 days or else I would have to just buy a new one). Boo.
Gosh, I have so much to say. But Andres told us that normally skiing season is over before Spring Break…some of the big places will be open but not many. So that means that we need to go within the next month. The “problem” (meaning there is not really a problem since its ok…haha) is that we go to Munich next weekend, Vienna the next, the next one is open, then its spring break. Most of us really want to go to Italy and Greece so that is probably where we’ll be headed. SO anyways, we need to go skiing like this weekend. We are going to Augustinerbräu Kloster Mülln (I think that’s how you spell it – a place where monks brew their own beer – its basically awesome) tonight, so we would have to leave early tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes and check back to see what I’m doing. AHH this is so great!

Snow and ice by the river

Snow on Caitlin's glove!

Cloudy/snowy day in Salzburg