Where the heck am I?!?

Where to start.. The past week and a half has been an absolute blur since I have arrived in Salzburg, Austria.  Right off the bat we jumped into our 2 week intensive language program where they attempt to shove a half semester of German language course into 2 weeks.  We took a placement test to divide us into our varying levels and judging by the looks around the classroom I was not the only one who seemed to not be able to sprechen sie deutsch that day…. Anyhow, I did well enough to place into the level I needed to for course credit back at the U of SC.

Our second day in Salzburg included a great hike around the city from our AIFS tour guide Andreas who is great.  The guy knows so much about Salzburg and Austria it blows our minds, from Mozart to the plethora of Cathedrals all the way down to the little things like why there is a huge chunk missing from a house in the middle of the city.. (US tanks were apparently too big to fit through Salzburg’s tiny streets and bumped into a few homes during WWII) But Andreas admits it is better then the alternative of US planes dropping bombs on the beautiful city.

The tour took us up to the defensive walls built across the river from the fortress, the views were incredible again, this country doesn’t seem to have any bad views from what I’ve seen so far..

The next day we woke up to Salzburg blanketed in a 2-4 inches of fresh snow that turned the entire city into a postcard and it really began to sink in that this was our new home for the next 4 months… After a few snowball fights amongst friends that made the locals roll their eyes we tried to act like it wasn’t that big of a deal and continued on with our day.

Wednesday we finally had to come to reality that we are in fact here to study as well as travel… So we attended our first german language course which lasts 4 hours a day… Our teacher (Ines) is wonderful but she tries to only speak german to us so we can learn as quickly as possible.  It seems to be working, as already I can tell my language skills are catching on really quickly! After about 2 hours she convinced us to go up to the roof of the Unipark (the building our classes are in) and check out the view for a short break.  What we found was stunning and for the millionth time left us all with our jaws on the floor…

From the huge mountains to the fortress it feels like I’m in a fairy tale.. The mountains seem fake they’re so gigantic and the novelty still hasn’t worn off, every break in class we all run up to the roof and marvel at them as if we’ve all never seen mountains before…

After 3 days of long german classes we finally reached the weekend! We were scheduled to go on a horse drawn sleigh ride up into the alps to a little town called Filzmoos.  While there we were to have lunch in a small cabin nestled at the base of a few huge peaks.  Our sleigh driver was a little too generous with der Schnaps, but we were all toasty warm when we arrived at our destination.

On the menu was gulaschsuppe and kaiserschmarrn… and beer.  The gulaschsuppe was great and has been one of my favorite foods since arriving but the kaiserschmarrn (which roughly translate to the emperors mess or something like that I really didn’t fact check that so just take my word for it..) was out of this world! It’s pretty much just a thick pancake that has been cut up and mixed with cinnamon, powdered sugar and strawberries and it tastes better then it sounds..  After stuffing our faces we all had to return to the horses and say goodbye to Filzmoos, as they couldn’t stay too long out in the cold weather..

Naturally being this high in the mountains and seeing the snow a group of us planned a ski trip for the next day.  We found a free shuttle to take us to the local resort called Flachau and used our free day on Sunday to ski our hearts out and take in one of Austria’s favorite hobbies.  Oh and it’s so much cheaper to ski here then the states… 40 euros for a lift ticket, 25 for rental and only 8 for beer AND gulaschsuppe on the mountain… Thats cheaper then the tiny hills in NC!!

But Monday was back to real life and work, (just kidding) but this week has been packed with work.  We got our class schedules and we started planning our trips around Europe and we’re all slowly becoming used to the everyday ins and outs of Salzburg.  We are finding our favorite wurst carts, kebab shops and pretzel vendors around the city and taking full advantage of them at every chance we get. My personal favorite is the krapfen brezel, which is basically just a pretzel donut with cinnamon sugar on it.  If we didn’t have to walk so much we’d all have put on 10 lbs already but thankfully we do.  

Anyway, this is where I leave you for this segment of my blog, sorry for the lengthy write up but so much has happened and I couldn’t leave anything out… I will be posting again next monday as this weekend I am going to a fc Bayern Munchen game and skiing again on Sunday before classes start monday!  Thanks everyone for tuning in, auf wiedersehen!!