Immer wieder Österreich
Before I begin, I just wanted to say I am sorry for the delay but I will be pumping out a couple blogs over the next few weeks. I ran into computer issues a few weeks ago and just got it all fixed and working again! After this post, I am done with updating you all on my Summer and we only have Oktoberfest, my family trip to Spain, and my trip to Switzerland until we are all caught up.
Family photo in Köln
I have to admit, my summer this year in Germany has been pretty slow… For June, July and August I didn’t have much planned as I had to save most of my vacation days for my family’s visit and my trip home in December and my moolah for a vacation or two in September, and November! But about a month after all of my Gamecock friends left Europe, I got some news from my friend George, that he was doing a trip around Europe with his cousin, Billy, and would be going right through Bremen! I had met George studying abroad last year in Salzburg and he had been in Europe for almost a 3 weeks already at his family reunion in Scotland with the Clan Mclean. I told them they were free to crash in Bremen for a few nights before we all headed to Köln together for a fun weekend there.
If you go to Germany and don’t have a liter of beer, did you really go to Germany?
I picked the two up from the Hauptbahnhof and like I did for my friends from South Carolina, I immediately took them to the biergartens along the Weser in the Schlachte. The weather was typical of Bremen that day (grey and a little wet), so the main benches were all closed off but we found a seat under an umbrella as it wasn’t too busy. We all caught up and I let them tell me about the family reunion, the kilts, the clans, their travels along their trip so far to Dublin, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam and where they were headed next. I knew that Köln was next on the agenda and I would be joining them for that, along with Salzburg in a few weeks but I wasn’t sure what else they had planned.
What is life without a kebab?
I showed them all through the altstadt and the Schnoor like I did the previous month, I now had a routine down now for visitors! Luckily, the next day was nice (for a few hours) so that they didn’t have to experience rainy Bremen every single day, and we took advantage of it by going down to the river and having a bratwurst and pretzel. We planned out when and where we’d go in Köln and found out that that weekend was actually the weekend of some sort of fireworks festival. The hostels were decently pricey, so we decided to stay the Friday night in Bremen instead and drive down to Köln on Saturday morning and I would only stay a night there before returning Sunday. George was pretty knowledgeable of the city as he had lived there for a few months previously so I was confident he could show me all I needed to see in 24 hours. On our last night in Bremen I was able to get together some German friends for a night of bowling, beer and kebabs. It was a nice goodbye to rainy Bremen for the guys and we all got a good sleep to prep for the drive the next morning.
A master bowler at work..
The drive and the check-in to our hostel were pretty uneventful, and luckily, both were quick and easy. I had been to Köln before but only for a soccer game last Spring and I didn’t get a chance to explore the city at all. I was really excited to see the cathedral as I had heard it was incredible. I have had trains go through the city as well and the main train station in Köln sits almost directly in the shadow of the massive Kölner Dom, so I had seen it briefly as I had passed through a time or two. But, nothing can really prepare you for the size of it until you’re standing on its steps staring up at it. For a time, the Kölner Dom was actually the tallest building in the world upon it’s completion in 1880 through 1884! And it’s easy to believe as you’re squinting up at the towers, it’s absolutely massive.
I tried my best to get the Dom in one shot, but I didn’t have enough space… (but I got that guys bald spot)
There were people everywhere as well as everyone had come into the city for the fireworks that weekend, it was so busy and hot that I was beginning to get a little bit claustrophobic, but George knowing the city led us through the crowds to a place he knew of for lunch. We settled in and we all ordered a beer to relax and cool down and to my surprise the waitress brought us some of the tiniest beers I had ever seen.. It was only .2 liters!! She put mine down in front of me and all I could do was sit there and stare at it.. What was I supposed to do with this?? After getting used to the liters and half-liters in North Germany and Bavaria, I felt like I had been given a kiddie cup! I wasn’t the only one either, Billy looked confused as well until George explained. In Köln, the style of beer is Kölsch, and the head (the white foam at the top) disappears more quickly then other styles of beer. So, to make sure there is always a nice layer of foam they serve their beer in tiny glasses and the waiters and waitresses are constantly walking around with a tray full of beers to replace the ones you have finished A bonus to this system is that your beer is always cold! With the big liter mugs, normally by the end your beer isn’t as cold as you would like it to be, just because it takes so long to drink it, but with the .2 liter glasses, you don’t have this problem. The waiters and waitresses leave a piece of paper on every table and when they put down a new round of beers, they make a check mark to keep track of how many they’ve put down. I got the hang of it pretty quickly.
Our afternoon chill-zone
After lunch we moved locations and found a cool restaurant with a table right next to an open window where we could talk to all of the party-goers out on the street, as well as trade and buy gifts from those who were selling them for bachelor and bachelorette parties. In Germany it is a tradition for those in the bachelor or bachelorette party to dress up in a fun theme and gather up and sell cheap little items, toys and little airplane bottles of booze to raise money to pay for their drinking that night, as well as to completely embarrass the one getting married at the same time. Köln is a very popular destination for bachelor parties in Germany and the city was full of groups that weekend with the festival, so it was a blast being able to sit back with our tiny beers, and watch the fun chaos out in the streets and square for the rest of the afternoon until the sun went down. And when we were finally ready to leave our perfect spot, we headed down to the Rhyne, crossed out onto the bridges with the crowds and watched as fireworks lit up the Kölner Dom and the night sky. A good end to a great week.
The next week flew by until my flight to Salzburg to meet back up with George and Billy (I know Salzburg twice in two months… I can’t help it!). My flight got in late but my hostel was only a quick taxi ride from the airport and a short walk to the bars where the boys said to meet them. I was a little ahead of schedule when I found them at O’malleys Pub (in my last blog post I mentioned how it was a favorite of our study abroad group). We didn’t stay too long as George had been kind enough not to have a käsekrainer (an Austrian sausage with cheese in it) until I arrived. So after an hour or two there we headed to our wurst cart and introduced Billy the best sausage ever invented. There’s nothing like a good wurst at midnight in Salzburg before heading back to sleep.
The next two days were very low-key, we planned on hiking Untersberg, the largest mountain in the Salzburg area but we didn’t get to it until Sunday morning. The weather Saturday was beautiful but we got a late start on the day and while we should have climbed Untersberg that day we pushed it off and toured the gardens, and the fortress. We got some great exercise walking around the city until our feet seemed to lead us off to Augustiner.. Shocker.. This was Billy’s first time here so we had to make sure he got the full experience. We had dinner, and a few beers and spent the rest of the evening sharing travel stories, joking about hostels, people and experiences, both good and bad.
Cozy Augustiner
That’s what makes travelling so fun for me. It’s not always as perfect as the pictures we see in magazines or on the internet. Actually it almost rarely is perfect these days. People are everywhere and whether you like it or not, sometimes you’re going to have a crappy experience or the view from some remote location you spent hundreds of dollars to get to, will be hidden in awful weather or overrun with people. But the last year has taught me it’s not so much about that rare moment when everything comes together and you get the perfect view or get to have the experience of a lifetime, it’s more about the travels themselves and sharing those experiences with others and interacting with those around you that make them special.
View from our cable car
That was the case for most of the next day, as we woke up to climb Untersberg and found Salzburg covered in a nice layer of fog. We decided to save time and just take the cable car up the mountain. It didn’t take you all the way to the top and you still had a bit of work left over to get to the summit so it wasn’t entirely cheating. We were surprised however by the temperature when we got off of the gondola! We had been comfortable in the city wearing a shirt and pants or possibly long sleeves, but when we got to the top we were freezing! It had to be 20 degrees colder up there then in the city in the valley below. We should have expected this, but it gave us a reason to get a bowl of goulash at the restaurant at the top of the lift for lunch before we started our hike.
Into the mist..
The hike was fantastic, and at times the clouds would part and we could see all of the shades of green in the valleys below. I had looked at Untersberg for months and always wanted to get to the top but never actually got around to it as our guides in our program said it was very dangerous if the snow and ice hadn’t melted away yet, and the snow and ice hung around until our final week there. When we finally reached the top, we were gifted with a beautiful view of both Austria and Bavaria Unfortunately, Salzburg and the fortress were both hiding in the fog still (just another reason to go back and do it all again I guess haha) but the rest of the views were breathtaking and worth the ride up and subsequent hike. But before long, we had to start our descent back into the fog so I could catch my flight, we stopped at a small cabin on the way down to grab a hearty lunch and a final Stiegl together before I said my goodbyes to the boys. It had been a great few weeks hopping around Germany and Austria with them, and we definitely made plans to catch up when I move back to the states.
ADRIAAAANN!! YO ADRIANN I DID ITTT!
I don’t know if I’ll get back to Salzburg in the next year or so before I return to America, and if I don’t, who knows how long it will be until I return.. I’d like to think I will, but there are so many places in this world that I don’t want to miss out on seeing, and while I love Salzburg, I think that this view from the top of Untersberg wouldn’t be too terrible of a final memory from this beautiful place that has left me with so many special memories over the past year and a half. So for now, it looks to be “so long, and farewell” to you Salzburg.
Vielen dank für alles Österreich, es war wunderbar….
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Or… you know, I could go back again another weekend because I have no self-control! AUF WIEDERSEHEN MEINE FREUNDE!
My new life in northern Germany 