This trip started as a dream to go to Iceland. We picked our group based on who was willing to hike through the frigid weather of the winter dreamland. Sadly, the finances didn’t work out for our group to travel to our top destination, but as a result we were left with a very low maintenance group of gals. After looking at a few different options, we settled on Austria, mainly because a friend of my mom told me that Salzburg, Austria was magical (thanks Mrs. Zigworth!) and we heard it had some great hikes.
We didn’t plan much for this trip beyond places to sleep and planes to catch. Our trip consisted of consistent movie nights, frequent trips to the local spar (grocery store) to get microwave pizzas or pasta, countless mugs of tea, accidentally wandering into large, important monuments, laughing at how ridiculous we sounded trying to say German words, deciding what to do the night before or the morning of, and simply enjoying a low stress break from our responsibilities and routine in Seville.
After about a week with the fantastic four, we split our separate ways. Faith and I hopped on a plane to visit Ireland for the weekend and meet up with some of our other friends from our program. While I am not going to overwhelm you with everything we did, I would like to share with you some highlights/stories from the trip.
Pre-trip
We all met up at a bus station in Seville to head to the airport on day one. Three out of the four of us had only brought backpacks for the ten day journey to save money on luggage in the planes. However, what little I had packed in my backpack (extra pair of pants, two shirts, some socks and underwear, an international power adapter, my toiletries, and a book for a class) got stolen - I’m not sure how, but I may have left my backpack at the public bike station that I use. I decided not to worry about it - I had my phone, passport, and wallet, so I could still hop on a plane and go to Europe. My friends were so surprised on how little the loss of my backpack affected me - they kept saying things like “Allison, it’s okay not to be okay.” However, I honestly had packed so little in the first place that it wasn’t a big loss, and I wasn’t going to let it damper my trip. So I set off for a week and a half across Europe with a purse and a sandwich. I think I was so optimistic about having so little to travel with that I had the Tom Sawyer effect on my friend Aubrey, who declared, “Wow, why did I bring a backpack?!”
Salzburg
My first memory of Salzburg is very comical - we called an Uber from the airport to our Airbnb and the guy who picked us up didn’t speak much English, but, from what I gather, wanted to play us some English music. While we were captivated by the gorgeous Austrian Alps, his selections of “Yeah!” by Usher and “I Know You Want Me” truly were a sharp contrast to the peaceful and pure scenery we were soaking in. We couldn’t stop laughing.
The Airbnb was absolutely gorgeous and looked out over the mountains. I loved drinking a hot cup of tea in the morning on our balcony and feeling at rest. Even though we had to catch a train to get to Salzburg, I loved our rural location of our Airbnb, with the cows grazing in the fields and fresh country smell once again permeating our lungs.
Salzburg was a unique little city, and we enjoyed picnicking by the river, exploring the town, touring the fortress, and eating pretzels.
However, my favorite thing we did on this leg of our vacation was journey to Berchtesgaden, which is a national park in Germany (thanks Sara for this suggestion!) I wanted to go to the Eagle’s Nest, which is a beautiful outlook on top of a mountain that holds Hitler’s vacation home. While we were waiting for the bus to go there, we met a Canadian named Blake who ended up hanging with us after we got off the bus. Blake has been vacationing around Germany the past month and thankfully could ask for directions for us in German and taught us how to greet the Germans walking by - “Servus”.
The last bus from Berchtesgaden to Salzburg left at 6:15pm, and the park map said the Eagle's Nest hike was 5 hours. We weren’t sure we were going to make it, but Blake found on Google Maps that there was a path that lasted allegedly an hour and fifteen minutes. So, instead of taking the park path, we entered into the woods to follow the narrowest dirt path through the forest of Germany. We did not encounter another human soul on this path, and I could not stop laughing at the ridiculousness of what we were doing. However, the forest was so beautiful and untouched, and I would do the same path again.
Sadly, Google Maps was incorrect on the amount of time that trail would take. The trail was very steep, with lots of switchbacks. We eventually ran into a few more people coming down, but we later realized that most people take a bus to the top. However, the hike was absolutely incredible with a vast view of the green, gorgeous Alps. We didn’t have much time to spend at the top because we had to come back down to catch the bus, but we did run into a recent graduate from Colorado State named Billy who is teaching English to Syrian refugees in Germany for a semester. I invited him to walk down the mountain with us, so our little eclectic group of Allison, Anna, Aubrey, Blake, and Billy (and Faith, though her name doesn’t fit in with ours) had a good time getting to know each other and sharing experiences on the way down. This was definitely one of the prettiest hikes I’ve ever done.
Vienna
Honestly, my favorite part of Vienna was our Airbnb, which isn’t saying anything negative about Vienna. It was in a pretty old building that sometimes houses diplomats from other countries. Our Airbnb was called the Imperial Palais Residence. A kind man named Mr. Ernst took us up a tiny elevator and let us into our beautiful room stocked with complimentary tea, snacks, and drinks. The decor was beautiful and we definitely felt like we didn’t belong there! As soon as Mr. Ernst left, we freaked out a little about how cool the place was and how it was possible that we could be staying here. Then we heard a knock that stopped our celebration. I opened the door to find Mr. Ernst there with a brown bag with more snacks - chocolate bars, pretzels, peanuts, coke, etc. - that he handed to me and said they were for us. I couldn’t believe it. We spent basically all afternoon the first day just chilling in our sweet suite and popping open all the sweets.
One of my favorite stories from Vienna is called "Ding-Dong-Ditching the Diplomats" and is as follows: In the building of our Airbnb there was a dark and steep spiral staircase leading down to the main floor. The first time we tried to descend, Aubrey tried to hit a light switch so we could see, but instead rang the doorbell of someone who I assumed actually lived in the building. We started almost running down all the steps, but the stairs were seemingly endless (the first floor here is one above the ground floor, so there were more stairs than we expected). We couldn’t stop giggling at how we ding-dong-ditched someone (who knows - maybe it was one of the diplomats) and I am willing to bet that when the man open the door, he could hear our girlish giggles echoing up the staircase.
Vienna itself was pretty cool. We tried the worlds most famous chocolate cake at Hotel Sacher, and then went to another cafe called Demel to try it’s rival chocolate cake. Even though the hotel had the original cake, we all determined that Demel’s cake was better (the second picture.) Both these places were pretty fancy, and we paid a steep price for the cake, but hey, when else can we try the worlds most famous chocolate cake and it’s rival? However, I definitely unashamedly slurped water out of the cafe bathroom sink to avoid paying 4 euros for a bottle of water.
Later that day Faith and I went to an amazingly chaotic aquarium that had crocodiles, monkeys, fish, and birds all in the same open-styled exhibit with ants crawling through the handrails, as well as a room with turtles, birds, and bats flying everywhere that you had to dodge. On our way to the cake places and the aquarium, we accidentally stumbled upon some palaces and some gorgeous parks. We kept laughing about what luck we had to accidentally run into all these famous and enormous monuments while following our highly ambitious goals of eating cake and visiting an aquarium.
I was a picture of health in Vienna - one day my lunch consisted of two pieces of chocolate cake and a McDonald’s burger, the other day lunch consisted of two and a half strudels. For my three dinners in Vienna I ate take out Chinese one night, microwave pizza the other, and tomato soup and grilled cheese the third night. It was honestly just great to be able to make what we want for a bit and enjoy some food we haven’t eaten in a while. However, my digestive system let me know that, even though I am on vacation, vegetables are still a necessity.
Ireland
I know that when you think Ireland, you think of the color green. However, I was blown away just how green Ireland really was. Faith and I took a Cliffs of Moher bus tour which spanned the width of Ireland and back in one day. All the shades of green together were so varied and beautiful, more green then maybe I’ve ever seen in a countryside. The Cliffs were super cool, and Faith and I tried our best to recite lines from The Princess Bride where Wesley climbs up the cliffs before the epic sword fight. The swirls of the water below were so blue - the colors of Ireland are just stunning in general. It was raining pretty hard and we were drenched, but we warmed up with a hearty bowl of Irish stew and some soda bread afterwards. The bread in Ireland is honestly probably the best I’ve ever had. Even the most basic white bread, like the equivalent of our wonder bread, that was in our Airbnb was so much better than any other molded loafs I’ve had.
I also, of course, loved the Irish accent. Our Airbnb owner’s accent was so strong that we couldn’t understand some of what he was saying - we even commented that it was more taxing for us to try to understand him speaking English than it is for us to understand Spanish. The Irish people are super friendly as well, and I enjoyed their easy going, helpful, playful, and open demeanor. Probably one of my favorite stories from our trips takes place in the taxi we took on the way to the airport on Sunday. My friend Payton coughed, and the taxi driver said (keep in mind this is at 4 in the morning): “Drink some hot whiskey for that, love.” Ireland was incredible - the food, the people, the colors - the only thing I didn’t like was the weather. It was pretty cold and rainy, so I’m thankful I can return to Seville where it is warmer and almost never rains for more than five minutes.
Another cool thing is that we showed up to Ireland on October 31, so Dublin was celebrating Halloween. On our bus ride we saw a guy juggling fire and a parade of people with a bunch of Joker masks on. The streets were full of young folks dressed up and going to bars and pubs. The people in our neighborhood were shooting off fireworks in seemingly every direction. Someone we met that day told us Halloween was Ireland’s biggest holiday. I’m not sure if that’s true, but they definitely did it big! Too bad we didn’t bring our costumes!
It feels a little strange to be heading back to Seville where I will plunge back into the daily routine, be a student once more, and have more than one option to wear everyday. This break was long and full, and I’m very thankful for the time off to travel with friends. Back in Seville, I really want to submerge myself in Spanish, try harder to hang out with locals, disfrutar la vida cotidiana, etc.. While I could plan more trips for the upcoming weekends, I know I will be more satisfied with this semester if I come out of it feeling confident and competent in Spanish rather than having traveled to more places. I can’t believe I only have a month and a half left here, and I need to capitalize on this opportunity. However, I am honestly really looking forward to coming back to the States soon. 6 more weeks!
Thanks once again for reading!
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