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Our day trip to Salzburg was entirely too short. First, we took a tour of the Law building at Salzburg University. A fantastic palace with more history all of Georgia State could ever muster. The tour guide showed us the restoration they were undertaking and it was really amazing to see how well everything was preserved. The facilities themselves were beautiful and beautifully decorated. The most interesting thing was the roof…which was the original one, down to the wooden beams. In fact, it was so well constructed that it survived snow and winter storms most of other Salzburg construction had not. After our presentation on finding a settlement range in International Commercial Arbitration, we were free to roam the city. This didn’t mean much since most stores, restaurants, and attractions closed down within an hour and a half of us being there.

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A group of us opted for the castle… and it was not a bad choice. The views from the watch tower were phenomenal. I could definitely see what had inspired the likes of Mozart. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go through the whole thing, nor did we have time to visit Mozart’s home, but it just gives me a reason to come back!

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where mozart was born

All that walking needed a reward, and we found ours at the Stiegle brewery. Famous around Austria, the Stiegle brewery and beer garden sits carved on the side of the mountain to amazing views, good food and great beer. I found my new favorite soup: Salzburg Potato Cream Soup and the boys found a solace from the sausage with gigantic plates of ribs. Since we couldn’t do half of what we wanted to do, we decided to finish our short afternoon with ice cream.

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After class today, Lauren, Karisa, Andrew and I decided to take the famous Postlingberg train, the steepest adhesion railway in Europe, to the Linz zoo, the church and the Grottenbahn. What was supposed to be a relaxing couple of hours turned into a full afternoon adventure with gnomes, fairies, dragons, steep gravel hills, and runaway giant birds.

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We took the train to the top instead of going directly to the zoo to take advantage of our ticket. I hadn’t been up to the top of the mountain and none of us had gone to the Land of Dwarfs. Although we told Andrew that it would be silly, he threw an epic tantrum and refused to come down unless we took a train ride on the Grotto Railway. He may tell you a different story, but that’s how i remember it!

Once in, the train ride took us around and around three times displaying dwarfs in the midst of performing their many professions…it was riveting! After, we walked down to the Fairy Land and Main Plaza.

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The Main Plaza, constructed in 1936, is a model of the Linz plaza and it shows all of the businesses and shops of the time period around the turn of the century. Around the plaza, there are many side strips that lead you into life-size replica scenes of famous fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Rumpelstizchen, and our very favorite: Snow-White and Rose-Red - a charming children’s story where the bear that sleeps with the fair maidens rips open a dwarf with its claws, which causes the bear’s skin to fall off and turn into a prince. Doesn’t that just sound like the kind of story you want to hear right before bed?

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The walk down to the zoo was almost as adventurous as the Land of Dwarfs. I suggested we walk down to the next train station…which turned out to be a bad idea. The path we took led us around the other side of the mountain…down a VERY steep gravel hill which made Karisa the first casualty of the afternoon. Fortunately, she is a good sport and her camera didnt break in the fall. After we made sure she was ok, it provided with enough comedy to make the walk down worth it. Thinking we were close, we asked a passer by the best way to get to the zoo. That was our second bad idea. It turned out we had gone so far, we now had to walk 2km to get to train station (at the bottom of the mountain) and ride the train up again. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the weather wasn’t turning and a mean storm wasn’t approaching in the horizon.

Determined, we found our way to the zoo where we proceeded to be thoroughly disappointed. It was small and quaint and the most exciting thing we saw were two donkeys attempting to procreate. Other than that, there were monkeys, two mangy camels, ostriches, some kangaroos, a really cool bobcat, and a giant bird that had escaped from its cage. I about had a heart attack! Karisa and Lauren went to take pictures and I went to see if the goats would take me in in their cage and protect me. We did get to jump in the trampoline…which is a perfectly sensible thing to have in a zoo!

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The rain chased us out and we ended our evening in a fantastic Greek restaurant with fried cheese and a glass of wine!

Sunday was a great day… a little more stressful than I wish it would have been, but a great experience nonetheless. Our plans to be at the baths by 7am went out the window when we walked in the door at 4am. However, we did manage to get to St. Gellerts around 11am or so.

The baths are fantastic. There are sparkling pools, thermal baths, an outdoor wave pool and terrace, steam rooms, polar plunges…you name it…oh, but most importantly: MASSAGE rooms!!
I got a well earned 30 minutes massage and by the end of it I was calculating in my head how much it would cost to bring the lady home…i was in heaven.

Unfortunately, carrying bags and walking in the heat to the bus didn’t do much to preserve the relaxed feeling. Nevertheless, it was worth every forint!

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That afternoon, we returned to Linz and Austrian food…which i have not yet come to fully appreciate… but i’m working on that.

Saturday, we woke up bright and early and were out the hotel door by 8:30am. The pastry shops in the metro station provided the perfect on-the-go breakfast and by 9:00am we were waiting to ascend to the Buda castle. A World Heritage site, the Castle quarter stands 180m above sea level…it’s around 1.5 Km long and it boasts 3 churches, five museums, and the amazing Fisherman’s Bastion, among other things. The Royal Palace was originally built in the 13th century and suffered with the city through the many occupations up until the 20th century. It has been destroyed and rebuilt three times, the last in a neo-Classical style, as was the architectural trend after WWII. But most amazing of all is the view!

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From there, we went to St. Matthias Church -an imposing structure built between the 13th and 15th centuries and dedicated to the Virgin Mary as protector of the city, hence its other name: the Church of Our Lady. We somehow got lucky and were given a private tour in english which made the experience that much more interesting. The Church itself is not quite as ornate as others in the continent, however, this one has seen many coronations, invasions and repairs. The most impressive things are the hand painted walls and the existence of the original stained windows…while most churches (like Linz’s cathedral) lost theirs during WWII, the keepers of St. Matthias stored theirs in the cellar during the fighting and thus preserved an amazing piece of history.

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Right outside the church is the Fisherman’s Bastion. Although it has never served any other purpose than its decorative one, it serves its purpose very well and makes for a fantastic backdrop to both the church and photographs of the city.

Afraid the city market was closing at 2pm, we pushed lunch till after shopping (easier to do than you would think) and took the train to the famous Central Market. Built in 1890, it is the largest market in the capital and it contains food, clothing, toys and souvenir stores. It was the perfect place to find babushka dolls, wine, jewelery, and anything you could want stamped with the Hungarian flag. Its popularity combined with its location next to the Vaci ut (major commercial street in the city) means it is flanked by cafes, restaurants, and eateries of all kinds on all sides. We chose one on the Vaci ut, and taking advantage of the beautiful weather, sat outside to relax, tan, eat and people watch. It was fantastic!

The afternoon was an afternoon of shopping, a trip to unload at the hotel, a stroll through Heroes’ Square and a quick and uneventful tour of Margaret Island.

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The evening was not so uneventful. After an AMAZING dinner off an outside restaurant on Raday ut, we headed to a lounge and then the craziest combination of floating clubs I have ever seen. Hidden somewhere off Margaret Islands, these clubs are docket and interconnected and don’t stop until the morning. Karisa and I called it a night around 3am, Lauren and Marian didn’t get home till 5…what a night!

As you all can tell, it has taken me two days to recover from our unbelievably amazing trip to Budapest. I had no idea what to expect before going and can honestly say I completely fell in love!

Friday, we left Linz bright and early at 6am and rolled into the city around 1pm. Our first stop was the International Arbitration Court which was located in front of the Parliament- an impressive and imposing building that houses the Hungarian government. The meeting at the Hungarian Arbitration Court was very interesting. We learned about International Arbitration and what separates Hungary from the rest.

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After Marian and I walked an hour to our hotel (all for being stubborn and not taking a cab), Karisa, Lauren, Marian and I headed to the Opera House. The plan was to catch an opera and dinner, but considering it would take 3 hours of our time in the city, we opted to skip it. Instead, we stumbled into an amazing restaurant off Andrassy Ut called Mensa and had the best food we had had so far in Europe. The restaurant was modern and funky…it had crazy walls and an a great overall atmosphere. We found out later that it is one of the trendiest in the city.

Since it was our first day, we decided to take it easy and choose a boat tour on the Danu over clubbing…the best decision we could have made! The cruise was at dawn, which allowed us to take day and night pictures. It was fascinating to learn the history of the city and really put the rest of the trip in perspective.

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After, we went to one of the restaurant/boats on the river called Spoon. Also very trendy! It had the coolest lay out, with different atmospheres in different sides of the enormous boats and a delicious dessert and drink menu. The restaurant helped us call a cab and we called it a night at around 11pm…we needed a full night night sleep for what was coming: experiencing Budapest in 24 hrs!

We finally got around to touring the city…or started to anyway…we took the train to the Hauptplatz and found the tourism info office. There, we purchased city passes for 20Eur…not bad considering we got free entrance to 12 museums, the zoo and the botanical gardens, vouchers for restaurants, train rides, discounted boat rides, and all sorts of things in german that I’ll probably never see since i dont know what they are.

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I convinced the girls to take the walking city tour and we embarked in our adventure…map in hand, down Linz’s streets. Our first stop was the Altes Rathaus, or city hall. Interesting name considering this is where Hitler did his speeches from when he was in town. There we went into the “Linz Genesis” Museum, which followed the history of Linz through time.

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After, we walked back to Hauptplatz to the Dreifaltigkeitssaule - a giant baroque column built in 1723 made of white marble. From there, we went to the Minoritenkirche (a monastery) and its beautiful and ornate church.

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Then Landhaus, the governor’s building, and Mozarthaus, the hotel where Mozart composed his famous Linz symphony in 1783.

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We continued our tour to the Linzer Schloss, a castle first built in 799 AD and completely rebuilt by Federico III in 1477. After being razed by a fire, the castle was once again reconstructed in 1604. Today, it houses the Scholssmuseum which curiously this month has the Colombian Gold Museum traveling exhibition!
Marian, Karisa, Lauren and I were amazed to be exploring Colombian gold works and a natural history in Linz, Austria. It was great to know the world also gets to see the great things about Colombia. They had hundreds of pre-Colombian gold statues, jewelery and ornaments, as well as a natural history exhibit portraying Colombian fauna. The museum had other things, but we didn’t really see it since I was so ecstatic to see the Kolumbien exhibit.

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Since we have a dinner tonight, we cut our trip short but will resume the walking tour shortly. It started raining on the way back and Marian and I got soaked. I am happy to report Austrian rain is wet, just like in other parts of the world. But after a full day of walking, it felt amazing!!

I finally made it into Linz… after a crazy week, an amazing wedding, and lots and lots of traveling. The plane rides from atl, washington and paris were uneventful…the train ride from vienna was short (i fell asleep the whole way) and i made it to the hotel all by myself!!!

the sommerhaushotel is great. i have my own room and own bathroom. having an internet connection in the room is priceless!!! so, that being said, i will attempt to have it updated as much as possible. pictures will also be posted on a regular basis.

i got here at 4:30…took a shower and headed to the hotel’s reception. it was great to see everyone and hear about their crazy adventures so far. we walked around the campus and i learned my first german food vocabulary: pommes frites!!! (look it up! hehehe)

nothing much since then, but this weekend we’re going to Budapest! Just booked the hotel!

Please write and comment…i miss you all already!

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