Salzburg, Austria

Well my weekend seemed to start on Thursday night, despite having to go to work Friday morning. It was Suman's, one of my roommates, last night in Schwenningen, so we had supper together then a few drinks and ended up going out after midnight to a bar that ended up being closed, so we went to this little bar with a few older locals in it and played foosball. I have never seen such intense foosball in my life, it was great, we ended up doing shots at one point, and didn't get back until 2:30am.

 Katrin, Sascha, Me, Suman, Marius

Intense Foosball

I woke up a few hours later at 6:30am and got to work for 7:30am, it was not the most pleasant day of work. Since it was a Friday, I worked until about 1:30pm, before heading to the train station where I took the two hour train ride to Friedrichshafen, a decent sized city on the shores of Lake Konstanz (Constance), where Breagh is living. She and her sister gave a tour of the place, we had some ice cream and bought some drinks at the grocery store. We later met Matt, and then Danielle a bit later, at the train station before we had tacos at Breagh's place, which has an amazing view of the lake and you can see both Austria and Switzerland.

View from the window in Friedrichshafen

We had a great supper and Breagh's friend Tucker, came over and we played a few drinking games. It was a good night, but the morning came early once again. Breagh, the two Danielle's and I caught the train to Salzburg, Austria at 9am, and had a lovely 4 hour train ride while hung over. We arrived in Salzburg around 2pm, checked into the hotel I booked, which ended up being pretty fancy. It was a Crown Plaza, and was a pretty decent price. We walked around the city for the afternoon, toured the Castle, and the girls did some shopping. Here are the pictures, it's nickname is Rome of the North, I could see why.

 Mirabell Gardens from the Sound of Music

 Traditional Austrian dancing and clothing

 Austrian Alps

 Mozart's Birthplace

 It got sunny!

 We had a great meal and almost got lost looking for a grocery store to buy some snacks and drinks. We ended up buying everything at a gas station and we also came across the hostel we wanted to stay at as it was run by the same company as the one we stayed at in Munich. We went inside to check out the bar but it was pretty quiet, we thought we might go back later that evening. We got back to the hotel and Breagh called the hostel (we didn't speak to anyone when we were there), turns out the bar is only for people staying there, and the guy on the phone was wondering why we'd want to go to a random hostel bar. Breagh explained how we had such a great time in Munich at the hostel bar, the guy then said we could go to the bar and was apparently pretty pumped. We headed to the hostel at 10pm and ended up having a great time, and met a bunch of other people, some of whom we later went out downtown with. We tried to go to this massive student party that was supposed to have 900 people or something, but it was sold out. We then tried to go to a club, but they didn't allow certain types of footwear, so we headed to an Irish pub that we had passed earlier and had an awesome time and met a bunch of locals, some of which thought I was an excellent singer haha! I have no idea what time we made it back to the hotel, but we did get kicked out of the bar because it was closing, so it was probably around 4am. I remember ordering a pizza from room service as everything else was closed, but I didn't manage to stay awake while we waited for it.

At the Irish Pub!

We got up Sunday, Danielle caught a train home and the rest of us walked around a bit more for a few hours, had a coffee at an outdoor cafe, and just relaxed. We ended up on the same train back to Germany which was great, made the time go so much quicker. We had a compartment to ourselves too, which made it much more comfortable. Breagh and Danielle had to switch trains in Ulm and I continued to Stuttgart, we were all lucky to make our connections. After they left I was joined in the compartment by a female Police officer that could have been a model instead, talk about intimidating haha. I made it home by 8:30pm, thought I lost my keys, but I found them thankfully.

Salzburg University and the castle

Only a three day week this week and I'm off to Budapest, Hungary on Thursday with Greg and Breagh. We did blind booking again and thought it would be either Budapest or Krakow. We're staying at the Retox Party Hostel, should be a good time!

Also, I've managed to change the settings so anyone can comment below, so feel free!

The Black Forest & Munich

After a busy week of 10+ hour work days (I have to drink coffee now) combined with evenings of beach volleyball, cooking for all my roommates, German board games, banking, a haircut, and a few bars, I had an awesome long weekend. I left work on Friday around noon and came back here where I met two of my roommates, Marius and Suman, along with one of their classmates, Carmen, and we piled in Marius' car, a small cabriolet convertible, and headed to the next town to pick up some groceries as we were heading to Marius' parents house outside the town of Neustadt in the Black Forest. We bought a lot of stuff and had to pile it on ourselves to fit it all in the car. It was only a 20-30 minute drive, and we were really in the Black Forest, I was impressed. We hung around for the afternoon, went for a walk and saw the amazing view in the pictures I'll hopefully be able to upload. We had a great barbeque as people showed up, and had a bonfire, guitar playing and singing, and lots of beer. It was starting to get light out as I went to bed, I think it was around 4:30am. I slept for a few short hours and somehow managed to wake up around ten after eight. I had to catch a train from the middle of town, a 10km drive away, at 8:35am. Thankfully another of my roommates at the party, Sascha, had agreed to drive me and was awake when I got up. I got to the platform with only few minutes to spare. I felt horrible and smelled like a campfire, but was happy I made it to the train. 

I slept for much of the first train ride, which was 2-3 hours long, and found out Danielle, a UNBer, was on the same train again as we were leaving, so we sat together on the next train from Ulm to Munich. The second train was an ICE (Intercity Express) train so it only stopped once which made it a fairly quick trip given the distance we went, so we arrived in Munich at 1:30pm. Turns out there was another UNBer on the second train, Carolann, so we found her in the train station and headed to the hostel but not before there was some shopping for Birkenstocks, I didn't buy anything the whole time in Munich except for beer and food. I meant to get some souvenirs, but has absolutely no room. We checked into the hostel and I was able to change and get cleaned up a bit since I had not been feeling too great. Danielle, Carolann, and I walked around a bit and planned to meet up with some others for supper later as they had arrived on Friday and were out visiting the concentration camp Dauschau. We saw a little bit of Munich on our short walk and had some ice cream that tasted like it had alcohol in it, not as good as it might sound. We met up with Breagh, her sister Danielle, and a friend, Keegan, that was just beginning a 4 month trip around Europe, and strangely enough I had met him at the Cellar, the pub at UNB, a couple of months ago. We had doner kebaps for supper, and set out to find some beer and wine as we only had 2 hours before the pub crawl was to begin. We finally found some cold beer (not an easy find in Germany) and got ready to go out for the night, Breagh and Danielle bought some awesome traditional Bavarian clothing, the Dirndl, to wear for the night. We ended up going to three different beer gardens on the pub crawl, and the one liter beers really hit me with the lack of sleep, so I don't remember everything too clearly, but I know I had a good time.

Saturday morning I had breakfast at the hostel and put the pieces together of the previous night, and also went to Starbucks for a second coffee, before a few us went on the walking tour of Munich like the one in Berlin. I think I liked the Munich tour even more than the Berlin one, we had another awesome tour guide and was incredibly knowledgeable. We saw and learned so much of Munich, it was crazy to think we were standing in the same place Hitler once stood. Below are the pictures of the tour.

After the tour we took a walk through the English Garden, a massive park in Munich, and came upon a field full of people with a crowd on the opposite side. We decided to walk though the many sunbathers, but there were way too many completely naked people we didn't make it to the other side, we turned around, nearly dying from the awkwardness. We made our way out of the garden, with a few more laughs, and ended up seeing the playing of the Glockenspeil, which doesn't sound all that great, I was more amused by the number of people recording it. We then headed to the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous and oldest beer house in Munich, for beer and supper. It was a great time and we had quite the crew as we met up with a bunch of the others. 

After we ate we headed back to the hostel, and we ended up partying in the hostel all night, playing drinking games, going to Burger King, meeting lots of other travelers, it was a great night. Monday morning we woke up and headed to the train station for the journey back, there were 6 of us travelling together and it ended up taking nearly 7 hours to get back as we bought cheaper tickets to save some money so we couldn't take the fast trains. It was an awesome weekend, definitely one that won't soon be forgotten, well the parts that I remember anyways!