Travel Home from Break

So this trip was really full of unexpected events. Before leaving, the university had to have an official travel meeting with everyone in Austria about the terrorist threats and advised us to be safe and required everyone to have a cell phone, etc. Obviously they weren't bad enough to cancel 10-day but it was definitely a hot topic for awhile on campus before everyone left for break.

Well, insead of having any terrorist attacks, all of our problems were with the trains. Our plans for Marseille were not the only plans spoiled, our plans to Paris at the end were too because France was having another one of their typical train strikes. But this time it was particularly bad and were affecting trains throughout Europe and even airplanes. Not only that, but rental cars were hard to get because of a gas shortage. In simpler terms, transportation is a little crazy right now. So our coordinator, Pam set out to be sure our group could get out of France and back to Austria. I don't know how it happened, but Pam managed to get us 35 seats on a private Italian train to Milan, Italy. These Italians were angels straight from Heaven I'm convinced. They were overjoyed to serve us on their train, and we were in sleeper cars so we had our own beds for the night and they fed us dinner and breakfast... for absolutely no cost. Think about that for a minute, seriously... 35 students in their own beds on a night train served dinner and breakfast without having to pay a dime. Don't tell me something supernatural didn't go on there! It was the hugest blessing and not only that but it was Sarah and I with one other student from our group in a six person sleeper compartment with three older Italians (two women, and one man) who could speak no English, but we had the most amazing time with them! I had my German/French/Italian phrase book and we had a blast coming up with phrases, asking them questions and just sharing smiles and laughs. I have never felt so much love, generosity and kindness by strangers then during that week in Lourdes! Well we got to Milano about 4pm and we spent about 5 hours in Milan. We visited the Duomo di Milano, ate dinner and got gelato, walked around visiting the shops and were back to the station by 9pm to catch another night train to Vienna!

Our overnight train from Milano to Vienna was SO much fun. We had sleeper cars again but this time it was four beds in a room and the other three beds in my room were friends from school so it was so nice! There were a bunch of us on the train so a group of us crammed into one of the little rooms and played a few games of mafia. I had a really good sleep that night too, probably the best night I had all week. I definitely have never had so little sleep in one week before in my life! But it really was a fun train ride! We got to Vienna about 10:30am - our train was two hours delayed which was a bummer and then to make matters more complicated we got on the wrong train again but luckily realized about 15 minutes into it. So we caught a train back to the train station in Vienna and fixed our mistake by getting on the right train ;) As soon as we got off the train in Gaming we hitched a ride back to the Kartause. We were back by 5pm... almost a full two days of traveling and we were tired and dirty! All of us were so excited to be back in Gaming and the best part was we were coming back from an adventurous and life changing week!

Lourdes Mission Trip (10-day break continued)

Those doing the Lourdes mission trip were required to be in Lourdes by midnight on Saturday and were allowed to leave Friday afternoon, which gave us some time in the beginning and end to travel wherever else we wanted to go during our 10-day break. We were planning to go to Marseille at the beginning (which obviously didn't work out), and Paris after. Even though we ended up in Paris at the beginning, we didn't get to see much so we decided going after would be fine too!

So we got to Lourdes about 7 hours earlier then planned. Some of that time we spent walking around the little shops. Our dress code for the week was black pants and white shirt, but Sarah didn't have black pants so she found some in Lourdes during that time. We were pretty hungry but decided not to eat yet since it was only 4:30. So we went to drop our stuff off at the Ave Maria where we were going to be staying for the week, then go get food. We checked in with Pam for the mission trip. She and Marlene are coordinators with Our Lady of Lourdes Hospitality and were our mothers for the week - they were such wonderful, hard working people and everyone just loved them! Well, when we checked in, Pam was so excited to see us she just took us under her arm and we ended up getting sucked into mass, a short tour and dinner with the older volunteers from North American Lourdes Volunteers who had arrived earlier that day. Having not eaten a solid meal the whole day, it was quite a struggle waiting to eat, but during our tour we learned the poverty of St. Bernadette and at one time during the tour Pam told us Bernadette was cold, tired and hungry running down to the Grotto. Definition of how I felt during that tour :P So the whole afternoon ended up being a huge blessing even though it started out a little miserable.

On Sunday, we attended International Mass in the Underground Basilica and had an orientation meeting to give the volunteers a feel of how the week was going to look. On Monday, our group of about 28 people flew in from the United States. These people had a range of difficulties that brought them to Lourdes for spiritual and physical healing. One man brought his wife battling cancer, we had a quadriplegic, a paraplegic, and many older people many of which needed wheelchairs. The 35 students that came to volunteer in Lourdes were split into different jobs. I worked in dining service where we didn't have to cook or do dishes, but served the pilgrims at every meal and cleared their dishes up after them. In addition to meals we were always available to assist them when attending different events in Lourdes like mass, rosaries, processions, tours, Stations of the Cross, etc. At the beginning of the trip the pilgrims shared the reason they came to Lourdes and these stories were incredibly eye-opening. Each of these people had suffering to deal with that I couldn't even imagine because I hadn't experienced it for myself. Then after the trip everyone shared again the highlights and blessings of the week and every single person in that room was transformed in some way.

I think the most important lessons I learned during this mission trip was the power of service and the true meaning of suffering. Someone told me studying abroad in Austria was amazing, but that the Lourdes mission trip really made Austria amazing. I can now say I definitely agree :)

Here are some pictures!

The rosary procession at night

Andrea, Julie and I :) the Rosary Basilica is there in the background

Dining service!

The Grotto

Rosary circle and basilica

Group! :)

Beginning of 10-Day Break in France

Let me begin by saying this week was probably the most amazing and eye-opening week of my life. We had crazy transportation adventures, days of service and learning about the true meaning of helping others in need and the power of suffering, strengthening of faith, and bonding not only with people from all around the world but with other students. I am so blessed and thankful to be attending such a wonderful school and that our little group of Franciscan students are part of a universal and worldwide church running a marathon through life that we're all in together. And I have more hope then I've ever had before of winning that race :)

Our 10-day break began on Thursday evening, as our weekend excursions usually begin, with overnight travel. We were able to get our reservations from the ticket machine this time, which were 5 euro seats like before but we managed to find an open couchette with one other person, and we stayed there the whole night without being kicked out! The night train took us to Zurich, Switzerland and from Zurich to Geneve. The Oebb website told us we needed to take a bus to Lyon and a train from there would take us to Marseilles (South France) which was where we were going to be staying that night. We made our hostel reservation for the night so we were all set. Well, instead of taking a bus which was going to take awhile, we were told we could catch a train to Lyon. We found when the train to Lyon was leaving, and got food and did a little clothes shopping during our hour and a half layover. We caught the train which was about a half hour delay. Well, turns out we got on the wrong train. About an hour into the ride Andrea got a little concerned and went to ask the conductor if the train we were on was going to Lyon. Turns out we were headed to Paris. Andrea asked when the next stop was so we could get off, and the conductor answered, "Paris." So we had about a two hour train ride ahead of us and we were headed in the complete opposite direction... to Paris instead of Marseille. The conductor was the nicest man though, he understood it was a mistake that we were on the train to Paris and didn't charge us a fine for the compulsory reservation which is usually about a 100 euro fine. We heard later of people from other groups who did get charged. We were so thankful to that man, he not only didn't charge us, but upon arriving in Paris, walked us through the traffic jam of people to the ticket machine so we could try getting a train reservation for a train back to Marseille. Unfortunantely, the most immediate train to Marseille at 5 was completely full and so was the later train and we couldn't get on the night train to Lourdes either. Instead, we managed to get reservations for a 10:30 train in the morning which would get us to Lourdes about 3:30pm, which was approx. 7 hours earlier than planned. So our plan for the night and the rest of the weekend was not ours to decide... and we needed to find a place to stay for the night in Paris.

We wandered pretty aimlessly for awhile. We were tired and really thrown off obviously. We eventually found a hostel which was pretty disgusting, but we didn't have much of a choice so we booked the last three rooms and attempted to buy some passes for the metro to go see the Eiffel Tower at night. Our credit cards wouldn't work (the machine would only accept coins). Not gonna lie, all of us were not in the best moods. I can recall being extremely frustrating with the whole situation, and being tired didn't help. Nothing seemed to be going right. Well, we didn't have enough change for the metro so we went to the supermarket and bought wine and chocolate chip cookies for a treat to have at the Eiffel Tower but actually more to get change for the metro. We picked up some food, bought our passes and hopped on the metro to the Eiffel Tower. We stopped at a souvenir shop and bought some postcards and a t-shirt (I desperately needed a bum t-shirt since I didn't think to bring an extra pajama shirt from home) and what better place to get one then in Paris! ;) While looking through the t-shirts we met Jackson from Bellingham who was working at the souvenir shop! He told us he was sick of small town America and so he packed up his stuff and moved to France haha. We walked to the Eiffel Tower which was gorgeous and we enjoyed our cookies and wine. At this point, we were quite fine with ending up in Paris. Trains are too unpredictable to get angry when traveling doesn't go as planned :)

We left late from the Eiffel Tower and were in our beds by midnight. We had cold water in the morning in a pretty unpleasant shower and were given coins to get breakfast from the vending machine :/ We chatted with a security guard in as much French as we could, and he helped us find our train we needed to catch to Lourdes. He was very friendly and we could tell he was pleased we were at least trying to speak to him in French :)

Switzerland!

Friday, September 24 at 7pm, four friends and I left the Kartause on our way to the train station for our first free weekend using our Eurail! The walk to the train station takes about 45 minutes but if you stick your thumb out there you might be able to hitch a ride ;) None of us really felt like hitch hiking though since we were going to be sitting on a train for a while. The train left for the station in St. Polten about an hour away at 8pm and we saw lots of other Franciscan students in St. Polten who were headed to all different places in Europe. We had kind of a long layover before catching our night train to Zurich, Switzerland and in the meantime tried to print our reservations we'd made for the night train, but the dumb machine wouldn't print them - a lot of other people were having trouble too. Here's how night trains work: they suggest you get reservations by calling the train station ahead of time because they're often crowded. Then upon arriving at the station you can print your tickets which tell you your seat number. Well, after many failed attempts on the broken machine, we gave up and hoped for the best. Without reservations on a night train one of three things are most common to happen 1) sleep in the luggage compartment, 2) buy coffee at the little restaurant and stay up most of the night, or 3) sit in a couchette that someone reserved until you're kicked out. All of these situations have happened to students before and we were told to be prepared for anything! So we were kind of annoyed because we had scrambled to make these reservations about 4 hours before and we were so proud that we got them even with it being so tight with time, but we still ended up getting on our night train having no idea where we were going to be sitting/sleeping for the next 8 hours or so. We walked the length of the train maybe three times with little hope. Many of the couchettes had one or two seats but that meant we would get separated. Well thanks be to God, we found a couchette with four open seats and the man sitting in the fifth seat was getting off at the next station. And the sixth man assured us that the people who had reservations for that couchette had missed their train (I have no idea how he knew that) - all that to say though, we had a couchette for the night without any worry of getting kicked out! The two men sitting with us were so nice too! One guy was in his early 20's and headed to Vienna for work and the other was from India traveling. Here's how we slept for the night and we were all quite satisfied and comfortable :)

We arrived in Zurich sometime between 8 and 8:45am. Some of us got better sleep then others but it wasn't bad for being on a train all night long! It was pouring down rain in Zurich which was a bummer but we found a Starbucks not far from the station where we got some coffee, relaxed, freshened up and ate some of our snacks we had bought at the Spar in Gaming before we left. We just explored Zurich for the early part of the day and left for Interlaken at about 1pm and arrived about 4pm or so, eating yummy snacks all the way there!

We found our hostel - Balmer's which was the place to be in Interlaken!

Unfortunantely, it was still raining and the forecast wasn't going to be changing much. If anything this was the most disappointing part of the weekend and in that regard probably not the best weekend to be going to Switzerland but bad weather happens so we made the best of it and still had a great time! We went to a chocolate show and listened to a presentation and watched how chocolate's made - we also ate way too much chocolate since it was conveniently sitting in front of us during the whole presentation. After chocolate, we walked back to the hostel, desperate for a full dinner since we'd basically just been snacking the whole day. We ate at the hostel's grill and met a guy from South Africa named Justin. He sat with us for dinner and taught us a much cooler way of playing Spoons then we are used to!

We woke up in the morning and checked out before going to Mass at 10am. I made the hostel reservations and I tried to get a second night at Balmer's but they were completely booked so I had to make a reservation at another hostel for our second night. After mass, it was still raining but with sun breaks so we walked back to Balmer's where we left our stuff even though we had checked out. We played some ping pong before deciding what to do for the day. Thankfully the rain had stopped, so we ate lunch and decided to do the high ropes course. We did that for the afternoon and all of us had a blast!

After swinging through the trees and walking on ropes for three and half hours, we caught a bus from the train station to our hostel which was a fifteen minute bus ride away in Iseltwald, which was completely unintended but it worked out fine. It was on a gorgeous lake and the town was so quiet. Our hostel was nice too and there was hardly anyone there. We made spaghetti for dinner in the kitchen and just chatted. We met a friendly cat outside, he reminded me so much of my cat except that he was tiny compared to Al! We played with him for a little while :) We were all so tired so we decided to go to bed early. We were all in bed by about 9. It was good for us because we had to get up super early to catch our train back to Gaming. 5:15 we were up. Laura's alarm clock didn't go off though so we were scrambling to take showers because we needed to be at the bus station by 6am. We kind of messed up the timing though and the bus was actually leaving the train station at 6 and getting to Iseltwald at 6:30... so we picked up loose ends that we dropped while rushing out of the hostel (I did my make-up in the phone booth with Allie's little mirror) and we ate snacks for breakfast since breakfast at the hostel didn't start till 8am :( We caught our train at 7am and ran into some friends who had also spent their weekend in Switzerland and they saved us from getting fined for accidently sitting in first class haha. It was a full day of traveling and we were walking back to the Kartause from the train station at 7:45. We walked for a little while with our thumbs out hoping someone would pick us up. We were lucky and hitch hiked the rest of the way back :)

Switzerland. Check :)