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!