Salzburg/Munich school trip - DAY 1

7:30 the buses left for Salzburg – approximately a two and half hour bus ride. We watched a movie on the way over so that helped the time pass :) We had mass at 11:00 at Franziskanerkirche which translated is Franciscan Church.

After mass we ate lunch. Sarah and I kind of lost our people so we sat a four person table where our Philosophy of the Human Person, and Ethics teacher sat, Prof. Harold, and our residence director Katie Hess who’s on her third or fourth year working as an RD in Austria. The lunch here was so good and we ordered white wine which tasted so yummy! And the lunch was delicious too :) We then had a tour of old Salzburg with the bishop’s brother (the bishop who celebrated mass with us at Franziskanerkirche earlier that morning), Dr. Seifert. Apparently he had been Prof. Harold’s professor! Salzburg is the home of the Sound of Music, and I’m a little rusty on exactly all the locations of the scenes in the movie but this picture is of the courtyard and steps where they sing one of their many songs :)

Some students also visited the gazebo where Liesel sings “I am 16 going on 17,” but apparently it was a bit of a disappointment because an old lady broke her hip falling off the benches, so they closed it.
Here’s a street in Salzburg – it was such a cute town!

And here’s Sarah, Andrea and I on the bridge during our walking tour, you can see the fortress Hohensalzburg in the background where we visited later that day

After the walking tour we checked into our hostel around 3:30, got some coffee and walked up the hill to Festung (fortress) Hohensalzburg which is the largest preserved medieval fortress in Central Europe. At the top of the hill was a fantastic view of Salzburg! We also visited Nonnberg Abbey a little ways down the hill from the fortress. Here’s the view from the fortress

We then walked around looking at the shops and stopped by Dom Cathedral in Domplatz – a plaza located centrally in Salzburg. There has been a cathedral in this spot since the 8th century and it honors the patron saint of Salzburg, St. Rupert. Mozart’s parents Leopold and Anna-Maria were married here in 1747 and Mozart was baptized at this font in the cathedral

He also served as organist and some of his compositions were written for the cathedral. We attended mass here on Sunday morning and I read the following, “It is the only house of worship in the world with five independent fixed organs, which are sometimes played together during special church-music concerts”

After visiting Dom Cathedral, we ran into Father Brad and some students headed to Augustiner-Bräu – one of the largest beer sellers in Europe. The tradition is to wash the beer glass in the water fountain before the glass is filled.

First wash the glass…

Then fill it with beer!

Here we are at Augustiner-Bräu, eating dinner :)

And that was the end of our day in Salzburg… Sunday we’re off to Munich!

Willkommen to Mariazell

On September 3, a group of students woke up early to go on an approx 12 mile hike to Mariazell! With this information I chose not to go of course ;) Instead, Sarah and I rode the one-hour bus ride there to join all those who went walking. We found some students who were strong and ready to go on another hike! and others who were not so happy - blisters, cuts and bruises! :P Mariazell was the cutest town, they had all these little religious shops near the church and we got ice cream while we walked around town and visited them :)

The Mariazell Basilica is also located here which is the most important pilgrimage location in Austria and one of the most visited shrines in Europe. Here are some pictures I copied from Google because we failed to get a good picture while we were there :P

Hello Big City

So we just got back from our Salzburg and Munich trip which was amazing! I'm behind though so I'm going to talk about our Vienna trip which was a week ago now.

7:30 on Saturday morning - everyone is pretty tired on the bus except for the kids. Most of the professors who teach in Austria have big families and the kids usually tag along on the bus rides, adding a little spunk to the lives of a bunch of college students :) 10:15 we had mass at Kapuzinerkloster, and at the end of mass we began our walking tour. One of the places we visited on the tour was the Spanish Riding School of Vienna. The horses are Lipizzan horses that perform in front of huge audiences in Vienna. We were told these horses can “dance”. Whatever “dancing” for them is, I guess they are pretty amazing. The first picture are the horses and the second is a sign that tells us when their morning exercise is. I was so entertained! :P

We also visited St. Peter's Church - potentially the oldeset church in Vienna. There are 714 angels in the church and everything that looks like it's made of gold is actually made of wood, but covered in gold :O

We ate at Melker Stiftskeller for lunch. As usual, lunch and the first round of drinks are paid by the University but any other costs are our own. At this point it was about 2:30 and from that time until 8:00 we had free time! We visited St. Stephen’s Church – the heart of Vienna – which was absolutely amazing. It’s a Gothic style church and so far is my favorite that we’ve seen.

I wish I had some better pictures, but it's so difficult to capture how amazing these European churches are! After seeing the church, we took a trip up the “lift” as they call them, and to a platform on TOP of the church. Here's just one picture of the outrageous view. I was scared out of my mind… I can deal with some heights, but this one was difficult. We were SO high up!

Afterward we went to Demel – Vienna’s best known pastry and coffee shop – and had Venetian coffee. I had what was called a Großer Brauner (a large espresso with cream) here’s a picture of it. It definitely made my day :)

We walked around a bit before getting dinner at around 6:30. It was kind of a crazy evening because we ended up with nine people in our group which was stress like no other. We managed to find a pizza place and split four pizzas – which took much longer than it should have. The waitress took forever to get us our check and in a hurry, we paid and left. We got to our meeting place for the bus at a reasonable time, but the stress was enough that I’ve vowed not to go on a trip again with more than four people. We still had fun though :)