Anyway, so I left you all in Munich. I went to the train station the next morning and hopped on a train to Salzburg, Austria, for 1 day and 1 night. My only plans were to go on a Sound of Music tour, then to meet up with Hannes, a guy I had found on couchsurfing.com, and hang out/stay the night with him and his friends. Couch surfing is a website where you can post up a profile and search the profiles of others who are willing to host visitors, or "surfers". Hannes had told me he could host me, but unfortunately I hadn't heard from him since I was in Prague, so I wasn't really sure if it would work out...
So, I arrive in Salzburg and everything is covered in snow! (Even more so than in Munich). I walked to Mirabellplatz (Mirabell Plaza) and got my ticket for my Sound of Music tour, then walked around for a while and checked out the city. In addition to being the setting for The Sound of Music, Salzburg is also the birthplace of Mozart, which was kind of cool. I wish I had had more time to check out his birthplace or home (I got to see both, but I didn't have time to go in and do the museums), but it was nice to walk around the city, which was absolutely beautiful!! It reminded me of a germanic Lyon, except with the Alps in the background!
Eventually, I went back to start my tour. I'm pretty sure this was the first tour that I've paid to go on since I've been in Europe....and it was CRAZY! We had an extremely chipper British woman as our guide, and she drove us all around Salzburg and the beauuuuutiful Lake District while singing Sound of Music songs and describing in freakishily vivid detail all the scenes from the movie. It was definitely interesting though, and the whole area was just beautiful! Really really cold, though.
After the tour, I still hadn't heard from Hannes, so I decided to forget that idea and hope that the hostel marked on my map had open beds for that night. I walked to the hostel and sure enough, it did! It was also insanely nice for the price, and I ended up squirreling my way into a couple of hours of internet, then meeting a couple of super fun Australian girls in my room. Us and a few others ended up having a few drinks in the hostel's bar, and I headed back to Munich the next morning to go to the airport and fly to Stockholm!
the river!
there were lots and lots of snowy hills
mozart's birthplace
this was a week or so after the invasion of gaza, however i hadn't been up to date on current events and i had NO clue what these people were demonstrating against!
first stop on our Sound of Music tour...the back of the mansion and the lake! which was frozen over.
the fortress. not part of sound of music, but still pretty majestic.
me and the GAZEBO!!! "i am 16, going on 17"....remember?
this is wolfgang lake, part of the lake district outside of salzburg. honestly one of the most beautiful landscapes i've ever seen in person.
i look a little bit uncomfortable..probably because it was soo COLD!
the end of our tour left us with some free time in a little town called Mondsee...it was quite festive, as you can see..SOOO then, I flew Munich - Berlin and Berlin - Stockholm. As I was flying in to Stockholm, the captain comes on and tells us that the electricity had just gone out at Skavsta (the airport we were supposed to land at), so we proceeded to circle around for a while. Our original landing time was already late as it was, like 11pm. So we circle around for 25 minutes and the captain announces that we're going to go to Arlanda airport instead...Everyone in the plane applauded and at the time I didn't know this, but it was because Arlanda is actually much closer to Stockholm, whereas our original airport was like 1.5 hours away.
So we finally land at around 11:30pm, after the captain announces that the current temperature is -17° CELSIUS!!! This is about 1° Fahrenheit. Luckily, when we got outside it was only -10°, or in the teens. So after about 20 minutes of confusion, we get to the terminal to wait for our baggage...which took another 30 minutes....and we get on the bus into town, which took ANOTHER 40 minutes. So basically I finally got to my hostel's street in the middle of the night and I realize I don't have the address. Of course, I ended up finding it 2 days later, but it sucked at the time. Luckily, my friend Brett was already there so I called and woke him up to help me out.
The next day, Brett and I braved the cold and explored a little bit! By the time we saw a couple of sites, sat down and had a meal, and started walking back, it was 3:30pm and the sun was already setting. Craziness! We definitely immediately regretted the time of year that we decided to visit Sweden. Hahaha. We spent a lot of time hanging out in our hostel, which was actually a neat little hostel that made it easy to make friends, because there was a lot of common space.
The rest of the time, we did a lot more walking around, but decided that our time might be better spent inside museums than outside suffering in the 20ish degree temperature. So our 2nd day, we went to the Vasa Museum, knowing only that there was a big ship inside. And man, was that right! The entire museum was about a ship that sank in the harbor of Stockholm in the 1600s, and was LIFTED out of the harbor and completely restored 300 years later!! The ship was on display in the museum, along with tons of artifacts. It was pretty neat. When we got out of the museum, though, it was about sunset again and there was basically a snow storm outside! That night, we attempted to find a bar to go hang out at with some new Midwestern friends from our hostel, but mostly failed (either because the bars were closed, even at 10pm, they only accepted 23 and older, or what have you).
During our last day, we decided on the Nobel Museum for our museum of choice. It was a bit boring, actually, but cool because Stockholm is where the Nobel Prize is awarded each year. The sun finally came out that day, although it never was above freezing temperature (from the moment I got to Prague until the moment I got back to Lyon, I never saw above 32 degrees). So we got a lovely meal of falafel/kebap and went home to try and force ourselves to sleep early, as we called a cab for 4am the next morning to get to the airport for our 7am flight!
So our travel day went something like this: 4am taxi to the train station. 4:15am bus (hour and a half long) to the airport. 7am flight to london. 12pm flight to grenoble (where it was just as snowy as in stockholm). 3pm train to lyon. and for me, another hour of metros and the bus from the train station to my house. finally putting me home at about 7 pm!
Crazy steamy Stockholm! Stockholm actually consists of like 9 islands...This is one of them.
We think that this building is City Hall....But we are not sure.
At about 3:30pm! Hello sunset!
Me and the Vasa...An old, old wooden ship
Snow!!!
The weather difference was real difficult for me and Brett (also from UCSB, also studying in Lyon). Most of our conversation while walking the streets of Stockholm was like this : "Hey Brett, remember the last time it was freezing in Santa Barbara?" "Yes, I wore a Tshirt and jeans that night."
The Palace
More harbors
This is about Mr. Nobel, the guy who created the prize. "The death of his brother Emil in an explosion in 1864 was a difficult blow." Funny pun, or coincidental translation???
At 9am at London Stansted....the best Burger King of my life (I hadn't had it in months!!! Doesn't exist in France!)
And as we begin our descent into the cloud cover over Grenoble, we see that the weather may not be much better in France...Well, that's finally it for my euro trip! Next up, Barcelona and Amsterdam this month and next...Yay!
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