a little salzburg moment
I am all about taking opportunities.
And when said opportunity is being in Europe and having the weekend to do whatever you want?
You best believe I am trying to go to as many places as possible.
I am here on this program with 3 other UC students and 3 international students from Brazil, Singapore and London. I’m been so lucky that we have all been getting along so well and are on the same page with wanting to explore and travel on the weekends.
4 of the students and I went to Salzburg for a day trip on July 9th—and we started of the trip by almost missing our bus.
It was totally my fault. I was getting ready and just lost track of time and we had to be at our bus 15 minutes before it left and it left at 7:00am. We had to take the subway to the bus station so it was an early morning.
After absolutely BOOKING it through the subway station: we made it to the bus with minutes to spare.
And it pulled out of the station at exactly 7:00am.
It is only about a 2 hour drive to Salzburg from Munich so after I took what I thought was a brief nap when we left: I woke up and was in the mountains! How convenient!
Picture from the bus
We arrived at a random bus stop kinda removed from the city and realized quickly: that we didn’t really have a plan.
Yay so fun! Day trip! Only a short bus ride there! But then you arrive, and realize
What do we do now?
We quickly found our way to the train station and made our way to the city. We were just making it up as we went, googling things to do in Salzburg.
Overall, the city is beautiful, and much smaller than I expected.
The first stop we went to was the Mirabell Gardens, which was part of the filming locations for Sound of Music which was so cool to see.
One of the best parts of the trip was that two of the people I was with brought cameras and are great photographers so I got some great photos. Here’s a bunch from the weekend below.
Another cool spot we saw was the Residenzplatz, which pictures just dont do justice because it is genuienly so
ginormous…
the pure scale of the buildings are hard to conceptualize.
My favorite part of the day was seeing the Fortress Hohensalzburg, which is the castle that overlooks the city.
Something I am realizing is that I can´t comprehend how old everything is.
Like this castle is from the
11th century.
The 11th century?
Fortress Hohensalzburg was built in 1077, a year where my brain short circuits a little bit everytime I think about it for too long. 1077? People were fulling functioning human beings that long ago? They had the technology and expertise to
BUILD A CASTLE?
Really puts into perspective what a tiny blip your life is in the scale of history, and that there has been so much life lived thousands of years before your own. I think it could be easy to spiral out over that thought but I think it is somewhat comforting. There is something beautiful thinking about the fact that there were people just like you and me, they just lived in 1077.
The pictures from the beginning of the day versus like 10 minutes later look like they were taken two weeks apart because it went from the greyist of skies to the most perfect blue skies you have ever seen.
After exploring, we got lunch at a cafe and got attacked by bees.
Like harrassed.
They kept going inside my friends coke bottle and he did not handle it well to say the least.
We for sure looked like stupid americans scared by bees.
Overall, the trip was a perfect introduction on showing how easy it is traveling on the weekends. On the way back on the bus we met a girl from Spain and a guy from Berlin who were super nice and we ended up talking to them the whole way back. Moments like these have been my favorite so far.
Meeting absolutely random people and it feels so normal, that you are from completely different sides of the world but talking and hanging out it so natural.
It is such a cute human moment.
That one moment you are in Columbus, OH in the Starbucks drive through and the next you are standing outside a bus at the Austrian to Germany border talking with people you just met while the Polizei check your passports.