Salzburg Christmas Weekend
so we went to salzburg this past weekend with all the exchange students. and we took the train and then a bus to the hostel. and when we were on the bus these 3 guys get on wearing rotary jackets and everyones like ‘omg newbies!!’ and run to meet them. i stayed where i was and applied lipgloss and fixed my hair telling the boy beside me that i would make my impression later. which was true because i spent the whole weekend hanging out with those boys. those boys who are short term exchangers from south africa.
so anyway…we get off the bus at our stop and have to pull out a map to find the hostel. so im holding this map which is longer than i am tall and everyone driving by is laughing. and finally we make it to the hostel. and we have a german test. UTOH! but i think i did pretty well. it was 60 multiple choice questions and then a 200 word text in german about our first 4 months in austria. after that we had a little presentation about salzburg and then we had the evening to ourselves after dinner. i went out into the town to the christmas market with 4 south africans. micheal, jason, anke, and carolee. we walked around and then went to have hot chocolate. which i had to order because i was the only one that spoke any german of the group. and then we were going to go ice skating but by the time we got there they were closing so we had a snowball fight instead. me versus micheal and jason. not fair but yeah. we were back to the hostel by 11 and i was in bed by 2.
saturday. breakfast at 8 and we left the hostel at 9. we walked to the fortress. which was on top of a big hill. and the road we walked was almost straight up and was slippery with ice. but everyone made it. we walked around the fortress for a while and saw a beautiful view of the city. after that we walked back down and through a very old graveyard and then to a sculputure which a local rotarian had carved. it was of the manger and baby jesus with mary and joseph and animals. it was very beautiful. after that we had lunch and then the afternoon to ourselves. jason and i went out into town by ourselves and walked around for about 4 hours. we got lost and found our way and then got lost and found our way again. it was a very nice relaxing afternoon. even though it was about -8C. which is about 17F. so it was very very cold! and then that evening everyone went to a restuarant and we had dinner and then gave presentations about christmas in our own countries. all the americans sang ’santa claus is coming to town’ and then ‘happy birthday’ to jesus. we were at the restuarant for about 3 hours. then we had the evening to ourselves. i went back to the hostel and just hung out with people. i didnt make it to bed until 4:30 and had to wake up at 6:30. but thats okay.
sunday. church. in the big cathedral. catholic. mass lasted almost 2 hours. and i didnt really understand a thing because we were at the back of the church and couldnt hear anything. then we went back to the hostel and ate lunch and took the train home.
ohh and i forgot to add. in addition to the short term south africans (9 of them total) we also had the 9 exchange students from croatia there also. it was so funny because i was introducing myself to them and the one girl is like ‘umm we have already met. at the multi district conference in ohio.’ i was like ‘ohhh yeahh.’ even though i didnt recognize her until she said that.
welp thats it for now
Merry Christmas!
