Salzburg Weekend

This past weekend I was in Salzburg for 3 days!

I didn’t have to go to school on Friday, and on the way to the train station I dropped off some Christmas postcards for my friends back home. I met the Graz area exchange students on my second train, and in all it was a 3 ½ hour train ride. We got into Salzburg in the early afternoon and took the bus to get to our youth hostel. We were some of the first ones there and had to wait most of the afternoon for everyone to get there. We were supposed to have a German test that evening but it got pushed to Saturday night because so many students got there late. After dinner in the hostel we had free time to explore and look around. I went with Crash, Parker, Johnny, and Jessie for a walk along the main river, the Salzach River. The suburbs or the city were really pretty at night and I liked the exercise after a long day of traveling.

 On Saturday, we had breakfast and afterwards made our way into the city with our entire group of almost 150 students. We had to do quite a bit of walking and got up to the Hohensalzburg Castle. It was a really cool building, but we didn’t see any of the interior. We did, however, get a great view of Salzburg from the vantage point and there were a bunch of cool vendors in this square selling things to eat and drinks. It was good to get some food again because the awful weather made us all quite cold and uncomfortable. I packed extra gloves and socks and lent both to some of my peers. We ate lunch at a Chinese buffet (just like in Vienna), and from there we had free time until our German test at 16:30. I mostly walked around with Crash and Johnny, looking for gifts for my host family and experiencing the Christmas markets. They were very similar to the ones in Steyr but much more expensive and touristy. Our German test was really easy (we had a different difficulty based on the language camp) but even the advanced one was a piece of cake. For dinner we got back on the bus back to the big castle to eat at a pretty fancy restaurant. We had a huge dining hall reserved for us all. The food was great and when we had eaten we all got up and sang Christmas songs from our sponsoring country. There were a lot of versions of “Jingle Bells” in a lot of languages and the Australian’s version about Christmas in summer was great! This was the last Rotary weekend for our “Oldies” the students from Australia and South America who are leaving in January, so there was a sort of ceremony for them. Once that was over, I headed out with Johnny and Jessie and took pictures and talked a lot about our exchanges so far. It was a good second day in Salzburg. Too bad the weather wasn’t nice, but I enjoyed it anyways!

The Hohensalzburg Castle

One of the Christmas markets in the castle 

Salzburg from above

Then on Sunday we just packed up our things and had breakfast. I only slept 4 hours the night before so I wasn’t in a good mood that morning but we got the second and final vaccination for Meningitis. After that we were pretty much free to go and that is when we began the goodbyes to everyone. This was the last time we would see any of the Australians in one place so that was somewhat difficult. Out of all the Oldies I will miss Chris and Alana the most. I didn’t get to know either of them too well but they were some of the kindest exchange students and Chris wants to be a pilot, so naturally we had something in common there. We also said goodbye to our own group because we won’t see each other for another 3 months until the Ski Camp in Schladming in March. Right now I am on the train back to Knittelfeld with Crash and Rachel. It was a good weekend in Salzburg; good final time to see the Oldies off and meet the students from Croatia. If I get a chance to return in a few years, I will be greatly looking forward to it!