An Australian in Austria

(or... more like... "A Million Aussies in Austria!")

Hello!

I'm in Salzburg! Taking a long time for internet access! My last update cost $AUD16 (including a coffee)! which is why it's been so long since I've written anything! This place has only 5 computers available for €3 for an unlimited time! There is actually a counter counting down from approx 3 hrs, but I don't imagine I'll be that long!

OK... about Vienna. It's expensive, it's very commercial, and everything is too expensive. The hostel (Wombats) was *too* good... for 2 reasons: I couldn't encourage ppl to leave the hostel to go to any local bar or nightclub, and also because I didn't book in for my last night, it filled up and I had to go to another hostel for a night! At least it was close by!

And I met kewl ppl! Jim and Tracey are almost travel addicts ;-) They do camp americas, then go and travel... in winter they're running a chalet in France... will have to visit them... and sample Jim's cooking!! :-)

Vicki and Eddie are travelling around... also on a europass - but they don't have long to go till they've finished! Vicki is going to England for a while after travelling... so we may even be able to meet up there... kewl kewl :-)

Hamish is a complex one :-) He's a really kewl guy who's into natural medicine, martial arts, rugby and playing a didge! I tried, and at least I got a sound out! He's going to try and work in the snowfields of Salzburg in winter... and this place is really nice! More on that later though! At the moment he's staying in some mansion place that friends of his family own in Vienna... grrr!

So... Vienna was a bit of a disappointment. I guess I didn't really try to understand Slovakians, cos I was only there one day... but I hoped to get an understanding of Austrian culture in 3 days! I guess that's the problem with big cities... they're all too big-city-ish! Since I was in Poland for 20 days and met tons of polish ppl, maybe I'm expecting too much (about understanding culture so quickly!)

So... the next day (after the rainy one I told you about before) I walked around with Hamish, Betsy and Jenny. We walked to the danube canal, and it was pretty icky! We walked back to the fine arts gallery place, payed too much to get in, and had to rush around to see everything before it closed! And 3/4 of the bottom (interesting sculpture) floor was closed! So that was pretty annoying!

Umm... on Sunday... gee what did I do on Sunday?? Or was that Sunday? Someone help me out!!!

Anyway... on Monday I know what I did. It was a kewl day! We went to see the KunstHausWien. It was build by this artist guy (I could tell you if I had my lonely planet guide - aka 'the bible' - with me) to house all his artworks, which are very contemporary... but not minimalist contemporary, but quite varied, detailed, interesting. He's done some architectural designs as well and there's an apartment block somewhere in Vienna that he designed. Anyway, the gallery is amazing... the floors are all lumpy... and in none of his paintings will you find a straight line (pretty much). There were all tiles everywhere, really colourful, mismatched, and tons of plants. Even the tickets to the gallery were interesting, you could take them and place them next to each other, and they fit like a jigsaw puzzle! 3 of us went, and our tickets were numbered 20, 21, 22... I wonder how many tickets you need to form the whole artwork! (each ticket was a slightly different house... colourful and with some alfoil-ey bits too!)

So that was Monday morning. Monday night I went to the opera! For €2! We had to line up an hour before the performance started, and grabbed standing room tickets. We grabbed some cake (Sacher Torte is good! Used to be my favourite food when I was 7, and I've rediscovered it!) then went in at 7... It was the premiere of Simon Boccanegra by Verdi. It was quite complex, and it took me a while to get my little LCD translator thingy working, but the singing was really good! Unfortunately, we couldn't see all of the stage... only about 1/3 to 1/2 of it... and we were so high we didn't see the backdrops! But, you can't complain about it when you only spend €2!

So, that was Vienna! In the morning I left on a train to Salzburg with Betsy and Jenny... the plan was that we were all going to Salzburg, but last minute travel changes are pretty frequent with this lifestyle!! They both went on to Munich, and will return here (to Salzburg) a little later.

Catching the train into Salzburg was great! In the distance we saw Mt Untersberg with all snow on top... and today I climbed it! OK... I'm jumping the gun and will come back to that!

I found my hostel and was wandering around by about 1pm. I grabbed a yiros for lunch (just about the only cheap food around here) on this cute street of shops (umm... more about other cute streets later... there are tons of them here!!). I was on a mission... to buy some hiking boots! After talking to the receptionist at the hostel, I knew the location of this sports megastore a little out of town. I ended up getting these really kewl trekking boots... they're not the super-hard-kick-someone-and-break-legs boots, but are kinda hybrid normal shoes/hiking boots... completely waterproof gore-tex (which is the most important part!) but have softer soles and are flexible suedey leather... ooh... they set me back a bit... but I needed them for today, and I like having dry feet!

So, I went back and walked around the old town for a few hours to wear in my boots. The old town is really cute! I took too many pictures of the castle... and I visited the gardens from the sound of music... don't remember enough of the movie for them to be familiar though! There's this really interesting church too, that was quite quaint and had catacombs cut into the mountain-hill thingy (errr.... which there are two of in the main centre... like, basically vertical escarpments right next to buildings... imagine if kings park escarpment was 3x as high and there were buildings all along it!)... tomorrow I might walk around one of them... hrmmm.

I returned back to the hostel, ate dinner and went to the Augustinerkloster und Bräu - this place where the monks brew beer! It was really quite tastey! I went with Anna?? this girl from NZ (but who's been working in England and will soon be moving to Perth!) and a crazy guy Neil (who I can write about cos I never gave him my website address!). He started talking about philosophical stuff, and just didn't stop! I mean... I can talk about that stuff for an hour or two, but not for a whole night!! I think he's in Germany now, so maybe I can have an evening where my head won't hurt!

OK... on to today! I'm really using this unlimited internet thing!

I climbed Mount Untersberg! I was supposed to be up early, but I've been running around like a chook with it's head cut off so I didn't wake up with my alarm! I think some of my roommates were amazed that I could sleep through it...!!! So I had a big brekky, and caught a bus for 8km to Glanegg. Info gave me a lil information sheet that said it would take 3 1/2 hours, but I left at 11 and got to the top (well, a shelter 10 mins from the top) at about 1:30. On the way up, I met Claudia, an Austrian air traffic controller who was walking on her day off... she had caught up to me... and I kept up with her for a while... but not for long! She went ahead and I met her at the top. She left 15 mins after me, and probably arrived at the top 10 mins before me! And she's had a knee reconstruction! (or some similarly serious operation).... err... wow! The climb was hard.... but very spectacular! After Claudia climbed down, I climbed up to the top, and along to another mountain peak... I think I was up 1856m... and Salzburg is about 400m above sea level. It felt longer than the Polish mountain climb... and doing it myself was harder (motiviation required!) but I could catch a cable car down, so that was pretty good motivation to get up there! It was quite steep for a lot of the way... maybe 1/5 of the climb was stairs at about 45 degrees! I could also see really far... it was a *really* nice day today... Salzburg at 8km away seemed quite close! So I reckon I could see nearly 20km! We could see some mountains that were in Germany too!

I met an American guy... and we grabbed a coffee and caught the cable car down. I still haven't been back to the hostel... will have to tell my friends there all about the climb! Took nearly 30 photos I can show them... and eventually you!

OK... so tomorrow... I'll try to get up early! I reckon I'll be aching! The plan is to go and see the fortress/castle thing, then go and catch a train to Munich. Need to start using my eurail pass! I've already got less than 2 months to use it, unless I move my flight from Rome to London (currently Dec 10th) back a bit.

Thanks for reading guys... I'm really tired now... have to email a few ppl then will limp back to the hostel!

Cya!

Posted by Sam at October 17, 2002 12:21 AM