After exploring Italy, we got a little change of scenery with Germany and Austria. We took a sleeper car to Munich, Germany, which was a very convenient way to travel when we had an 8 hour train ride. It really made the time pass by quickly! Once we made it to Munich we planned out our time there including the things we wanted to see, places we wanted to eat, and decided that we could use one of our days as a short “day trip” from Munich. This is when Alex (my boyfriend, if I have forgotten to mention) and I decided to head to Salzburg, Austria for a day. We had train passes which made it super easy to hop on any train you wanted to any country you wanted.. if it happened to be on the set list of 25 named by the Eurail system.. but still it was very convenient. So Alex and I saw the Mirabell Gardens and the Salzburg Castle – scenes from The Sound of Music. It was a very pretty town, almost surreal.
When we got back to Munich we visited the BMW show room and the site of the 1972 summer Olympics. Munich, a movie about the massacre of Olympic athletes in the ’72 games, is on my “to watch” list. We also visited the Hofbrauhaus, which used to be an old brewery, but is now just a huge tourist attraction that is a beer hall serving only its own brew. The next day, a full day in Munich we took a walking tour, got a bird’s eye view of the city, and ate sausage in the English Gardens. It was so nice to get away from the pastas and pizzas of Italy and get the meat and potatoes that Germans love.
Our next stop was Vienna, which is well known for its arts and culture scene. What better way to experience this than attend the Opera? They offer standing seats for 4 Euros, which seemed like a deal we couldn’t pass up. We saw Faust in French and had little screens with subtitles in English. The standing section was just packed with people though and I didn’t have a screen for the first half of the opera. I still really liked the experience, but a chair and subtitles throughout would have made the three hours a lot more enjoyable. We also saw Schönbrunn Palace, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and the Dorotheum, which was like an auction house with very expensive things inside (we didn’t stay for long). Then we went to a little town called Grinsing outside of Vienna at the bottom of the Vienna Woods. This town was known for its wine making so we went to a wine tavern and then made our way up the woods (by bus).
Well, time to go make some dinner. I have 6 days to prepare for my next exam so I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon!
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