ART2013: Road Trippin'

As I surely mentioned in previous blog posts, Austria has a lot of holidays. Because Austria is still, technically, a Catholic country, most Catholic holidays are also state holidays, and therefore the month of May is absolutely over-run with days off. Exactly one of the five weeks in May is a full teaching week. It’s awesome. This means that I get to use my last month of school to check everything off my Vienna/Austria bucket list, and I got a good chunk of that done last weekend!

We had last Thursday and Friday off because of “Christi Himmelfahrt” (aka Ascension?) so some other TAs and I decided to plan a little vacation in the regions of Austria we hadn’t yet seen. We rented a car and drove west, hitting a total of 4 different provinces. Here’s a map of all the places we went!

We started our trip in Sankt Pölten, the capital of Niederösterreich, where Michelle and Hannah live. From there we drove to our first stop, Sankt Gilgen. St. Gilgen is located on the shore of Wolfgangsee, part of the Salzkammergut, the incredibly picturesque lake district that surrounds Salzburg. The geography of eastern and western Austria are very different, so it was fun to see everything change as we drove west. As we crossed from Nieder- to Oberösterreich (Lower to Upper Austria), we saw mountains slowly start to appear in the landscape, getting bigger and bigger the further west we drove. By the time we got to the Salzkammergut, they were getting pretty big, and the combination of the striking mountains, dense multicolored forests, and crystal clear lakes made for a beautiful, beautiful sight. I didn't know there were so many shades of green! I had been to the Salzkammergut before, when Michal and I came to Salzburg in January. Our Sound of Music tour (read about that here!) took us into this district to the city of Mondsee, but the weather was so foggy, rainy, and horrible that we never actually saw any of the lakes or mountains. Thus I was SO happy that we chose to stop in St. Gilgen, and I could finally see the lakes as they are supposed to look! 

Our trusty steed for the weekend

view from our hostel window in St. Gilgen

Wolfgangsee

We wandered the very small downtown that evening and had a scrumptious dinner of traditional Austrian food (although we had some difficulty deciphering the menu items, which used words from the Tirol/western Austria dialects) in an outdoor seating area that had a beautiful view of the mountains. The atmosphere was delightful. And the food was amazing. I had Brenesselknödel, a kind of bread, vegetable, and cheese dumpling with some kinds of flavors and herbs that I couldn’t identify, but were amazing.

Rathaus and little Mozart fountain (Mozart's mother was born here) 

beautiful cemetery in St. Gilgen 

The next morning we awoke to an even more beautiful view out our hostel window, and although we had to hit the road early, we took our time driving to our next destination. We drove partway around Wolfgangsee and Mondsee, the next closest lake, before getting back on the Autobahn. The drive was, again, simply gorgeous. Words don’t really do this landscape justice. So the following pictures will have to suffice. Our road took us through the “Deutsche Ecke,” a little corner of Germany, and then back down into the province of Tirol. Again, the mountains kept getting bigger and bigger, causing us to make intelligent remarks like “THEY’RE JUST SO HUGE” over and over and over again. We really were blown away by the beauty! The valleys are really wide and SO green, filled with farms and fields and SO MANY COWS (!), and tiny little villages (each with its own church, of course). Then right behind the huge field is a gigantic mountain that looks like it’s grown out of nowhere. We stopped at this one gas station to use the bathroom, and we ended up hanging out for about 10 minutes taking pictures of the surroundings because they were so gorgeous. There was a huge field of yellow wildflowers, with a few little huts, and then a giant craggy, snow-topped mountain right behind it. When you think of Austria in your mind (or watch the Sound of Music), this region is exactly what you’re imagining. The whole thing was pretty unreal.

After slowly making our way west, we made our first real stop of the trip: Haiming. This was the “adventurous” portion of our trip, because in Haiming we went Canyoning. Canyoning is basically a mix between hiking, rock-climbing, swimming, scrambling, etc. We put on wetsuits, helmets, and harnesses, and piled into a van with our two guides (Daniel and Simon) and our two new German friends (Daniel and Damien—there were a lot of Daniels). We drove up into the mountains and stopped on the side of the road, where we got our “safety talk” and then we were off! We started on a bridge over a river, and with basically no “how to” instruction at all, we rappelled from the bridge, down into the river about 30 feet below. This was just the beginning. We then proceeded to follow the river downstream as it flowed through the canyon. Every time we reached an obstacle (usually a set of rapids or a waterfall) we had to somehow pass it. This meant sometimes we rappelled, sometimes we jumped, sometimes we scrambled sideways across a cliff with our carabiners attached to a steel rope, and sometimes we utilized any combination of the above. It’s definitely an intense experience when you’re standing at the top of a 15 meter cliff and someone tells you to stand at the edge, get down on your knees, and just “lean back.” Especially when you have known that person for all of 10 minutes. And your life is entirely in their bony, scrawny little hands. By the end of the 2 hours, though, I felt much better about my rappelling skills, and I’d even say that I was getting the hang of it all by the end! The whole experience was pretty tough physically, and my hands and feet were totally frozen by the end of it all, but it was a total blast. I felt super accomplished by the end, and although I feared for my life several times, we all made it out with minimal damage! I’m already over the few scrapes, rope burns, bruises, and sore muscles I acquired in the course of the journey! I never would have thought to do this, had my friend Annie not suggested it, and I am so so glad we did! It definitely got us deep into nature, in a very up close and personal way, and the sense of accomplishment at the end was worth every second of fear I experienced along the way!

Got our equipment and ready to go!

Ready to jump off a bridge? Okay let's go!

Group shot in the waterfall!

Not terrifying at all...

After Canyoning we headed into Innsbruck for another lovely Austrian dinner in the city center. Innsbruck is a really cute old town, with very colorful buildings and a nice big pedestrian center. It’s even more beautiful than your average European city because it’s right in the middle of the Austrian Alps, so there are giant mountains anywhere you look. Unfortunately we didn’t get to explore the city as much as I had hoped, because the days we had planned for touring the city turned out to be pretty rainy. But it’s still beautiful nonetheless!

more amazing food: Tiroler Bauerngroestl

famous light wall. it's famous, okay?

Famous "Golden Roof" AND beautiful mountains

Friday morning we got up and drove still further west to Längenfeld. There, with the hope of recovering from the rigors of canyoning, we spent the day in luxury at the Aqua Dome, a thermal bath nestled in the Alps. The most eventful moment of the rainy drive there was when we turned down the road taking us to the spa and as we rounded the corner, we found ourselves stuck behind two HUGE cows walking down the road with their attendant supervising. These cows had to be pregnant or something because they were actually ginormous. You can imagine how excited I was…

The spa itself was glorious. There were two large indoor pools, and a sort of lazy river that led outside to a cone-shaped tower that was surrounded by three big “bowls” at varying levels. Each bowl had a different kind of water. One was very warm and salty, another had jets that switched on and off throughout the day, and the third had a sulfur fountain in the middle, that was supposed to provide both a massage and a mineral treatment. The coolest part of these pools was the fact that they were outside in the open air, so we had a perfect view of the stunning surroundings. We were quite literally IN the mountain, so all we could see on any side were mountainsides covered in thick tree-cover with really low, wispy clouds flowing through. It’s hard to describe, and of course we didn’t have our cameras with us, so you’ll have to just try to imagine how gorgeous it was. Everything looked very mystical—it was almost like we were in an enchanted world. And even though it was misting, raining, and pretty cold outside, we were in the warm pools, so we weren’t too cold. Basically everything was just amazing. There were also these private sauna boxes with differing lights based on what kind of mood you were looking for, and tons of “relaxation areas” with panorama views of the mountains. After a few hours we all felt amazing. For the rest of the day all four of us kept remarking about how much the others were glowing from the royal treatment we gave ourselves at the alpine spa!

Giant Wooly Mammoth inviting us to treat ourselves

Saturday was again pretty dreary weather-wise, so our plans of exploring Innsbruck and going up the mountain in the cable cars had to be scrapped. Instead we explored Hall, the little city we stayed in on Thursday and Friday night, and it turned out to be quite delightful.

We then drove back in the direction we came from, east towards Zell am See. This drive took us through lots of mountain passes and windy roads, giving us the opportunity to see a bunch of really small towns, mostly ski resort towns, including a few famous ones that hold ski competitions. In several of these we got out, walked around, and marveled at how adorable so many places in Austria are. I really enjoyed Kitzbühl, which many people compare to Vail or Aspen, in the sense that it’s kind of ritzy, and thrives off of ski tourism. We also stopped off at a few scenic overlooks, which were still stunning, despite the dreadful weather, and then finally made it to Zell am See, another city on a lake in the province of Salzburg.

Kitzbuehl teddy bear!

Downtown Kitzbuehl

On our last day we finally woke up to dry skies and a little bit of blue peeking through the clouds. This gave us a chance to actually enjoy Zell am See a little bit more. We had planned to drive up Großglockner, the tallest mountain in Austria, but we were worried that because of all the rain we had gotten the roads might be closed, or we might need special tires. And we weren’t sure if there would be much visibility, because the clouds were still quite low. Instead, we decided to check out Krimml, the home of the 5^th largest waterfall in the world! I am SO GLAD we did! Again, the drive there was beautiful (that goes without saying). We hiked about 15 minutes to the base of the falls, and then a pretty steep 30 minutes to the top of the falls, which was at a total elevation of about 1200 meters. The view from the bottom of the waterfall was incredible, since there was so much water after all the rain and melting snow, and then once we got to the top, we could see the entire valley below. The waterfall was so powerful and so impressive, I am really glad we ended up checking it out!

Zeller Lake from our hostel porch

We're going to that waterfall in the distance!

View of the valley from the path to the falls 

And then began our long trip back home. We drove a similar route to the one we came in on going again through a corner of Germany, through Salzburg, and back on the Autobahn all the way to St. Pölten, where we again parted ways. The entire weekend was simply wonderful. We got to see really spectacular scenery, and I just love the ladies I was travelling with. They’re always a blast, and it was great to have this trip to ensure a nice long weekend together before we all part ways in just a few short weeks! We laughed a ton, ate a ton and a half, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute! It was most definitely a weekend to remember.