Weekend 5: Salzburg and Werfen, Austria

This weekend's adventure took us to Salzburg. We ventured around Metz on Friday night before our 11:30 pm train. Then we sat (well... laid in our couchette) for two hours for a reason unbeknownst to us. This caused us to miss our connection train from Munich to Salzburg the following morning. But we found a Starbucks (oh how I've missed blueberry muffins) to fill our time while we waited for the next train.

View from the train from Munich to Salzburg

Then we arrived in Salzburg and found our adorable hostel. Which was more like an apartment hotel! It was great -- we had our own room, bathroom, kitchen area, etc.

Mary Margaret flopped on our wonderful bed :)

 Then we ventured out into the Old Town area for some lunch. When we got off the bus we happened upon Mozart's residence and the Mirabell Gardens.

Mirabell Garden

The Mirabell Gardens contain this statue of Pegasus where the von Trapp children practice the song "Do-Re-Mi"

Pegasus statue

Me and the painted Sound of Music cow

Then we ventured over to Mozart's Residence and took a tour of the museum housed there. It was amazing to see his house and learn about his family. At that point we decided it was time for a nap (because we were exhausted from traveling, etc.) After our naps we were ready to head to dinner at Stiegl Keller - a beer garden on a hilltop overlooking Salzburg. 

 Salzburg on our way to dinner

Me and Salzburg :)

Giant chess set!

Sunset view of Salzburg from the beer garden

Our grapefruit flavored beer -- it was delicious

More sunset views of Salzburg

Sunday afternoon we had brunch at the fantastic restaurant again. I had a BAGEL! with egg and cheese. Forgot how much I've missed bagels. Then we took an adventure out to Werfen which is about a 40  minute train ride outside of Salzburg. Werfen is home to the largest ice cave in the world! (Eisreisenwelt) It was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. We took a bus from the train station to the ticket building (pictured right) where we bought tickets for the lift and the ice cave itself.

View of Werfen on the bus ride from the train station to Eisriesenwelt

Then we hiked about 20 minutes to the lifts. See pictures below from the hike. It was extremely inclined but had beautiful views (as you can see from the pictures) so it was totally worth it! Once we got on the lift it took us about 3 minutes up where we had another 20 minute hike until we reached the ice cave itself.

Just having fun on our hike up!

Me and the Austrian Alps

View of the Alps on the hike

View of Werfen

That's the ice cave!

View from the cave

Me and the cave

There's no electricity in the cave so we carried little lamps to light the way in the cave! The guides lit strings of magnesium to light up the ice sculptures inside and create bright light to help us see.

At the door of the cave, the winds reach about 90 km/hr (approx. 55 mph) so when trying to enter the cave we were pushed back out by the winds. It made getting into the cave a struggle! But on the way out the winds pushed us out so we had to break into a run to catch up with them. Also, inside the cave we had the opportunity to turn out all of our lamps to create total darkness. Your eyes won't adjust. You can even wave your hand in front of your face and you'll think you see a shadow but it's a trick played on you by your brain! I experienced this feeling only one other time at Dialogue in the Dark in Atlantic Station. What an amazing experience.

For lack of being able to take pictures, I have decided to include the website link to all of their photos. I was disappointed to find that the reason they don't want you to take pictures is "it'll take too long for the tour" ....I'll snap pictures quickly if I can just have some pictures of the coolest, largest ice cave in the world. Oh well, this website will have to suffice at showing just how amazing it was in there.

http://www.eisriesenwelt.at/site/content/CB_ContentShow.php?coType=photos#

Anyways, Salzburg was a fantastic weekend. Sorry for the lack of writing in this post -- mainly pictures -- but as they say: a picture is worth a thousand words! :)

Field Trip 1: Fort Hackenberg and American WWII Cemetery

Today we went on a group field trip to Fort Hackenberg and the second largest American WWII cemetery. 

Fort Hackenberg is the largest fort on the Maginot Line which stretches from Belgium to Italy. It has 19 blocks which house ammunition, kitchens, barracks, etc. The deepest point is 96 m underground. Fun fact about the barracks: there are 3 men per bed. While 1 man was sleeping the other 2 were working and they took 8 hour rotational sleeping shifts! 

 The fort entrance 

This is the magazine where they store ammunition. This magazine is the largest in the Maginot line. The trains used to carry stuff were gas up until a certain point and then switched to electric. However neither could be used in the magazine around such highly explosive material. Also, the trains were electric because the fort is 6 miles long and they wanted to be able to transport throughout it during time of war so they needed the fort and trains to be self-sufficient. 

This (if you rotate your head to the left) is the anti-explosion door. It's extremely thick and was guarded at all times. There was a small cave/door on either side for the guard to get to the other side quickly. It is slightly distorted because of an explosion -- story to follow later!

Power room! Each color means something different (oil, etc.) 

Just a lovely family stroll with our gas masks. Note the tube running from the Mom's "purse" to the stroller...

This is the above ground view of the turret. It is a huge gun that weighs 19 tons and rotates 360 degrees. It has a 5.6 km range. It has 2 positions down (eclipsed) or up (in battery). It works on either electricity or a lever. When the shot has been fired, the empty shell travels down a slide inside the turret to the gallery level.  

(rotate to the right) This is the wall outside block 8. 

In 1944, General Patton and the US Army came to help take Metz back from Germany. When they approached the fort, there were Germans in the observatory so they saw the US Army coming and used one of the 3 75 mm guns in block 8 to ward off the Americans. Since the guns have a 10 km range, the Americans couldn't do much damage from that far away so they approached from a different angle. The US Army destroyed block 8 and the Germans surrendered. Once they surrendered they tried to blow up their ammunition stored in magazine 3 to destroy the fort. The design of the magazine is to send the impact of the blast out into the hallway to the entrance. However the door to the entrance was closed so the blast shot back down the hallway to the anti-explosion door (pictured earlier). The impact of the explosion caused the door (open at the time) to slam shut which is why it's slightly distorted in shape. So in an attempt to destroy the fort, the Germans closed the anti-explosion door and contained the explosion in that hallway. Effectively protecting the fort instead of destroying it.

Next we went to the second largest American WWII Cemetery in Europe -- the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial. Originally during the war there were approximately 5 temporary cemeteries in the area. The 28,000 bodies were transported from these temporary locations to the St. Avold cemetery in 1946 and 1947 where they were identified. The families were notified and chose to either repatriate the bodies or have them buried in the cemetery. The cemetery contains 10,849 graves. Including 4 medal of honor recipients. The cemetery also contains 11 women serving as nurses during the war. It also has the grave of the cartoonist of Popeye, Superman, and Betty Boop -- Willard Bowsky 

 The cemetery

There is no order to the graves based on rank or anything. The only strategic placing was for 30 sets of brothers who are buried side by side. 

Andrew Miller - a medal of honor recipient. Among other things, he ordered his unit to remain undercover and entered a building alone armed only with a bayonet where he convinced 5 Germans to surrender. 

One of the medal of honor recipients was for a fine young man who served in the 761 Battalion. This was a group of primarily African-American soldiers who at the time were not permitted by federal law to serve alongside white soldiers. He died in 1944 and his family wasn't given his medal of honor until the 1990's. I'm glad he finally was given the recognition he deserved. 

Something that I found interesting was a story about the 5 Sullivan brothers. All 5 brothers enlisted in the Navy together and served on the same ship. This ship was sunk in the South Pacific and all five brothers were lost. As a result, brothers were no longer allowed to serve in the same unit. Also, if all brothers passed and there was only one left serving -- he had to be saved and sent home alive. 

Remind you of the plot to Saving Private Ryan? That's because it's a fictional story based on a real concept! 

In the cemetery, one of the medal of honor recipients was shot down in his plane accidentally by Americans on a foggy day. When his brother was found and told to go home, he replied, "my brother is my hero and I'm staying" -- so he did. He passed nearly 4 months later. They are buried side by side in the cemetery. 

Grave of the unknown solider. There were approximately 150 bodies with no names. And approximately 440 names with no bodies. 

Grave of an unknown soldier. It reads:

"Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God"

We had a phenomenal tour guide who was a great speaker. She said something about the unknown solider that really struck me: "An unknown solider is someone who came to fight like everyone else but he lost more than his life; he lost his identity." 

Today was an extremely educational and valuable experience. It was great to see the forts and efforts of the war followed by the somber experience of the cemetery. 

Weekend 4: Metz and Nancy, France

This weekend we decided to stick around Metz and recover from the taxing life of traveling and school. For those of you that laugh when I say taxing (as if study abroad can be exhausting) -- let me tell you it is! We started out our weekend with a BBQ with our friends that we met in Barcelona Brent and Thomas. And then we watched Mean Girls! Gotta love that movie -- it was a wonderfully relaxing Friday night which was a pleasant change from our usual Friday activity of of getting to trains, finding hostels, etc. 

Saturday afternoon Mary Margaret, Kristen, and I took an trip to Nancy which is town about 40 minutes south (via train). They have a beautiful park and a free zoo that we decided to enjoy! Nancy has a beautiful square with gorgeous gold decorations and the National Opera of Lorraine (the region of France I'm currently living in). 

The square

Fountain with beautiful gold embellishments

National Opera of Lorraine

The zoo had a ton of peacocks. Turns out they make a really funny noise -- sounds exactly like the noise Kevin the bird makes in the movie Up! Also, we got to see them all display their feathers -- must be mating season. They would display their feathers and then rotate slowly. I'm looking into whether or not the feather display is also a form of claiming territory. They did not seem happy with each other that's for sure! We also found an albino peacock! It was beautiful!

 Peacock

 We found that peacocks do this thing when they display their feathers where they sort of rattle. I think it's a method to scare off predators. In this picture, the predator was an oh so scary pigeon...

 Albino peacock rattling at the pigeon

After the zoo we sat in the park and ate some ice cream before heading on a train back to Metz. It was delicious and sitting in the park was fantastic and relaxing!

Park in Nancy

After returning from Nancy we found a really cool African drum and dance concert in the Place de Republique in Metz. It was so cool to hear!

African drum/dance concert

Beautiful sunset in Metz :)

On Sunday, Mary Margaret and I went to a wine tasting in downtown Metz. It was 2 euros for a glass and you got to carry your glass around and sample different things. It was lots of fun and we talked to a bunch of the people that own or work in the vineyard.  It was lots of fun and a great cultural experience during our relaxing weekend!

Cathedral in Metz

Wine tasting!

Weekend 3: Barcelona, Spain

This weekend we went to Barcelona for 4 days! It was AMAZING! I have wanted to go to Spain for a while and was so excited we were going there. Also, as an added bonus I was finally able to put my 9 years of Spanish to use! On all our other trips I have no idea what's going on because I don't speak the language but in Barcelona, I was able to recognize a lot. Barcelona actually speaks Catalan which is close(ish) to the castellano Spanish that I've learned. It definitely has a lot of differences though but I was able to figure most out.

Our train to leave for Paris (where we would transfer to a different train to leave for Spain) was later in the evening so we decided to hit up the H&M in Metz before leaving to go bathing suit shopping for our trip to the beach. I got a new purse that fits my big Nikon camera so I don't constantly look like a tourist -- yay! This was a great idea until me, Kate, and Kristen got stuck in the elevator. It was pretty old school in the first place seeing as it was a platform that you manually moved up and down by holding the button for the floor all the way until you got there. But we kept going up and down trying to get one of the doors to open until we knocked on the glass door and the employee got her supervisor who let us out. So now I can say I was stuck in an elevator.

stuck in the elevator! 

Then after taking what we thought would be a shorter way to the train station, we got lost. But don't worry, we found the train while (accidentally) exploring Metz. Then we took the high speed TGV to Paris and transferred to a different station where we hopped on our couchette train. Turns out they're very small. Sitting up is not really an option. But we slept (kind of) through the night until our train arrived in Port Bou where we had to transfer to a regional train to get us to Barcelona.

View from the train. It was absolutely breathtaking

With a slight delay of our couchette train, we only had about 3 minutes to get to our other train. Mary Margaret, in an excellent attempt to lead our group to the train, missed a couple steps (and by couple I mean all of them) off the train and did an excellent belly flop of sorts onto the platform that kept us laughing for days. She sustained a few minor bumps and bruises but don't worry, the story doesn't end here.

We made it to our regional train, made it to Barcelona, and even found our hostel. Check-in wasn't for a few hours and we were eager to hit the beach so we dropped our bags in the luggage room and changed in the bathroom and went to the beach for a few hours before heading back to the hostel.

The beach!

Quick side story: after a glitch in booking our hostel we booked for the wrong weekend, cancelled the wrong weekend, and re-booked for this weekend. What does the hostel have on record? Us cancelling. What do we have on record? About 3 emails confirming Mary Margaret's deposit, cancellation, and a final email with our new booking. So they kindly inform us that there isn't room for us that night. After an impressive use of what we refer to as our "business lady voice", Mary Margaret saved us and the hostel moved 2 cots into 2 of the rooms and then agreed to move us to our own room the following night when there was more availability.
We quickly showered and changed and went on an adventure to find a restaurant my sister told me about when she studied abroad. It's called Les Quinze Nits. It's a cooking school where 5 star chefs in training practice their skills. There was a line out the door to wait for a table. We all shared sangria and I had some calamari (which was tender and delicious), shared a caprese salad with pesto, had a wonderful green salad (I miss real salads with lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers! This one even had corn and carrots), and meat canneloni. Everything tasted wonderful and we topped it off with some gelato to wrap up our evening.

Waiting in line outside Les Quinze Nits in La Placa Reial

Some of the most delicious calamari I've had in my entire life

Sunday morning we found some other GTL kids in our hostel and decided to join them on a potential walking tour. But seeing as we didn't know when it was, only where to find it, we opted for the create-your-own-walking-tour option!

We saw the Arc de Triomf and listened to a sound check for a free concert in the park, wandered through the park, ate kebabs on the beach, walked along the beach and watched people flying kites and doing "social graffiti", went to the Sagrada Familia, and the Casa Batllo. Cue lots of pictures from the day:

Arc de Triomf

Awesome tree in the park we wandered around in

Social Graffiti -- it was fascinating to watch

I've realized while being here in Europe that I love to know the story behind everything. For example:

La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1882 (that's 130 years of construction) and it's still not done! The Spiritual Association for Devotion to Saint Joseph (aka the Josephines) commissioned the building and it was intended to be an Expiatory Temple for Barcelona in commemoration of the sacred family -- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Gaudi was employeed to work on the building at age 30 and worked on it for over 40 years until his death. He was tragically hit by a tram just outside the church in 1926. He was buried inside the crypt of the church and in 1936 arsonists raided his tomb and smashed the plaster models of the church and all the documents were burned. As a result, the construction since then has been based on the reconstructed plaster models and computer analysis. It's projected to be finished in 2030 but as you can see from the picture below (found in the Sagrada Familia subway stop), everyone has a lot of confidence in that.

Something I found interesting about the Casa Batllo is that every surface (whether it be stone, wood, glass, etc.) is "soft and molten" as my travel book describes it. There are hardly any right angles on the building at all.

Casa Batllo

That night we tried to go to the free concert but it ended up raining and we brought 1 umbrella between the 9 of us. So we ran into what turned out to be the worst tapas restaurant in Barcelona. The paella that Mary Margaret and I split was burnt onto the pan and served al dente which rice is not supposed to be. Needless to say, that was not the best meal we've had in Europe so far.

Monday we dropped our bags at the luggage check in the train station and went to find the Parc Guell. We escalated and hiked up a big hill and approached the park from the back (that way our whole adventure was downhill! An excellent hint from some fellow GTL kids that we ran into at the Sagrada Familia). The park was commissioned by Eusebi Guell in 1900 and was supposed to be a lavish neighborhood of 60 homes designed by our good old friend Gaudi. However only 2 of the homes were finished (Guell's and Gaudi's) in 1914 when the project stopped. (Apparently no one wanted to live in Gaudi's eccentrically designed homes -- little did they know how famous it would be). After that the city purchased the land and turned it into a park. I'm going to let the pictures do the talking since it's hard to put the beauty of this park into words:

Escalators up to the Parc Guell

stunning view from the top of the park 

performer at the top of the park -- "everybody's gone soofing -- Barcelona beach"

Kinda killed the mood a bit...

 Parc Guell -- who remembers this from America's Next Top Model??

   Parc Guell

View of the entrance of the park

The dragon at the front of the park

After the park we headed home to Metz. This being our second couchette experience, we were better prepared. We even met a guy named Rafa who is our age. He was born in Poland and lives in Germany as an EMT. He offered to show us around Munich because he lives nearby. He also showed us how to turn the couchette bed down to make it into a couch! Which worked great until it was stuck and we learned that on some trains you need the conductor to bring a key and unlock it. Oops... Anyways, Barcelona was an absolutely fantastic weekend. I hope I get to go back someday!!