Utter Exhaustion

Because of a mix-up and a train cancellation, we no longer had seats on the night train like we were supposed to, so we ended up sitting for about 2 hours in a little cubby in between two cars before transferring at some point to another train going to Salzburg, where we did get seats. The train was freezing though and neither of us got much sleep, so by the time we rolled into Salzburg around 6:00 AM, with little sleep two nights ago, ( regretting the 2:00 AM picture hanging right about this point), the hike, and the ridiculous lack of sleep the night before, we were pretty exhausted. But we did fairly well despite the fatigue. We trudged through the exhaustion to see the sights of Salzburg, included the Salzach river, several cool churches, Mozart’s house, a fortress, and an interesting building we never really figured out quite what it was but hiked up quite a hill to inspect.
It was there that I insisted, to the embarrassment of Dallin, that we pull out the bubbles my mom had sent me. Sometimes you just have to be a kid. I also wanted to go frolic in the field, but was sadly thwarted but an electric fence.


We also discovered a piece of modern art in the city, which pretty much consisted of a bunch of chairs, which the plaque said were to use while contemplating the spirit of Mozart. So upon my insistence, we did. After that, we were toast. So we headed to our hostel and caught a quick nap to recharge ourselves before the night began. We ended up having an incredible night at the fortress, including a fancy four course meal followed by a classical quartet concert. The food wasn’t amazing, but it was incredibly fancy, and the view of the town and the Austrian mountain around sunset was amazing. And the music was really cool; I had told Dallin I hoped he was a fan of classical music because I sure was and since Salzburg and Vienna were like the birthplace of classical music, we absolutely had to go to a concert of some kind. So that was really cool to hear Mozart, Haydn, and Shubert played in that city. The next morning we saw a bit more before hitting the train once more for our final destination, Vienna.


We got to Vienna early that afternoon, and after getting to our ridiculously inconveniently located hostel, we saw a bit of the town before making our way to the opera where we had heard you could get cheap standing tickets. They were cheap, only 4 Euros, but there was a reason. FYI- it’s not very fun to stand for 5 ½ hours. Yes, that’s right, we got there about half an hour before the show (“Parsifal”), and the opera was (of course), an unusually long one, a good five hours. Way to go Wagner.

Honestly though, I do like Wagner; the music was incredible, the story was great, and luckily there were even little screens by our ‘standing posts’ that had the translation from the German text so we knew what was going on. After the opera, me and my poor tired feet were done, but Dallin stated that the night was young and there was much to see, so we went and saw. We wandered around, saw some cool buildings and memorials, got the munchies so we stopped at a snack stand. Unfortunately I can’t enjoy the Austrian specialty of schnitzels like Dallin, but they do have really good pickles for only 30 cents, which were so tasty! : )