So remember that time we slept in a tent?

I never thought I would EVER include the words "slept in a tent" in any of my blog posts, but there's a first time for everything!

This past weekend, seven girls and I went to Salzburg, Austria (aka Mozart's hometown and the setting/filming location of The Sound of Music!). I had been to Vienna before, so I was thinking I knew what to expect. Not so. Salzburg is probably one of my top 3 favorite cities right now. It is exactly how I imagined a small Alpine town in Germany or Austria. And by "Alpine," I mean literally smack dab in the middle of the Alps. Salzburg is a lot smaller than I was expecting, but it's extremely quaint, and the people were incredibly friendly! Even nicer than the Italians.

Since we don't have classes on Friday, most groups left on Thursday afternoon. So our group (Becca, Jackie, Rebecca, Hilary, Kaitlin, Lee, Megan, and myself) literally had the place to ourselves since we decided to leave on Friday morning. And by Friday morning I mean my alarm went off at 4:45. After going to be at 1:45am you can imagine my excitement. We caught the 7:00 train from Verona, and after connecting in Innsbruck (another incredibly beautiful town in Austria), we got to Salzburg around 2:00. I thought I was so smart in checking the weather before I got there. I was happy to see that it was going to be in the low to mid-60s the whole time we were there with a slight chance of rain both nights. Weather.com, you fail at life. When we got there it was in the low 50s and pouring down rain. To add to the excitement, everyone except one person only packed flip-flops. The warmest jacket I had was a jean jacket (I committed the unforgivable fashion faux-pas of denim-on-denim...don't tell Tim Gunn). Even more exciting was the fact that, due to the fact that all the good hostels were booked by the time we got there, we got to sleep in a tent. Outside. Something I thought I would never do. By most standards, the campsite was pretty nice. Our tent was basically one giant tarp held up by poles with another piece of tarp for the floor, four cots, a picnic table and a teeny tiny lamp. Hoping it would warm up, we decided to go into town to explore a little.

When we got off the bus stop, we decided that since we hadn't had any lunch, we would stop at a nearby pretzel stand for a quick snack. Little did I know that I was about to have the best experience of my life. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. But seriously, these pretzels were HUGE, and they had all different varieties. Needless to say we went back the next day. Since most of us were about to freeze our butts off in the rain and cold, we decided to try to find some shoes and jackets. Realizing that we were poor college students, we decided to just rough it and go in our flipflops. As we meandered the streets of downtown Salzburg, we decided it might be a good idea to find somewhere to eat dinner. Since Rebecca was smart and brought a "Top 10 Things To Do in Salzburg," we decided to try the alleged "Oldest Restaurant in Europe." As we were walking to it, we stumbled upon a beautiful cathedral right next to the restaurant, St. Peter's. Since the restaurant didn't open for 30 more minutes, we went inside. We got there as the choir was practicing - it was absolutely beautiful. After the choir stopped, we heard the monks chanting in a back room. The cathedral was so beautiful that we all stopped to sit in the pews and reflect. I think every single person in our group was moved in some way by the beauty, majesty, and peace of the building. I wish I could have taken a picture that showed you the entire thing, but it was way too beautiful and awe-inspiring to even put in a picture.

After we left the church, we decided to wander around the back of it to explore the graveyard. It was HUGE! Some of the graves there were from the early 1700s, and I'm sure there were some earlier. As we wandered through the beautiful gardens, we found a line of tombs that were nestled in the mountain and covered by beautiful wrought-iron gates. We all commented that they looked just like the gates that the von Trapps hid behind at the end of The Sound of Music when they are on the run from the Nazis when Rolf betrays them (we later found out that the director of TSoM saw this very same graveyard and based that scene from the movie on this same section of the graveyard! Cool right?). It was incredibly beautiful - the graveyard was literally right next to this huge mountain on top of which sits the great Salzburg fortress. It was astounding.

We decided to head over to the restaurant after this. When we got there, we were told that it was founded in the year 803...how cool! The part of the restaurant we sat in was the original wine cellar, and it was absolutely beautiful! It looked like a grotto on the inside, and it was so beautiful! We had 3 and 4 course meals with the most amazing food. It was pretty expensive, but definitely worth it!

We were all so tired that we decided to go back to our campsite. It was so cold, windy, and rainy that we all dreaded going to sleep. When we got back, we all threw on every single item of clothing we brought with us, got under our two blankets that the campsite owners gave us, and tried to sleep through the rain and the cold. We were so tired we all slept pretty well, but it was a struggle getting out of bed the next morning. However, it was totally worth it, since we got to do the Sound of Music (hereby known as TSoM) tour!!!

After a breakfast of a pretzel from that same amazing place, we loaded up TSoM bus and headed off to sight-see! Our tour guide, Peter, was a little odd, to say the least. He had the typical tour guide personality - cheesiness with a side of cheesiness. He was absolutely hilarious though (in an awkward eccentric way). The first thing we saw was the lake where Maria and the children fall out of the boat when they greet Captain von Trapp and the Countess. Apparently the little girl who played Gretel (the youngest one) almost drowned during that scene! Sad! There was a house next to the lake that we all thought was the house from the movie. Sadly, it wasn't. But apparently they based the back of the house and the rooms on the inside from that house, so that was kind of cool. We also saw the mountain, the Untersburg, that Maria sings on at the beginning of the movie and that they cross into Switzerland at the very end of the movie. Apparently, the Untersburg actually divides Austria and Germany, not Switzerland. So, the von Trapps were actually heading TOWARD the Nazis instead of away from them...FAIL. But it was still cool! After that, we saw the gazebo where they filmed the Sixteen Going on Seventeen scene! That was really cool, and of course we all went picture-crazy there. After that, we drove up to the little town where St. Michaels, the church where they flimed the wedding scene, was. There was actually a wedding going on there at the time, which was cool. The inside of the cathedral is even more magnificent than the movie leads you to believe. It was astounding! After that, we drove up into the lakes and mountains region and saw the most beautiful scenery you can imagine! Apparently they filmed the panorama montage from the beginning of the movie up here, and it is even more beautiful than the movie tells you. There are tons of lakes and little towns nestled between the mountains. If only it hadn't been so cold and rainy! But no one complained - it was just that beautiful.

After the tour was over, we headed to the Mirabell Gardens, which is where the majority of the Do Re Mi sequence was filmed. We skipped through the tunnel/arbor singing the song, marched around the fountain, and stood on the stairs (the end of the song where they do that cool jumping thing? Watch the movie if you have no idea what I'm talking about). That was probably my favorite part! Check Facebook for pics.

After we got our von Trapp fix, we headed to the Fortress of Salzburg, built in the 1100s. You can see it from anywhere in the city, since it sits high on one of the hills. After a shuttle ride up the mountain, we got to go inside and see all the rooms. The coolest part was definitely the view from the top. We could see all the sights that we had already seen from the air...it was so cool! Again, no one complained about the rain and the cold. Apparently the Salzburg government pays artists to live in private apartments in the fortress today to encourage the culture of the arts in Salzburg! So much for starving artists...

After that, we decided to find the "Beer-Garden" that our tour guide had told us about where we could have dinner. When we got there, we found that it was more of an upscale food court where all the locals went - it was pretty cool! Ironically, we sat at a table right next to people from Alabama (who were all Crimson Tide fans...), so we had a good laugh about that. They cheered Roll Tide, while we called the dawgs. Apparently a bunch of Italians across the room thought we were challenging them to a cheer-off so they started to compete with us. They had clearly never been to a UGA game before, and we owned them in every way possible. We talked to the people from Alabama for a while, and it turns out they live not too far from Verona! (the husband works for "human resources for the government," whatever that means. Covert operations, anyone?), and they invited us over to their house/chateau for dinner! It was so nice to hear that good old Southern accent again. Then we met some other college kids from University of Ohio. After we made fun of their lame state (actually we just made fun of Ohio State...), we were told by the security at the restaurant that we were "being too loud," aka we were being just as loud as everyone else in the restaurant but because we were Americans we were being too loud, so some of us left in a huff to go to the Italian place across the street. Irony? I think so.

After a long night, we decided to head back to the campsite, again sleeping in all of our clothes. We got up the next morning and headed to mass at another beautiful Catholic cathedral. We stayed for an hour of it, and even though it was all in German it was an incredibly moving experience for all of us. After mass, we headed back to the train station for our ride back to Verona. We were all so sad to leave Salzburg. You know it must have been a great trip when we were sad to go back to ITALY. I hate to sound cheesy, but it was such a magical place. Something about the city captivated all of us, and it's hard to figure out exactly what it was. Our explanation was that "the hills really WERE alive with the sound of music," but of course that is merely conjecture.

This trip was everything I hoped it would be, but even better. Our group meshed so well, and we had the best time. We had so many inside jokes, funny quotes, and great stories at the end of the weekend. I'm sure the other groups that went to Paris and Munich had great stories too, but I think we had the most entertaining stories. I'm incredibly excited about going to Dublin and Barcelona, but they are going to have to be pretty flipping awesome to top Salzburg.

In other news, we have midterms on Thursday. Blah. Of course I decided to be an overachiever and take the two hardest classes on the program, but I think they're also the two most interesting classes. So that will be an experience, one that I'm sure I will never forget...boo. But on the other hand, I've made so many great friends on this trip! It really is like "Friends"...European style. A bunch of people came over for dinner again last night. And by dinner I mean eat and then talk for three hours when we should be studying. But it's so much fun! I can't imagine how I am ever going to leave this place.

Well, that took FOREVER, and I probably should have been studying. But I wanted to write it all down before I forgot! Hope you guys could get through that.

As always, love you, miss you, and thanks for keeping up with my blog!

CIAO!