Austria is indeed very different from Australia.

Austria was this past weekend. The night before we left the power went out at our flat. We called our program directors about it since they handle the communication with the landlord and the fuse box is inside the school which we don't have keys to and they said they would take care out it. Phone calls were made but no one wanted to travel into the city on a weekend to turn the power back on so all of our food spoiled.

Aside from that Austria was awesome. It was so beautiful. We went to this old church right outside the town of Steyr. The have this old mechanical nativity scene that took 40 years to complete. It wasn't exactly the highlight of my trip for obvious reasons but I can appreciate the hard work it took to make everything. Then we went into town and explored. It was a lot colder than I expected so it's a good thing I like layering up.

We ended up going to this little mountain town where they have this festival about the Krampus who is a monster/demon thing that accompanies Santa Claus on Christmas and punishes bad children. There was a big parade where people dressed up as these monsters and (jokingly) tried to take people from the crowd. It was...interesting.

We were starving after the parade so we found a restaurant to get dinner that was supposed to be like a Tex/Mex grill place and I wanted to nachos con carne but what came from the kitchen was not what I was expecting. First I think the waiter misunderstood me and thought I was just ordering spicy nachos with no meat but the "salsa" they used I'm pretty sure was something equivalent to the sweet & sour sauce you get with Chinese food back in the U.S. It was weird. I still ate it because I was hungry and had a few bites of the turkey dish that Daniel got.

We all went back to the bus and headed to this little mountain town outside of Salzburg. I forget the name of the town but it was so cute and quiet. Daniel, Kristy, and I got up very early to explore the town before breakfast. We had a large breakfast of sweet breads and cereal and coffee (yum (: ) and then headed to Salzburg. We hiked up to the fortress (very steep and long walk) and saw old weaponry and royal chambers and torture devices. Then we went down and perused the Christmas market which was huge. I spent most of my euros on food (I don't have much use for Christmas ornaments and trinkets) but I did buy a little owl figurine to add to my little collection of owls from around the world. And I don't mind spending money on food because it's necessary to my health and rich hot chocolate and bread pudding with apples and nuts and plum sauce and pretzels as big as my head are just so tasty.


I really like Austria. It was cute and people were very nice but I don't think I could live there long term. The lack of meat that isn't pork is too much to handle.

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