Austria

Well, I'm back from my travels, and working again. two days of camp gone, thirteen to go. I already have everything prepped from last time though, so it's not too bad. My T.A. speaks English very well, and is very nice as well, which always helps.

As for my travels, I arrived in Munich at 11:00pm on June 25th, which was a half an hour after Germany won their semi-final match against Turkey. The people in the streets were suitably elated. Lots of flag waving, honking and shouting. Met my family at the train station, and drove to Steinbach am Attersee where my Aunt's house is.



The next day, after having a leisurly breakfast with the Grandma, I went for a swim with Nick, and then headed for Steyrling to visit Onkel Roman. Roman has done very well for himself, and has a large tract of land (aka mountain) that he uses for hunting. We had some nice wine, and sat around chit-chatting for a few hours. We were considering staying for the night to go hunting, but decided to head back, which turned out to be an excellent idea, since the heavens opened up and released a torrential downpour as soon as we left.

The next day I went climbing up Hochlecken, which is the mountain behind the house, but after a few hours, gave up just a little way from the top since the thunder kept getting closer. We got a little way down the mountain before getting caught on the top of a mountain, under trees in a thunderstorm. Not the best of places to be. When we finally got back down, I was completely soaked and needing of a good rest. My cousin Axl came later in the day as well, which was nice.

Had my Grandmother's 90th birthday party the next day, which she enjoyed immensely. Probably half of the town including the mayor showed up (although half of the town consists of about 30 people).

Dropped Nick off in Munich the following day and headed to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler's Eagle's Nest. If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend it. The bus ride alone, driving right along the edge of the cliff was worth the journey.



Unfortunately, my pictures of the Kehlsteinhaus just don't do it justice. You can actually see Salzburg from Salzberg, which is where the Kehlsteinhaus is.

For the next couple of days I just went around the Attersee looking at different things, took a short trip to Voecklabruck, and a day trip to Graz, which is extremely overooked as a tourist destination in my opinion. They have a giant new museum in the middle of the town that looks like an alien landed in the city amongst all of the old buildings.

We also took a trip to Hallstatt, which is very possibly the most picturesque town that has ever been created. However, there's nothing but tourists there now, so it's a bit cheesy after a few hours with all of the chintzy stuff being sold.

We went to Salzburg the day after Hallstatt to have a wander around, and on my last day with the family, we went to Onkel Roman's house for lunch again, and had some amazing wine, and really good venison steaks. Had a really good time chatting, and was quite sorry when it was time to go.

After saying goodbye to the family, I went to Vienna for two days, and just wandered around the city looking at all of the beautiful buildings. I had a really hard time taking any good pictures of anything though, because they were still cleaning up after the Euro Cup, and all of the really beautiful things had stacks of porta-potties and cranes and such in front of them. Not really lending itself to great memorable pictures.

Next, it was off to Budapest...