Adventures Abroad

I have always wanted to go to Hallstatt, just to see it.  For people who have never heard of it, it seems to be a nice and quiet place by the lake; for people who have heard of it, it probably is a touristy name!  I am rather embarrassed to say I wanted to go there, just a bit, because I really think it’s a touristy place.  Honestly, if I just wanted to find some outdoor trails by a lake, I would perhaps choose some other locations by the Salzkammergut lakes.  However, part of the reason I decided to take this trip this weekend is to avoid all the tourists in the summer, so of course I will have to visit Hallstatt first!  I plan this trip rather hastily.  I bought the train tickets three minutes before the ÖBB office closed at five on Friday afternoon, and took the morning train on Saturday.  The idea started to form when S, her Austrian language buddy M, and Sam, whom we met, who is from the UK and was only in Vienna for an academic conference, were sitting in Cafe Hawelka late at night one day this week.  M went home last weekend (she is from the countryside) and she started talking about the perfect view she had from her bedroom window.  The weather just started to get warm this few weeks, the grass was bright green, and in the background was the towering mountains, still with snow on the top.  Then Sam said he is going to Innsbruck this weekend, where one can supposedly see the beautiful Austrian Alps from Universität Innsbruck.  I really want to see the mountains.  M suggested that I should go before summer comes and all the snow melts away.  The conversation ended without me having any serious ideas about leaving Vienna this weekend.  This week was concert week, meaning the Music Performance Workshop class held a chamber music concert.  I have to admit that the class is rather unorganized and many things happen at the last minute, which greatly added to the stress.  Towards the end of the week I, like many other students, felt quite burnt out.  I really wanted a break to get away to somewhere quiet and close to nature; I even wanted to just be alone, and be able to think clearly to myself.  The desire grew bigger.  There were always moments like this when I was at Puget Sound, when I just really wanted to leave all that I am working on and take off, but I was always just a wish.  Then I realized that here, I can actually make this come true.

So Saturday morning, I hopped on a train.  The train ride itself was absolutely gorgeous, the weather was perfect, too.  Hallstatt is about a four-hour train ride from Vienna.  I arrived at the station early in the afternoon and took a ferry across the Hallstätter See to get to the little historic salt mining town.  I walked around the town for a bit, and of course, took the picture that appears so frequently on the cover of travel magazines and books.  But the thing is, I was actually there!

Then I decided to move on to the less touristy place.  I found a trail that I think is supposed to be the Malerweg, the path which poets and artists in the previous century have taken and where they found inspiration.  I could always hear the rushing sound of Waldbach (Forest Creek) as I walked.  The trails should lead up to a waterfall, which I eventually found.

I wandered around some more and ultimately decided to spend the night there.  So I went to a youth hostel and got a bed.  It seemed really quiet there and I was given a dorm room all to myself.  After securing a room, I took a different Wanderweg behind the hostel, this time up the hill to get a good view of the lake.

For the evening I sat by the lake to watch the nightfall and read until I could no longer see what’s printed on the pages.  In the morning I got to see the morning sun shining on the Hallstätter See, which was part of the reason why I decided to stay for the night.  Overall, I guess not much happened, not very exciting, not too eventful, but I thought it was, to me, very… mentally fulfilling, which was exactly what I needed.  I was very glad I went, and I was fully aware of how foolish it could be, going there by myself and all.  But this is what I will be doing during my tour after my study abroad program ends in May anyway, so I might as well get some practice, hahaha.  Of course, next time I will choose some smaller, obscure places that are just as charming but less touristy!

Last week was midterms week here.  I turned in one paper and had three other exams.  We soon discovered that midterms week here are sort of like finals week at home, in that no class is held during the week.  Fortunately I only had my exams toward the beginning of the week so I had the rest of the week free, which, I should say, somehow never happens to me at Puget Sound and I always stay for the whole finals week.  I should also explain, that this is not how the universities in Vienna work.  In fact at Universität Wien, they do not have midterms but only finals.  I don’t take classes at Uni Wien, however, which is rather unfortunate.  Instead my classes are held at the IES center by my study abroad program.  This means all my classmates are American study abroad students.  Anyway, what I was going to say was, I had a few days off last week so I took advantage of the free time and traveled.

I took a train to Passau to visit a friend.  The weather was really wonderful during the week and we took lots of walks around the small city and her hometown, which is a small neighboring town named Fürstenzell.  I was really glad I got to take a break from the big city life and retrieve to a quieter place.  I think that is what I would like to do when I have more opportunities to travel later – I want to be able to visit smaller places.  After a beautiful train ride, I arrived at Passau Hauptbahnhof (train station) on Wednesday evening.  J picked me up and drove us to her home.  We drove through some country scenery and saw the gorgeous sunset.  It suddenly reminded me how long it has been since I have lived in a big city and missed the sunset.  Passau is a city only about 300 km from Vienna, about three hours drive.  It is on the Austrian-German boarder and a meeting point of three rivers, Donau, Inn, and Ilz, so you can imagine how beautiful it must be!  And then it was just really great to see J again after we parted last May.  I was really glad I got to spend some time with her!

I have decided that the theme of my travels last week must have been river cities!  Because I then went to Prague for the weekend with Suzanne and Kevin – okay, so I guess the theme was beautiful rivers and awesome people/friends/travel buddies, because they are some of my favorite people!  It is needless for me to say how important it is to have good company.  Prague was a marvelously beautiful city.  It lies by the river Vltava, or Moldau, the German name that I knew.  The walks along the river and across the bridges were absolutely beautiful.  Suzanne did a tour of a few major Central/West European cities with her family last summer, and Prague was the city that she wanted to visit again.  I have always wanted to visit too, as I am fascinated by all the East European cultures and post-communist arts, about which, I have to admit, I knew very little, and was even considering study abroad in Czech Republic at first!  What I didn’t know was the city also contains a lot of medieval beauty, especially when you start going underground!  Suzanne loves the city; she would repeat that again and again just walking down the cobble stone streets.  I think it is the perfect representation my experience with the city.  I mean, it’s just the atmosphere that is so attractive, and you don’t need to see any particular thing, but just breath the air of the city is enough.  We just walked around a lot and tried to take in the city as much as we could.

I decided that everything in Prague was put together with good taste, it seemed.  Like restaurants.  Of course all these major cities would have plenty of descent, expensive restaurants all over.  But too often I just see ones that are purely fancy.  Just by looking through the windows of these restaurants in Prague, I was intrigued by the unique design and characters of each one of these places.  I loved the heavy wooden tables, or individual old-fashioned lamps and lounge sofas.  It’s good taste.  And the streets are all dimly lit at night, together with the narrow stone-paved streets, they create a pleasant nostalgic feeling that I really enjoyed.