There is a LOT to catch everybody up on!
For most of my life, I've been a pretty big planner. I have some kind of plan... or at least general outline of most things that I do.... ESPECIALLY vacations. Well, this weekend, I wasn't in charge. My friends Paul and Greg decided that they wanted to go to the Hohe Tauern National Park, which is about 6 hours away by train. We bought our train tickets, and they told me to leave the rest up to them...... (famous last words? lol)

On Friday night at midnight, Paul, Greg, Laura, and I jumped on a train and headed west... that's all that I knew. Our tickets were for Hallein, which I assumed would be our ending destination. We had to switch trains in Salzburg so that we could head to Hallein. We had about an hour of downtime, so we thought we could find something to do, or somewhere to eat..... what we didn't realize was that it happened to be 4am, and nothing was open.... and there are no such things as Austrian Waffle Houses. We decided to just camp out at the train station until our Hallein train arrived. There was a "warm room" in the corner of the station, so we headed inside. About 5 seconds after setting foot inside the room, we felt severely out of place. We were surrounded by some of the sketchiest looking people I've ever seen. In the corner, a man in a turban sat Budah-style in one of the chairs, sound asleep and another guy with rotted hair glared at the four Americans standing in the doorway. This warm room also smelled worse than a cattle farm, so the four of us exchanged disgusted looks and immediately decided to leave the stench box. made ourselves comfortable on some benches in the open-air train station and attempted to take naps. I'm pretty sure we looked like four homeless bums! haha.

Finally, our train arrived and we jumped on, since by this time I couldn't feel my legs. It gets pretty cold on Austrian nights. We got to Hallein at about 5:30 or so in the morning, and again, the city and the train station looked completely abandoned. While on the train, Greg named himself "Supreme Group Leader," after winning a game of poker, and decided that his first duty would be to delegate group responsibilities to the rest of us. He said that Laura didn't have any real skills to speak of, so she was just the food and beverage coordinator. Paul is the best with reading maps (since, apparently, men have a sixth sense that is amazing directional skills), so he was named Team Navigator. I guess people think that I talk a lot (no idea where they came up with this), so I was named the Communicator, meaning that I had to talk to all of the locals to figure out where and when to go places. Well, this should be easy..... seeing as I speak ZERO German..... awesome. I walked up to the information desk at the station, and asked the attendant which was to go to get to the national park. She looked at me like I had seven heads, and started talking about Ice Caves in VERY broken English. She said she had never heard of a national park. At this point, I seriously thought about killing Greg and Paul. Did they just pick a random town and hope it was close to the park? haha. So, I went outside and saw a group of taxis gathered. Now, if anybody is going to know where they are, it should be a taxi driver. I asked if any of them spoke English, and luckily, two of them did. They said if we took this same train about 30 more kilometers down to Zell am See, that we would be in the heart of the national park, and would be able to find a place to stay.

WE DID! We just jumped back on the train and spontaneously changed our lack of plans completely! I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous. It was just 7am when we got to Zell am See, so we grabbed a bite to eat at a pastry shop and asked where the nearest hostel was. We only had to walk a few minutes, and got a room in this very cute place. It was a little more expensive than we would have wanted to pay, but not much. The room was also VERY nice and not creepy at all. When we looked out our window, we saw that we were situated at the bottom of an enormous mountain, which was absolutely beautiful! This HAD to be the national park! :)

We decided to sleep for a few hours, since Greg and I hadn't slept at all on the train down. We had to be the look-outs for the correct stops. -- We all got up at about 11:30, and were ready and refreshed to take on some nature! The owner of our hostel pointed us in the right direction, so we set off for another random adventure.

After walking a long way and not seeing ANY sign of a park entrance or hiking trail of any sort, we got a little nervous. We were walking along a sidewalk on a small hill, and saw a little bitty man in overalls fixing a concrete wall. Well, since I'm the "communicator," I was pushed ahead of the group and went to speak to this local. In about 2 seconds, I realized that he didn't speak ANY English. He called his wife outside, and she didn't speak much more. All we got out of this old couple was that we were in the right place, but that the park was a long walk down the road still. Oh great.... more walking! :) The nice little man pointed to his car and offered to give us a ride to the park entrance. We had two decently strong guys with us, so we weren't too nervous about one old man, so we agreed. We didn't understand his name, so for the rest of the trip, we referred to this good citizen as "Stanley." Stanley made sure that we knew where we were before he drove away. Cheers to Stanley! :)

We all looked up, and saw some of the biggest mountains that we've ever seen! WAY bigger than in Kentucky! So, in the spirit of adventure, we headed up a little road that we were told would eventually turn into a hiking trail that would take us to the top of the mountain..... in only 3 hours (ooooh, boy... put your hiking shoes on, kids!). Now, in high school, I could have boasted to be in pretty good shape, but after 3 years of not playing soccer, I've lost just a little bit of my stamina. Let me just tell you, this was without a doubt the most strenuous hike that I've ever participated in. We were all dying after about 20 minutes! haha. But, we didn't want to give up, so we grabbed walking sticks and started singing and hiking like champions.

At the top of one if the hills, there was a HUGE horse just standing looking at us. My life pretty much flashed before my eyes. I could see this massive devil stallion charging four out of shape twenty-year-olds.... we wouldn't have had a chance. We felt that if we moved really slowly, the horse might not see us, and let us pass. We creeped along the tiny road to safety! Yay! Finally, after several breaks and after we demolished a few chocolate bars, waters, and pretzels, we made it to the peak! It was breathtaking..... and not just because I was physically out of breath, but because the view from the top was amazing! We stood up there for a long time, just basking in the sun and in the glory of climbing the Alps! Success! After 3 hours of hiking straight up, we made it.......

Not wanting to be too big of overachievers for one weekend, Greg took charge and voted that we take the lift back down to the base of the mountain..... no arguments came from the rest of us! haha. We got back to our room and watched our first ever rugby game on tv.... since we didn't understand anything else.... and since Spongebob was in German, too.

The next morning, we slept in a little (since none of us could feel out legs!), took full advantage of the free breakfast of the hostel, and then headed out to find another small adventure before heading back home. We decided to rent an electric boat and take it out on Zell am See (See means "lake" in German..... so the Zell Lake or something!). We rode around for about an hour, got chased by some crazy swans, told stories, and just enjoyed the incredible weather that we'd been blessed with. We started talking about how this trip reminded us of Homeward Bound (the movie with the three animals that were lost in the wilderness together and had to climb over mountains). Paul was Shadow, the wise golden retriever. Laura was Sassy, the opinionated, yet sweet, cat. Greg was Chance, the crazy pale bulldog. Since there weren't any more characters, they said that I could be the Porccupine, who basically just caused trouble in the movie..... thanks guys. :)

The trains back were PACKED with people, so from Zell am See to Salzburg, we sat on the floor and played cards... because there were NO seats left. We stopped in Salzburg to get dinner, and then caught another train back to Vienna. From Salzburg to Vienna, the train was, yet again, packed. There was a bar area in the middle of the train, and we found a table where we could stand off to the side. Greg busted out the cards, and we played cards for about three hours! We also met this guy named Erik, who was from Michigan. Erik was just vacationing from his Engineering job for a few weeks. He joined us for several rounds of cards. He was very nice! I love meeting random people like that. After we got of the train, we showed Erik to a nearby hostel, since he had no idea where he was staying! :) (Sounds like us!)

I finally got into bed at around 2am, after a long train ride, several unscheduled stops, some card games, and pizza! Class this morning was at 9am..... staying awake was quite a different adventure. :)

I really loved this weekend trip. Sometimes, not planning things leads to a really awesome adventure. We all definately bonded this weekend (maybe near death experiences with horses, climbing huge mountains, or just being utterly lost in Austria will do that to you!). I had a great time just being in the Alps! I'll definately have to go back!