My Last Entry

If you wanna catch up on what I've done for the last few days then just ask me in person. I'm home. Good night.

The Birthday Day

Today was a fairly chilled out and relaxed day which was good. We were all prepping for the big party tonight. We were celebrating 3 birthdays. 1 was mine which will be on the 8th, 1 was Florian's and his is on the 7th and the other one was his cousin but I don't know what exact day his birthday is, I just know it just happened or is about to happen. The party was very fun! Probably one of the best birthday parties I've ever been too. There wasn't anything super special that happened but it just seemed to be so much fun! Florian and I had gift ideas for each other. I get him a 6 pack of beer and he gets me a bottle of Jagermeister, sounds fair to me. Unfortunately, I will not be able to bring this home with me once I come home because I'm not old enough. But, it may be brought to me in October and the first trip it's making is to Monday night dinner as a souvenir for the PEP Boys. I had to come back from the party early unfortunately because I was so tired I was about to pass out and that wouldn't have looked to good on me. But I was still there for 4 hours so I still got in enough laughs for the evening. That's all for know. The internet is getting fixed tomorrow and will be down all day so I won't post tomorrow but I'll just do a double post on Monday. Good night.

I'm going to start this post with the good news. My 2 new room mates were also leaving the same morning as me so I had no troubles getting to the train station. It's now about 9:30 in the morning and I had originally planned on taking the 12:09 train back but I didn't want to stick around that long so instead I took the 10:09 train. Finding the right train was no problem... it was the connections that had me worried. It never told me at which station I needed to get off at so I was getting very nervous. But I had to get on the train now unless I wanted to wait another 2 hours. I remembered that on the way to Vienna I connected in Salzburg and Salazburg was one of the stops that my current train was making so I was 95% sure that I needed to get off at Salzburg. But, I still needed to figure out which train I took from there. So I looked in the travel itinerary of the train I was taking from Innsbruck to Salzburg (I'm going to call that Train A to make it quicker to type) and I was able to find that I was getting off in Salzburg and it gave me the name of the train I needed to take and what time it left. The one thing it left out was the platform and that was very important to me. I got to Salzburg and immediately looked for a train schedule. It was platform 34 and I luckily had walked there by accident and the train was already there so that was a huge relief! Train B was a fairly nice ride until some kids got on. 6 of them, 3 boys, 3 girls all about 15 years old and more than enough booze to go around. They got loud and annoying fast. I got spilled on twice, the first time wasn't so bad. It was just a few drops that landed on the side of my shorts but I didn't really mind that. The second time I got half a cooler spilled on me if not more and that was all over my right leg. Not a very comfortable feeling to have sticky legs on a train. But, oh well, my stop eventually came and Silke picked me up to bring me back to their house. Fast forward to tonight. We went back to Huttn Wirt to hang out for a little while. Sure, Jeremy and his friends ran with the bulls but I rode them! Except it was mechanical, so Jeremy and friends, you've still got me beat. But on another note from that night I was able to ride that bull for 35 seconds! Plus I finished my first ever beer! It wasn't just beer though, it was grapefruit flavoured but it's a start. I didn't end up staying there for too long but that was fine with me. There is no bad news, I just thought that it'd be a good attention grabber. Gotcha!! That's all for today. Good night.

Innsbruck Day 2It

This morning I woke up and looked up what there was to see here in Innsbruck and I found quite a few things but the problem was getting there. I couldn't find bus routes or schedules online and no big attraction was within walking distance. But I was close to a bunch of stores here so I figured that I'd stay close and check out the surrounding area around the hostel. I was hoping to find the last few souvenirs at one of these stores but I couldn't find the right thing so after a few hours and checking every store (I mean every store, I even checked grocery stores with great desperation) I had given up and called it a day. I came back to the hostel and downloaded some movies for my train ride tomorrow and also figured out what time my train would be leaving at. It was a relatively relaxing day but I have a bad feeling about the train station tomorrow. Just getting there is the problem. But, don't worry, I'm sure I'll figure it out Mom. Good night.

Innsbruck Day 1

Today was a very long day. I had to check out of my hostel by 10 and my train didn't leave till 11:45. So, I spent almost 2 hours at the train station on my laptop watching movies that I've seen several times before, but, oh well, it still helped the time pass. Once I got on the train it wasn't too interesting unfortunately and because of the sun there was a bad glare on the screen so I could barely watch my movie. I didn't take any pictures because  all you could see were construction sites and once I got to the mountains there was a storm so visibility was limited. Once I got to Innsbruck I looked at the given directions for how to get to my hostel which seemed fairly simple. It told me to take a certain bus and what stop to get off at. This would've been fine if the bus was near the train station. I looked all over for this bus stop but couldn't find it. There was a map that showed where all of the buses drove but it was a terrible map. There was only 1 of them and it didn't have names or a thing saying "you are here" it was terrible! So after pondering this map for way too long trying to figure out where I was, I decided to give this bus station one last look around and still found nothing so my frustration got to me so I gave up and took a taxi. It only costed 8 euros so it wasn't too bad. Once I got to the hostel and I checked in I was pleased to find out that I have english speaking room mates! They're a newlywed couple from New Zealand so it was so nice to have a consistent conversation and not need to worry about how fast I talked or how I said it. We were talking for a little while and then they decided that they were going to go down to the kitchen to make themselves supper and have a few drinks so they invited me to join them which I did. After they'd eaten we had noticed that there were 2 girls from Great Britain sitting at the table behind us. So we got to talking with them and we ended up spending 4 hours maybe a little more just talking about our backgrounds and where we've been and where we're going. It was very interesting and there's way too much to type because the 2 British girls had the travel bug and the newlyweds had been vacationing for months in Europe already. Unfortunately I have 2 nights here and everybody else only have tonight left here but hopefully some more english speaking people take their places tomorrow. That's all for now. Good night.

I forgot the pictures of the church

Vienna Day 3

Today I made my trip out to see the inside of Schloss Shonbrunn and the Stephansdom Church. I was woken up at 615 this morning to the sounds of my room mates packing their bags. It didn't really bother me at all so I just tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. That didn't work so at around 850 I was all set for the day and walked out the door to go to the subway. It wasn't until I got to the Schonbrunn stop that I remembered that I was going to go see the inside of the palace so I quickly got off the train so I could make my quick stop there. I got there bright and early so to avoid big line ups. As I walked to where you start the tour inside I noticed that it said no backpacks and I quickly looked around to see if there was any spot that I could store my backpack which I didn't see. I wasn't going to toss my bag into a bush and hope that no one could find it because based on the size of this palace I don't know if I would even be able to find it again. So, I had quickly given up and started my walk back outside the palace. It was there that I spotted an area where you can store your bags so I did. I walked back to the start of the tour and then remembered that I forgot my camera so I went back to the storage place to find out that you can't take pictures inside anyways. So I again walked back to the line which I thought you could just buy your tickets there...  I was wrong. Thankfully I noticed this before making a fool out of myself when the man asked for my ticket. So I again walked back and then bought my ticket. Apparently I'm still a kid there, perfect! Saved me about 8 euros! I then walked back to the line and I was all set for this tour. Well it wasn't really a tour, I walked by myself through it but it's just easier to call it a tour. So anyways I was walking through this palace and wow it was a very nice house! But not going to lie.. I'd hate to live there! Everything is either glassed in or roped off so I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near it (obvious joke). Unfortunately no pictures allowed so I don't have anything to show everybody what it looks like. After I did my walk through I headed back to the subway and started my trip to  the Stephansdom Church. I got off the subway and the church was right there, how convienent! I right away pulled out my camera and snapped a couple pictures. I then found an entrance to what I thought was the front where I could leisurely walk through and look at stuff. It was far from that. I climbed up the tower on spiral stairs and man was it tight! If I walked straight with it then I took up almost the whole walkway so I stuck close to the side so that there was almost 2 lanes, typical Europe. Once I finally made it up to the top I realized how high I actually just climbed because there were only very small windows on the way up the tower. I had an amazing view once I got up to the top and once I had taken a couple pictures and caught my breath it was time to head back down. I walked down and once I finally go to the bottom (I timed it and it was about 5 minutes of me quickly going down steep spiral stairs) I started walking around the church and saw the real front entrance. So I went in there to take a look, and wow! What a nice church! I'll post the pictures below and you'll be able to see what I mean. After I finished walking around in the church I figured that I'd stick around and look around the city a little bit. I walked around for a while, checking out stores and doing some souvenir shopping. It was getting close to 1 and I was starting to get a little hungry. I saw some street meat being sold and they also sold beer there so I was going to have some sausage and attempt beer for lunch. While walking there I bumped into the 2 dutch girls that I had met on the train a few days ago. We were talking for a bit and it turned out that we were both about to go have lunch but they were planning to eat at a restaurant. They hadn't picked one yet but they ended up picking the one right beside us. We sat down and the waitress said that they only serve drinks not food where we were sitting but she said that there's a restaurant on the top floor of the building about 10m from us. We took the elevator to the 7th floor and sat outside for lunch. It was a good lunch, I wasn't too hungry so I just got a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. After lunch they wanted to look at shoes and I wasn't too interested in that nor did I know if they wanted me to stick around for longer than lunch or not. So we parted ways. I walked around a little bit more and bought some more stuff then I realized that I need to watch my spending so to lessen the urge I came back to my hostel. I got back shortly before 3 and had a necessary shower. But, before I could do that I needed to get towels so before I walked all the way to my hostel I went to Spar hoping that they'd have some towels today (I checked yesterday for towels so I could shower but was unsuccessful). I looked and didn't see any.... so, I improvised. I bought a pack of 10 dish towels and hoped that it'd be enough. It turned out to be more than enough and I only needed 2 so I'm set for the next 4 nights if need be. That's all for now. Good night.