Stephens Adventures: Austria

Well I am quickly falling behind on my blog posts. That said the next stop on my Christmas trip was a Vienna in Austria. Unfortunately, I was not able to book a seat on the train from Budapest to Vienna, and so I ended up sitting on the floor between two cars. After a less then perfect trip, I got to Vienna and wandered off to find my hostel. After checking in I started to wander around town and check out Vienna's many beautiful sites. I ended up meeting a few people in the hostel to wander with and have a few drinks with.

The palaces and churches in Vienna are really quite nice, and they are conveniently mostly in one area so you can walk in an almost straight line and see all of them.

After being in Vienna I had a brief stopover in Bratislava (next blog post) and then I headed to Salzberg to visit Vera. We had a great time going around the city of Salzberg and after a short wander up to the castle on top of the mountain we went for beers followed by chocolate cake. I had forgotten how much I missed having mountains around (Ottawa and Malmo are both very flat!). After our snack we headed off for dinner at the top of a mountain in a Gasthaus. To get to the gasthaus, we hiked all the way to the top of the mountain in the snow. Once we arrived and enjoyed dinner with beers and then hit the schnapps. As we were the last ones left in the place the owner came by to chat and buy us one last round of schnapps. After the schnapps we took sleds down the mountain to get back to our car. I only crashed a few times, and it was great fun!

The next day after an amazing lunch with Vera's grandmother it was off to Croatia!

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