Whirlwind Weekend!



                                                                                                           



Part of the group at the Play!





Last Supper scene



My busy weekend started out by having to meet at the train station at 6:20am and boy was that early! We all met at 5:50 to make sure everyone was up and so we could get to the bus in time. We all made it to the train station and headed to Oberammergau. It was about a two hour train ride with an hour stop in Munich. The train ride wasn’t too bad. We all pretty much slept the whole way. We got in to Oberammergau around 11:00. Oberammergau is a beautiful town! It is surround by mountains and it was absolutely gorgeous. My favorite part was there is a large mounting towering over the city and there is a large cross on top. It is really neat! We then walked to our hostel and checked in. It was a pretty nice hostel but one thing I had trouble with was the unisex bathroom! Incredibly awkward! The stalls were right by the urinals and there were definitely a couple times I walked out and saw some old men using the urinal. Ahh! Not something I really want to experience again. Haha! I shared a room with 5 other people and it was really weird because they stuck us with one of the professors and another girl not in our group. There are 6 girls on the trip so we just assumed we would all be in the same room but I guess not. She wasn’t my professor but the other girls agreed it was weird sharing a room with a teacher. She insisted the window be open while we slept and it was soooooo cold! I absolutely froze and did not get any sleep. It was terrible! I broke the quiet hour rules and got in the shower before we were supposed to just because I needed to warm up. Anyway, after we checked in to the hostel we got lunch there and headed to the play. We walked about 10 minutes to the where the building was and there were a ton of people. The building holds 5,000 people and it was definitely sold out. It was interesting because we were for sure the youngest people there. It made me realize how cool of an experience it was for us to be there. It takes people a long time to get that experience and we get it when we are in college. It was pretty cool. The play was absolutely amazing! The first half lasted about 2 ½ hours then we had a 3 hour break and then it went for about 3 hours. It was long but I loved it! The acting and singing was great which is hard to believe because the townspeople put it on. They aren’t actors or anything yet it is amazing! There is a rule that you have to have lived in Oberammergau for 20 years before you can be in the play. We all agreed that the play was a little too long. If it would have been an hour shorter I think it would have been perfect. The whole play was in German but I was surprised how much I could pick up on. They spoke so clearly so it was nice. We also had a book with the English script but in the second half it was too dark to read it. I was completely blown away with the entire production and I feel very blessed to have had the experience. There were some people in our group who weren’t too excited about it but that is there loss. I loved every bit of it!

Ettal

We booked it back to our hostel because we were frozen and it was raining. Not a good combination. Then I didn’t get any sleep that night which didn’t help. The next morning we got up and ready around 8:00am and had breakfast. This was the day I was in charge of planning so I was a little nervous. It is a lot of pressure. It was absolutely pouring and we had an hour walk to another small town planned. I talked to my director and we decided to look into taking a bus. We found a bus and made our way to Ettal. It was a really cute little town but it was cloudy and rainy which didn’t really help. We had planned a tour of the monastery there but with the bus schedule we had to cancel it. In the morning we went to the monastery but didn’t get a tour of it. We saw the church which was beautiful. There was a mass going on so we sat in there for a little while. Since we had some time until our lunch reservation our directors were trying to fill time so we went to the most random place ever. We went to a cheese factory! It was the funniest thing! We had a “tour” of the place but it was basically sitting in a room watching a video about how they make cheese. It was alright just so random! That went longer than we thought and we were late for our lunch reservation. This is when I had to step in to lead us to the restaurant. It was a mess because we saw a sign pointing one way and apparently is was the wrong way. We asked some guys where it was and they pointed us in the other direction. Anyway, we eventually found it and when we got there, there was another issue. We told them we had a reservation and they gave us the blankest stare. It turns out the person I made the reservation with didn’t work there anymore and they didn’t have our reservation. It was all ok because they had room for us but it was kind of a mess. Everyone kept saying how good the food was so that made me feel better. I didn’t like the pressure of planning but I guess it was fine. Everything turned out alright just not the way it was planned but that happens. We had to catch the bus back to Oberammergau to get our train. The bus was every two hours which made things difficult but we got to spend more time in Oberammergau which was nice. A group of us walked around town taking pictures and we visited the church there. I think that is one of my favorite things to do. The churches here are absolutely gorgeous! Nothing like what we have in the states. Once we got to the church I knew I had been to Oberammergau before. We took a trip there in high school but no one ever told us! Haha! We caught our train around 4:30pm and headed to Innsbruck, Austria.

The train ride into Innsbruck was absolutely gorgeous! We all had our windows down trying to take pictures but it was kind of difficult. The pictures do not give it justice anyways. The mountains were covered in snow and it was beautiful! When we got to Innsbruck we walked straight to our hostel and checked in. The hostel we stayed in was specifically built for the 1976 Olympics which was cool but you could definitely tell it was built in the 70’s. Really awful colors! We then went out to get dinner and most of the group went to this restaurant called Al Pacino’s. It had really good pizza and good music so it was a lot of fun. We went to bed right away after that. We were all so tired. I slept a lot better the second night which was good. I woke up at 7:15am and the first thing to pop into my mind was “I just missed Piano Man”. There is a 7 hour time difference and right when I looked at the clock I knew. I was definitely thinking about everyone all weekend but this is when it hit me. We got breakfast at our hostel and headed to the streets of Innsbruck. It was really cool but it was raining which makes everything look worse. I really liked the city. We walked around for a little bit and then we went to the Goldenen Dachl museum which is the Gold Roof museum. It was all about this gold roof which was built in the 1500’s. It was interesting but a whole museum on a roof was not really our thing. We then got lunch at this really nice restaurant. We tried to find a restaurant that wasn’t so fancy but we were kind of stuck since we had to go as a group and they had to accept Visa. We use group money for meals but our director was short on cash so we had to pay all together. It had really good food! I got schnitzel which I am really starting to like. After lunch we were all on our own. We got free tickets to a museum because we are students which was nice so we saw parts of that. We went to the chapel there which was called Hofkirche and it was beautiful!  Then we also saw this show thing which was really strange. I don’t even know how to explain it but we basically walked from room to room and they showed us different things. It was weird.

We went as a whole group and we laughed through the whole thing. Afterwards a group of us went to the other churches in town. I love seeing all the churches because they are all so different. After that we went and saw the Imperial Gardens which weren’t that great. With a name like that I thought they would be amazing but it was just a regular garden. It was pretty but nothing special. In the afternoon we went and got gelato which was yummy. We sat on a bench on the main street and ate our ice cream which was nice. We had to then meet at the train station at 4:15pm. We got on the train and headed back to Salzburg. We had a great weekend but we were all ready to go back home.

On Sunday night there were fireworks because it was the last day of Rupertikertag and it was absolutely amazing! A small group of us went and sat right along the river. They lit the fireworks from the fortress and it was so cool! I have seen better fireworks before but the scenery with the river and the town was breath-taking. We all couldn’t believe that other people missed out on it. It definitely made me think of Katie’s great words of wisdom to never say no to anything. If someone asks if you want to do something you always say yes and I am totally living by that rule! I would have felt so sad to miss something like that. Yes, I was tired but that just doesn’t matter. Time is flying by and there will be time to sleep when I get home! Haha! Monday was a really relaxed day. I got to sleep in because I didn’t have class until 1:00pm which was really nice. I feel so terrible because my roommate told me I was screaming in my sleep! Ahh! I don’t know how to fix it and she probably thinks her roommate is absolutely crazy! Hopefully I won’t do it often. Well that was my weekend which was a lot of fun! It was very busy but I enjoyed every minute of it!