We left this morning after breakfast on the 8:30 bus to Frieds. Our train left at 9:10 from the Bahnhof. We transferred at Lindau and then again at the first stop in Switzerland (I think??) onto our larger train headed through Salzburg, Austria, where some key scenes from the Sound of Music were filmed, and on to Vienna. It was about an eight hour trip in total.
Kyle on the train. There are mirrors on the ceiling and this is what we saw when we looked up. Creeper=P
Stephen (third from left) is just a great guy, really smart and laid back. His best friend from childhood, Kyle (middle with the shiny jacket), is traveling with us too, and together they're hilarious. Kyle has an awesome testimony, and I think he's the one I'm most excited to get to know this weekend. He's just an interesting person I guess.
Erik was a last-minute addition to our group, but I'm really glad he's coming. I enjoy spending time with him, and in this setting, he won't be able to escape my presence=P
Next Autumn, my roommate (in the pink jacket). She's so much fun, and my exact opposite, so we work perfectly together.
Kelty's stoic face. So great:)
My attempts at model poses. We were all in a weird post-travel mood. As you can see, the camera loves me.
Kelty (process of elimination... the girl on the left) is funny and it was easy to become friends with her. We don't really hang out at school, but since we realized we would be going to Vienna together, have been talking a little bit more. She speaks German, which will be so good to have too. I'm really excited to get to know her better during this trip=)
And that's eight! Peter was also with us for the train ride itself, but he has friends in Vienna who he'll be staying with, so we won't see him again til the ride back. He acts like a secret agent. No further description is necessary.
Needless to say, we had a hilariously entertaining eight hour train ride, complete with Nutella on cardboard crackers, scary bathrooms from the future, gorgeous countryside, a movie, and sharing pictures from home.
When we got to the Vienna station, we bought our transportation tickets for the weekend. For ten Euros each, we got tickets for any train, subway, and bus travel all over Vienna for 72 hours. Like I said, transportation prices here really aren't bad at all.
After buying tickets, I grabbed a transportation map and we hopped on the train headed for Hutteldorf, where our hostel was. On the map, our stop was the third, and the hostel info had said that it was a 15 minute trip. TURNS OUT we were on one of the fast nighttime trains, our stop was first, and it was only a 5 minute trip! Course, we didn't find that out until the doors closed on that first stop and Kelty looked out the window... haha I know that sounds awful, like how could we miss our stop when "Hutteldorf" was literally written right there?! But when you've got eight kids who've been travelling for seven and a half hours, "distracted" becomes an understatement.
So we keep riding the train. It's dark outside. We're still a little bit slow. Still not quite sure why that was the first stop. We look at the map, and the next stop looks like maybe 3/4 of a mile. We figure we can walk back...
15 minutes later...
The high-speed train finally stops. We step off the train into muddy grass. I start laughing. If the American Gothic couple would've been standing there, the image that was forming in my mind would've been complete. ...a cow lows in the distance...I imagine walking all night down abandoned country roads like Judy Garland and Toto before they discovered color...
In reality, we were at a very nice, modern train station on the outskirts of the city. But for those first two and a half seconds before my brain waves resumed their normal function.. well you can imagine the mental loop-the-loop I had the good pleasure to undergo.
Anyways, so yup that's where we're at in the pictures up above. At some random middle of nowhere train station in Vienna, waiting 45 minutes for the train (that, by the way, just happened to NOT be high-speed and therefore took twice as long to get us back and stopped at every single dang stop in the process) to take us back to Hutteldorf.
In the pictures, we're standing on the platform above the train tracks. Behind the picture-takers was a nice little Disneyland-esque (I don't know how to spell esque. Plus it's not actually a stand-alone word and I can't think of any words that contain it to check how it's spelled...and now I'm wondering why I felt it necessary to explain that...) train station with about sixteen silent German sojourners watching our antics with bewilderment on their faces.
So. We successfully reached Hutteldorf finally. Walked over the freeway, which was inexplicably separated in the middle by a canal, by footbridge, and found our hostel ten minutes later by following the signs. Sort of a -10 degree midnight 800 kilogram backpack-carrying end of a nine hour travel day scavenger hunt, complete with a 200 meter vertical climb.. Fun stuff, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
Note the use of metric unit measurements. That right there is what I call successful cultural adaptation.
The hostel was really nice. Orange, yellow, and green color-schemed...odd. Good internet though.
We got to our four-person rooms. The three of us girls went into ours to deliberate and decide which guy was gonna have to stay with us. We decided Stephen would be the least awkward about it.
Everybody dropped off their stuff and made beds, and we headed back to the train station for a doner dinner. It was the weirdest thing, and I don't think my written explanation will do the scenario justice, but the guy working there was so creepy to me! Everybody ordered the same thing, one of the burrito-type doners.
He was a big hairy guy, probably forty years old with dark skin and he wasn't putting a whole lot of effort into his work. Each doner was sorta flimsy and small, he dropped Autumn's on the ground, dusted it off and handed it to her, and put all the ingredients on all of them without even asking.
I ordered mine last. He smiled at me and asked "How are you?" and I said "Good." and he kept working. He asked me what I wanted on it, smiling and looking me up and down. Then he slowly put what I asked him to on there. He piled the meat on, like twice as much as anybody else got, asked me again "How are you?", I assume because it's the only phrase he knew in English. By this time, I was getting really weirded out.
To finish, he asked, "Do you like it spicy?" Haha ahh and I swear it was the creepiest, most uncomfortable thing! The only thing he could've done to make it worse was wink. Ugh it was so bad! Then he slowly starts rolling it up, not even looking at the doner, just looking at me and smiling the whole time, and he handed me like four napkins (no one else got any) and I grabbed the doner from him and walked away really fast.
The entire group was just cracking up and I said he must've been joking, just trying to creep me out and they said no way. We looked back and he was still staring! And when we compared, my doner was literally like Goliath compared to the rest of theirs, haha!
Anyways, we went back to the hostel, ate our dinner, and climbed in bed completely ready for the best sleep of our lives.
Psalm 23:3
he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
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