Jono's Travels

A little background is needed for this entry I think. When I was in Australia I lived with a girl named Julia for a few months. Julia was a music major and absolutely adored the sound of music. She tried to make me watch it a bunch of times but I constantly wormed out of it. Soooo I find it really ironic that I'm now in those very same hillls that Maria von Trapp ran - those hills that are alive with the sound of music!

Ok that was corny, I promise I'll try to keep the sound of music quotes out of this entry. On our first day in Salzburg Jill, Kristen and I just went on a self-guided walking tour around the town. Salzburg is in a basin of some sort formed when a couple lakes from the ice-age dried up. At least thats the gist that I got - really though all that matters is that its in a valley, with green rolling hills nearby and the alps in the background. Unfortunately when we were about as far away from our hostel as we planned on going it started to pour down on us. So we busted out the ponchoes, umbrellas and hoodies and trudged back to the hostel. Early night that night as we all needed some good shuteye after Munich.

The morning of the second day marked a big occasion - my first time watching the sound of music. I actually really liked it - guess I should have listened to Julia all those times (Sorry Julez!). It was a feel-good movie, with a bunch of unintentionally hilarious parts in it to boot. After watching it Jill (an avid sound of music fan) got a glint in her eye and took off on the sound of music tour while me and Kristen explored the local fortress. The fortress was interesting as it was the seat of arch-bishops governing over Salzburg from 1400-1800 (roughly - please don't wikipedia me on this trevor!) and had never been taken by force - only willingly surrended to napoleon on his jaunt through europe. After heading back to the hostel and meeting up with Jill we went to another beergarden for the night. This one had 2L steins and a crazy friendly group of swiss-germans in it. The swiss-germans seemed to take a liking to us backpackers and brought us over for a traditional snuff snorting ritual of sorts. At the time I wasn't 100% sure what it was but there was a couple of grandmas beside me doing it so I figured it had to be ok!

On our last day we took an organized tour to the nearby icecaves. They are the largest discovered icecave in the world (I think) - it took over 1km to walk to the back of them. The formations were really impressive, as was the ride there through the alps. Plus we had a wicked funny aussie tourguide that played Akon on the ride there as his wife was into it. Sorry no photos from inside the caves though - it wasn't allowed.

At this point I'm splitting up with Jill and Kristen - they head to Croatia and the Dalmation coast while I continue up to Vienna. I had a great time travelling with these girls and will be sad to see them go.

Stealing the ladders from my hostel

Jill and I hamming it up in the Mirabell gardens

Jill with the Romanian woman who taught her to make Hungarian sweetbread

View of old-town salzburg from the fortress

Traditional Austrian hat complete with not-so-traditional tourist

Jill, me and Kristen at the biergarten

Group from hostel

Prost dass die gurten nicht verrost! (cheers so you're throat won't go rusty)

Snuff ritual with the swiss-germans

Salzburg at night

Entrance to the ice caves -that's Jill and Kristen in the foreground

Some wannabe-thug showing that the icecaves were cold (surprise)

Kristen and Jill with the castle at Wurfen in the background

3 weeks in and I think the biggest cultural shock I experience may just be going from one keyboard layout to another. After just getting the hang of the Italian layout I'm now bashing my head trying to get used to the Austrian one. Despite the fact that a keyboard is only so big, I still have not been able to find the key for the at symbol. Also the z key and the y key are switched from the positions from which I'm used to - this makes for multiple retypings of any word with either letter

Innsbruck has a certain resort town feel that reminds me of Whistler in a lot of ways. The main town is set in the Austrian alps and along with the surrounding holiday villages has played host to the olympic games twice. The setting is stunning and the surrounding areas make for some great hiking. I had picked this town just for the hiking and was stoked to learn beforehand that there was a mountain club that provided free transportation, guides, and a traditional nightime siesta. This sounded too good to be true to me and it turned out it was... sorta. The program started at the beginning of June and I was there at the end of May, hah.

Deciding that I still had to make the most of the mountains I set off for some independant hiking on my two full day there. It was good to get some activity in and the sights were impressive. I had a bit of a run-in with some of the natural inhabitants on my second day though. On one of the trails I was hiking the path ahead was blocked by a mountain sheep/goat. Since the path was pretty narrow and my knowledge of mountain sheep in the alps is rather limited I decided that trying to get around this fella on a narrow trail with a steeeeep fall wasn't the greatest of ideas and I had to tuck tail and turn around.

The hostel I stayed at was a quaint bed and breakfast - probably the coziest hostel I've ever been. Met some interesting girls from Hong Kong that had all quit their jobs to travel around for awhile, as well as a group of siblings from the states. However I think I might be a little over-relaxed from the past week as I'm feeling restless and looking for to the big city hostels and beer gardens of Munich where I'll be going to next.

Since I've been blogging for the past hour and a half and I've got a pretty severe head rush from all the smoke I'm going to go get some fresh air now!

At the summit of Patsch - one of the ski hills in the area

Blocked by a mountain sheep

Giving said mountain sheep a piece of my mind (trust me, it's there in the background)

Hiking the nordpark on my second day

Alpine hut used by mountaineers