Austria

Tuesday morning I said goodbye to Katy and headed out to catch the train to Florence. The plan was that Sarah and I were going to meet there before we headed out. I got to Florence and went to the meeting point of McDonalds. Five minutes later Sarah showed up. I have to admit that I was surprised. Not that she wouldn’t show or anything, but just the fact that it’s possible to meet so easily in another country.

“Hey let’s meet in Florence, Italy” – how crazy does that sound?

We got our night train tickets to Vienna, Austria for only 7 Euros. (we found out why so cheap later)

Anyway, Sarah’s roommate from Tech is studying in Florence so she let us stay in her apartment until the train left that night. The view from her cute apartment was SO Italy. She made us Eggplant Parmesan! Incredible! It was nice to just chill in a comfortable environment for a while. After dinner we went to get one last gelato L. (don’t count the number that I had while in Italy) :P

We boarded the night train and saw the tiny little rooms with six chairs and zero leg room….that’s what you get for a Eurail pass and 7 euros. It worked though. The air conditioner wasn’t working so to take our minds off frying to death we joked about my obsession with little kids clothes and Sarah’s obsession with dogs. Right then Sarah looks under my chair and says “Is that a dog under there or am I going crazy??” I didn’t believe her at all but sure enough there was a DOG under my chair on a European train Hilarious!!…they didn’t check his ticket though. (Now every time we get on trains we check under each other’s chairs for dogs) J

At about five in the morning the Austrian police, who were quite intimidating men, boarded the train to check passports. Of course Sarah and I didn’t have any problems. The next car down, however, did give us some entertainment. An Italian man was arguing that he didn’t need a passport to get to Austria. The policeman replied, (insert Arnold Schwrzenneger accent here) “Don’t tell me what is the law in Austria” Sarah and I looked at each other barley able to contain ourselves. Yes, I realize this may not seem that funny but at 5 in the morning everything is hilarious.

We woke up in AUSTRIA and arrived at Vienna at 8:30am. We found a map and started heading to the area that looked most touristy. Not at all sure where we were, we stopped at a bus stop to look at the map.

Sarah – “Well it looks like we take wienersnitchel down to …..” The butchering of the German street names made us realize that we were, in fact, in yet another place where we speak none of the language. Vienna was okay but after only a few hours we decided that it was time to head to Salzburg, Austria. Good choice it was!

more to come later on Salzburg and such!