Seasons of the Year

Departing from Austria was bittersweet; I had come to really love that country. But it's not like we weren't going on to other great things. Next stop, Switzerland!

The train ride from Salzburg to Bern was gorgeous. In Munich and Vienna, we couldn't see any of the Alps. From Salzburg, we could see some of the mountains. On the train, we went THROUGH the mountains, spanning rivers and gorges, threading between the peaks. As we travelled, we went from an Austrian fall, with the changing leaves of trees, to a snowy winter, with snowflakes whirling in the sky. Then, a mere five minutes later, we were in what seemed to be a beautiful spring day! It was remarkable how much it changed as we proceeded.

This is the best pic I was able to get from the train.

Welcome to the Alps.

About five hours after we boarded the train, we were getting off in Zurich to switch trains for Bern. Molly and I, feeling a little bit more adventurous, chose to explore the city for a few hours before we went on. Zurich was a nice town; we didn't see a ton of it, and I really don't know much about the history. Surprisingly enough, they had lots of Swiss army knives and watches for sale. Who would've thunk?

We pulled into the Bern train station just after 7, and after wandering for about half an hour, we stumbled across our hostel in the heart of the old town. There were already two guests in the room; an older man and a young Canadian girl. We started talking with the girl, and then she joined us when we went out to see the night-life of Bern. SO MUCH FUN. We were in one of the bars when six younger men came in. Apparently they had all just finished their medical school final tests, so they were out celebrating. Made for a great evening!

The Old Clock

Thursday found us exploring the city of Bern (named for the bear). It's an old city, and as the capital of Switzerland, it had some pretty cool things going on there. We walked to the Einstein museum (would've cost 18 francs to get in, so we passed), wandered towards the bear pits, and up to the rose garden overlooking the city. After a fantastic dinner (Swiss sausage and potatoes), I had no complaints about the city.

Seriously, the city has BEARS for pets...

On Friday, we went to the city of Interlaken (literally meaning "Between the Lakes"). A very tourist-oriented town (I'd say it's similar to Estes Park in Colorado), there wasn't a ton to do just looking around in the city, so we took a train to either end of the lakes. We went to Spritz and Brienz, where we had some beautiful weather and spectacular views of the mountains. Seriously, it felt like a Minnesota summer.

By the end of the day, we arrived in Lucerne and immediately went to bed. We spent the whole next day wandering the streets, but I never really got a good feeling about Lucerne. It was a nice city, but there didn't seem to be anything special about it. I think Molly would probably disagree with that, but I wasn't entirely impressed. What WAS cool, though, was the bicycling we did. We rented bikes from our hostel and just rode along the lakeshore. Now I can officially say I went biking in the Alps!

But soon enough, the time came to head back home (to Ireland). We woke up early on Sunday morning and caught a 6:30 train to Frankfurt. Arriving at noon, we found out that the airport we were supposed to fly out from was APPARENTLY not the international airport that is so convenient to get to. No, we were supposed to take a two hour bus ride to the airport, and the next bus (which would cost us 24 euros apiece) was leaving at 1:30. Perfect. With a 3:20 flight, that just didn't work out too well, eh? In the end, we rented a taxi (costly, to say the least) and made it to the airport in time for our flight. Two hours later, we were touching down at the Dublin International Airport, catching a bus to Galway, and enjoying the (illegal) firework displays and bonfires celebrating Halloween. Time of arrival at the Park Lodge Hotel: 9:00 PM.

What a vacation.

Oh, Switzerland...

And the journey continues...

Our next stop in our Germanic adventure is actually in Austria: Vienna! This was my first experience on an ICE train, and it was phenomenal! Not only did it get us from point A to point B, but it was quiet, smooth, and very comfortable. I absolutely loved the train, a theme that carries through across the entire trip.

Arriving relatively late in Vienna, we checked into the hostel and walked down the main street towards the city center. This was a good hour-long walk, so when we got back to the hostel we enjoyed our COMPLIMENTARY drink from the in-house bar, then headed up to bed.

The next day was very full. We left the hostel around 8:30 so we could find the chapel where the Vienna Boys Choir sings. Every Sunday, they sing at a mass in the Imperial chapel, so we were hoping to find some standing room just outside of the chapel (it costs 30-some euros to actually sit in the chapel during the mass). After getting lost several times, we found the chapel during the preparation of the gifts, so we stayed and listened 'til the end. These boys can SING, that's for sure. It was really cool. After the mass ended, Molly and I went to a High German mass just next door. Although I didn't understand 95% of what was being said, it was still a pretty cool experience.

Vienna Boys Choir in their Postlude.

The rest of the afternoon, we walked the Ringstrasa, the circular road that encompasses the entire city center. Nearly every major sight-seeing place is located along this road, so we got to see some pretty cool buildings. Once it started raining, we went to the Museum of modern Austrian art and spent about an hour there.

Haufburn Palace

That night, we also decided we needed a bit more culture than simply looking at the art gallery. Molly and I were able to buy some three euro tickets (standing room only) to the Vienna ballet that evening. For me, it was the first ballet and I had mixed opinions as for what to expect. Turns out I didn't have to be worried at all; it was pretty cool! I even recognized a bit of the music!

Vienna Ballet Hall

The next day, Monday, was by far the best day of the trip. Molly and I had signed up for a "Grape Grazing Tour." This is a bicycle tour of the wine region just outside of Vienna. Not only a tour, but also a wine TASTING tour. Beautiful, eh? We took three trains out to this really isolated village in a valley and met Walter, the owner of one of the taverns. He sat us down and we sampled six types of wine; five white, one red. Oooh man, these were tasty! After we finished sampling, we got on our bikes and began riding down the trail deeper into the valley! Two stops later, we were eating a wonderful barbecued lunch with marinated pork, bacon-wrapped cheesy sausage, and steak. And to drink? Well, wine of course! It turned out that we were the last tour of the season, so he was trying to get rid of some extra wine. Bummer, eh?

The group of us. Emma and Courtney (Australia),

Kay and Brian (Chicago) and Molly and myself!

After having copious amounts of wine, we arrived back in Vienna in time to catch an 8:30 train to Salzburg. Now, we had told Chris that we would be arriving in Salzburg that evening, but we never told him a time. Well, to our absolute surprise and delight, as we were getting off the train at the Salzburg station, we were met by none other than Chris himself! A good thing too, because our hostel apparently closed at 9:00, so we would've had no place to stay. Chris took us back to his dorm and we celebrated his Polish roommate's birthday!

This is actually a picture from Munich...

The following day, we wandered throughout Salzburg with our guide and got a history of the city. Unfortunately, it was an Austrian national holiday, so nearly everything was closed, but we still got a good look at the city. That night we treated Chris to a nice dinner (a leg of pork, dumpling, saur kraut!) and headed back to our hostel, having enjoyed Salzburg thorougly!

Sound of Music, anyone?

Ten day break? Let's GOOOOO!!!!

For those of you who don't know, the abroad program that I'm in right now has a fall break built into the schedule. No classes were held between Friday, October 22 and Friday, October 29th, so we had the perfect opportunity to get away from our home and travel. Some went to Portugal for the week; others went to Croatia. Some families took the opportunity to visit their sons or daughters in Ireland, while other students simply hopped over the channel to the U.K, or even over the northern Atlantic to the far-away land of Norway. Molly and I did something a bit different; we went off on our own adventure in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland!

As soon as classes were over on Thursday, Molly and I caught a taxi into Galway City to catch a citylink bus to the Dublin Airport. From there, we hopped a RyanAir jet over to the London-Stansted airport, where we had a 7 hour lay-over.

Highlights from the layover:

• Quick nap after the all-nighter we each pulled the night before
• Epic game of POUNCE (I won, 156 to 121)
• All-day breakfast
• Krispy Kreme donuts

Somehow we survived those seven hours, and soon enough, we were landing in the Memmingran airport, about 90 minutes outside of Munich. One bus ride later, we found ourselves at the Munich train station, meeting a good friend of mine, Chris. Chris is studying in the Austria program in Salzburg, but he decided he wanted to come up to Munich and hang out with Molly and myself for a little bit. I don't think we could ask for a better tour guide.

Our fearless leader, Chris Pignato!

Majoring in German and History, Chris is well-versed in German history (go figure), so he was able to show us around the city, translating for us, telling us stories, talking about the culture, etc. Best of all, he knew a great Beerhaus pretty near to our hostel, where we enjoyed some German soccer, schnitzel, and beer.

Hitler gave a really famous speech here.

I forgot what it's called though...

After a great night's sleep, we headed over to Dachau, the German concentration camp about thirty minutes from Munich. It doesn't matter how much you know about World War II; actually seeing a concentration camp gives you a whole new perspective of the experience. I'll let some of the pictures tell the story.

"Work makes one free"

Living conditions aren't the greatest, I'd say.

A memorial to the victims.

Crematorium. Because Dachau wasn't a death camp

(as opposed to Auschwitz), it is uncertain whether

this was actually used to kill prisoners.

Anticipation...

Just giving the faithful followers (or bored readers) a bit of an update on this blog. You can expect four or five new posts within the next three days. I'll be using three of them on my travel break (October 22 - October 31), one on the first week back from the break (November 1 - November 7) and the last on anything else I think of in the meantime.

After all, you know what they say about procrastination:

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING!!

Last Saturday, fourteen of us took a bus for about an hour and got dropped off at the bottom of a mountain. Five hours later, we got picked up, having successfully climbed THIS mountain:

With THESE people:

In particular, you should note our 74-year-old program director, three from the right. He made it up the mountain, no problem. Some more pics:

We had to climb/slide down that... much harder than climbing UP it, for sure.

The Northern Expedition

A few weekends ago, we took our second excursion of the trip. Remember, the first one was to Southern Ireland, where we saw Cork, Tralee, Kilarney, the Dingle Peninsula, the Ring of Derry, and the Cliffs of Moher. This time around, it was off to Northern Ireland!

Before I describe what we were doing, I'm going to give you a bit of background on Northern Ireland. I'm sure some of you don't realize this, but technically Northern Ireland is NOT part of the Republic of Ireland. It's part of the U.K. Go figure. There's lots of history behind this whole situation, going back to the 1600s and beyond, but I'm pretty positive you'd just stop reading if I started writing about that. Better to just say that there were some very strong tensions for quite some time, and these tensions still haven't been relieved yet. It's not just tension between two countries, but also tension between the Catholics and Protestants. Before we left, we were warned to avoid wearing any school apparel or anything else that might say SAINT John's or Ben's. That's how extreme it is still.

We started our trip from the Park Lodge Wednesday afternoon. After a short jaunt (or maybe just a two hour bus ride), we stopped just outside of Sligo at William Yeat's grave. If nothing else, this was a great chance for us to stretch our legs. Sligo is towards the Northwestern coast of Ireland, just before we get into Northern Ireland. Sure enough, just about 45 minutes later, we cross a river and all of the sudden, all the speed limit signs were in MPH (not KPH)! Also, in the matter of ten feet, we stopped going to Derry and started going to Londonderry. Odd. The most noticeable difference was the quality of the roads. As soon as we crossed into Northern Ireland, everything was much more organized and much smoother. I guess the British ARE good for something!

Upon arriving in Derry, we found the town completely shut down. This is strange, since it was only 6:00, but apparently there is hardly anything left open past 5:00. First thing on the agenda: Supper. We went as a group to a nearby restaurant and enjoyed some delicious beefy Guinness Stew, mashed potatoes, veggies, and cheesecake. Afterwards, we did a bit of relaxing, then hit some pubs, but not for long. After all, we had to cheer on our Minnesota Twins in game 1 against the Yankees! Too bad staying awake 'til 5:00 am didn't pay off...

Derry from the old city walls.

Waking up 3 hours later, we left again for a Ring Fort just outside of Derry. I'll let the pictures describe it:

Coming back from the ring fort, we had a few hours of free time: LUNCH. A bunch of the guys went to this all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet: CLUTCH. That was the best lunch I've had in a looooooong time! Afterwards, we met up with the rest of the group at the Museum of Free Derry. This commemorated the victims of Bloody Sunday, the massacre of 16 peaceful protesters by the British army. The museum was run by volunteers, but it may have been one of the best museums I've seen. It was outstanding.

We finished up the day with a walking tour of Derry, where we looked at the murals painted by the IRA and other citizens of Derry. Every mural had a story, and our guide told them all phenomenally. We walked the city walls and got some great insight of the city. If you're ever in Derry, I'd definitely recommend this tour.

This building is actually a historical monument now. People are allowed to paint on it for festivals and other events, but they are REQUIRED to leave the words on it.

After watching the Twins lose again, we took off the next morning for Belfast. Along the way we stopped in the city of Bushmill (home of Bushmill's Distillery!!) and took a tour of the distillery. AWESOME. It smelled great, too! Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to use electronic devices because the air was so saturated in alcohol...

After a quick lunch and several samples, we bounced on over to the Giant's Causeway. This is quite possibly the strangest geological phenomena I've seen in my life... Again, the pictures will do it better justice.

Arriving in Belfast, the first move was again dinner. This time, four of us went to a Kebab shop right across from our hostel. Hands down, this is the best kebab I've had. We hung around the hostel for a while, then went to explore the nightlife. Belfast is substantially larger than Derry was, but since we really didn't know anything about the city yet, we mainly hung out near to the hostel.

Yum...

Saturday morning, we took a city bus tour and then were given the rest of the day to ourselves to explore the town. Of the bus tour, I think the peace wall was the coolest thing. It's amazing to think that the wall was so necessary to preserve a way of life... Later, I ended up taking a free tour of the city hall, learning a bit about local politics (strange, to say the least). After some church, I ended up at that same kebab place for some more dinner. Twins played again, but no one really had the heart to pay 10 pounds to watch them play at 1 am again...

Peace wall in Belfast.

Our hostel was about four or five blocks away from Queens.

Sunday, we left Belfast for Strokestown, about halfway between Belfast and Galway. We toured the famine museum (heart-lifting, eh?) and learned about the potato blight. It was an okay museum; I don't think I'd go again, but it was worth seeing, I guess. I think I was more interested in just getting back to the Park Lodge by that point. Sure enough, a few hours later, we see the familiar sight of home!

Three weeks later...

I know it's been quite some time since all of this happened, and I apologize for that. Actually, I don't, because it'll still be fun to tell you about it. I hope you bear with me, as this'll be a fairly substantial post.

From Wednesday the 16th through Sunday the 20th, we went on our first group excursion. About once a month, the group goes on a longer trip to a different region of Ireland. September was the month for Southern Ireland, October will be in Northern Ireland, including Belfast and Derry, and November will be Eastern Ireland, mainly in Dublin. But more on October and November later.

We left Wednesday morning, and after a drive of about 45 minutes, we stopped at the house of William Yeats, the Irish author and playwright. We met the literature professor there, and he did some poetry reading for the group. It was pretty cool, but I don't think we were supposed to be there.... it was closed for the season. Oops.

The house of William Yeats, complete with a

medieval tower.

From Yeats' house, we had our next stop at Coole Park, a 1000-acre property owned by Lady Gregory until the late 1920s. She hosted many prominent authors and playwrights, including Yeats, so we took this opportunity again to do some more poetry. We took a walk out to the vanishing lake (literally, the lake drains itself and refills itself with different amounts of rainfall) and listened to the Yeats poem depicting the lake.

After this, we proceeded to Cork, our home for the night. We had the opportunity to stop by the university in Cork (another CSB/SJU program sends students there in the Spring) before checking into our hostel. The University is impressive. Built just ten years before St. John's, it has a beautiful campus. I wouldn't mind going to school there.

University of Cork, AKA Hogwarts.

The following day, we struck out towards Killarney, making three stops along the way. The first stop was Blarney Castle. Of course, the highlight of this site was the kissing of the Blarney Stone, which is rumored to provide anyone who kisses it much eloquence in speech. Aside from the eloquence, the view from the top of the castle is well worth the stop!

Blarney Castle. Feeling eloquent yet?

Second on our list for the day was a memorial for Michael Collins, one of the leaders of the Irish rebellion in the 1920s. He and his party were ambushed while driving to Killarney, and during the fight, he was killed. At the site of the ambush, a cross was built in memory of Collins. We stayed just long enough to get a brief history/how-to speech on guerrilla warfare, given by the one and only Dave "the Hutch" Hutcheson. That in itself is not something to be missed!

Finally, we stopped at the Ross castle, a renovated castle from the 1500s. We got a tour of the castle and a brief history of the region. As with any tour of old buildings, we weren't allowed to take pictures, which is a bummer. The castle was pretty cool.

After spending the night in Killarney, we went on Friday to the Muckross House, the mansion owned by the Muckross family, who hosted prominent guests like Queen Victoria. Again, we got a tour of the house and some time to explore the property. Impressive, to say the least. We didn't have nearly enough time to wander the trails, which is probably the biggest regret about the place, especially since we spent the rest of the day on the bus, driving around the ring of Kerry. It was a spectacle, but a very cramped bus detracted from the experience.

I told ya the Muckross estate was pretty sweet!

This is the view from the back porch.

On Saturday, we drove a short distance to the city of Tralee, home of the Kerry County Museum. This museum claimed the award for the best Museum in Ireland in 2008 (I think), so it was of no surprise that it was such a good exhibit. The display was on medieval Tralee, with a life-sized recreation of the city from the 1400s. Afterwards, we drove across the Dingle Peninsula, returning to Tralee for the night. After having a delicious Philly cheese steak, we celebrated Taylor's 21st birthday with style!

Last, and definitely not least, we drove through the Burren to the Cliffs of Moehr. With cliffs soaring over two-hundred feet above the waves, we had a spectacular site to behold. After adventuring the peaks of the cliffs for an hour or two, we struck out towards home. I'll let the pictures tell the stories!

Of course we followed the rules...

That's what a 210 foot cliff looks like.