Day Two

Hey! Some pictures to come on this post.

Today was the first day of classes. The place we're staying is called the Eduard Heinrich Haus, and it's rather unlike any other sort of hotel, hostel, or dorm. It's really a mix of all of them. There is no room service or daily cleaning, but there are hot meals cooked twice a day (breakfast and lunch), wifi, foosball, ping pong, lifesize chess outside, and also classrooms down in the bottom of the building. It is not just foreign people either. There are many german-speaking people here, as well as travelers from other countries. Yesterday I met a guy from Manchester, England who was about to audition for a spot in an opera.

Anyway, since the classrooms are downstairs and we need 37.5 contact hours per class for it to count for credit, we started today. Ever class day is split up into three blocks. The first goes from 8:30-9:45, the second from 10-11:15, and the last from 11:30-12:45. Then it's time for lunch at 1. Breakfast is from 7-10am. I have my two classes in the second and third blocks, taught by the american professors who came with us, and the first class, Mozart's Final Years, was the best of the two even though I was given homework due tomorrow night when we have our second set of classes.

Anyway, after classes, we had a meeting and then went on a long, 3 hour walk around Salzburg (again for some of us) which had some new things, but mostly things which I had been by before. Passing by interesting places for the second or third time very quickly does nothing but kind of make me want to stay there, but after we got to the biergarten at around 5:45 things were better.

I got some sauerkraut and two slices of pork belly. It was very good. The food was available in a lot of different stands with different offerings inside the building, and there was their homebrewed beer outside. That was fun.

After that we were on our own. (YES). So, I decided to go with a couple friends to climb up the mountain on which the Festung, or old city castle/fortress sits. Originally, the entirety of Salzburg was surrounded by the walls of the fortress. Then it expanded down the mountain to the river, the Salzach. Up until the river is known as the old city. Once you get across the river, it is the new city, which still has buildings which are super old nonetheless.

 This one is from yesterday, the first day we got here. That's in front of one of the pretty buildings with my two roomates. They look a lot more jetlagged than me. I don't remember its name. We walked past a lot of buildings really quick.

 This is the first place with a view that we hiked to. You can see some churches and stuff. This around halfway up. We ended up going a back way around the university and walking up a steep hill (mountain), and stopping for the view. Eventually another part of our group came up behind us and we joined them to walk down, and then walked all the way back to the house on a hiking trail. We didn't have to, and could have gotten on a bus, but we did anyway. That took a longgggg time but we made it. Then I did some homework, and here I am.

This is at the top of that path. It was pretty breathtaking. That mountain straight behind me to the right is just a bit further than our house to which we walked.