By Lauren
I feel as if we did not appreciate Austria as much as it deserved. We arrived the same day as winter arrived, so it was cold, wet and miserable. Dora was not in good shape, so we decided to buy a Vignette (motor way pass) in order to use the motorways, so that if we did breakdown, we would not be in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, the drive was not as exciting and scenic as it usually is when entering into a new country. On top of this we ended up having to pay for a few extra tolls along the way which we were unaware of and this pushed our budget further below negative (meaning less beer in Munich). We enjoyed Slovenia so much and did not feel like we were ready to leave and therefore, at first we did not seem to admire the beautiful Austrian Alps and big lakes as much as we should have.....
This didn’t last very long, as we were creepily welcomed at our campsite by an overboard Belgian women who reminded us very much of my grandmother in her youth. We at first thought that she worked at the campsite, but later realized that she was just there for the weekend. The campsite was based near ‘St Gilgen’ on the Wolfgang See which is one of the 76 lakes in that area and very much seemed like a retirement village. As it felt like we were camping in Antarctica, we were forced to go to bed as soon as sun set to try keep warm and stay out of the rain. Luckily, our tent was very nice and cozy and we were happy to spend the evenings in the tent playing cards and board games.
We had 2 full days in Austria and so we decided that we would spend 1 day cycling around the lakes and the other visiting Salzburg, the home of ‘the sound of music’, one of my favorite musicals.
Early on our first morning, we forced ourselves to get out the tent into the crisp air (not an easy task), did some clothes washing and said a pray for some sunshine. God must have been listening, as the temperature gradually rose throughout the day and our washing was able to dry (Success!!). We headed off on our bikes following the Wolfgang See towards St Gilgen. The 60 km cycle was so pleasant with some highlights being dancing in the fields singing “The hills are alive, with the sound of music” and a mission up a mountain on a rangers path. The path was so ridiculously steep and we had to stop several times to lie down on the side of the path until the imaginary stars and black spots disappeared from our vision. Once we were at the top, the effort was all worth it as the view was amazing and it was all down hill from there. On our way through the valley we heard loud roaring, which we thought were bears, however, after consulting with a local, we were told that they were just Fallow Deer. We were disappointed by this and decided to just believe that they were Bears as this was more exciting. Unfortunately, while we were in Slovenia, Bud had attempted some bush mechanics on his bike, resulting in a skew wheel and no back brakes (He was so impressed with his effort with Dora that he went a bit wild with his tools). This was unpleasant for him, however, it allowed me to keep up with him all day. Our day ended with a swim in the icy wolfgang sea with some surprised coated-up onlookers.
The next day, we caught the bus into Salzburg and got off in the centre of a busy market which buzzed with traditionally dressed locals rushing about. I had Julie Andrews voice stuck in my head, and so we immediately went in search of some of the famous ‘Sound of Music’ Scenes. The funny thing about the ‘Sound of Music’ is that most of the movie was not even filmed in Salzburg and most of the locals and people in Austria are not even familiar with the movie. Anyhow, we ignored this fact and sang our way through the various scenes, visited the abbey and walked through the busy streets. Bud was very patient with my singing throughout the day and to his delight, he got to visit the Red Bull shop/Museum which was really interesting and displayed Sebastian Vettel’s F1 car from 2010 as well as a whole lot of record breaking artefacts.
Our time in Austria was short, but we managed to do quite a lot despite our dampened spirits at the start. On our way up to Germany, we decided to visit a town called ‘Fucking’, just because this is a hilarious name for a town. We stopped, had a couple of photo’s and laughs and continued on. Next stop is Munich Oktoberfest!!!!!