The hills are alive...

Gruss Gott! In other words, the greetings of God be with you! This is the Austrian way to say, "Hey!" It's a bit more personal, don't you think? Anyway, first and foremost, my apologies for being so terrible at keeping up with this! It really would be a lot easier if everyone could just be over here with me having all the same adventures. How's that sound?

Well since my last post, I have started classes and am loving them! I'm only taking four (Christian Marriage, Sacraments, Theology of the Church, and Metaphysics. For all of you who were just dying to know), but they are keeping me on my toes that's for sure. I even think midterms are coming up in a few weeks. How is that even possible? Didn't we just get here? Even the weather is trying to make the semester go by more quickly: apparently it's pretty abnormal for all of the snow to melt at the start of February. Personally, as a Florida girl, I pratically cried with joy and immediately busted out capris and flip flops. Unfortunately, the sure signs of winter are starting to creep back up on us. Soon I think it'll look like this again:

Maybe we'll get lucky though and have beautiful sunshine. Trust me that makes the snow MUCH more bearable

This is the view from my window. That's right, this right here is my backyard!

So life here in Austria has been pretty busy. I mean, come on, it's pretty weird when the weekdays full of classes feel like down time! But that's how it goes when you're gallivanting on the weekends to incredible places like Salzburg and Munich! We got up nice and early one Friday morning and drove into the city just in time for Mass with the bishop of Salzburg who is in fact a very adorable and funny man. After Mass, we ate a most delicious lunch and checked into our hostel (which was super nice. Yay for school sponsored trips!). We then had free time the whole rest of the day which meant I was making my way up to the Hohensalzburg Castle which can be seen practically anywhere in the old city. That, my friends, was quite the hike. Definitely an incline made for horses and not people. But we made it to the entrance which was not at the top, so after paying, we climbed up even higher and just when we thought it was such a bad idea to climb up, we found a side alley which opened up into an incredible view of Salzburg at sunset.

Definitely worth 3.80 Euro!

Breathtaking, right? And of course the pictures don't even do it justice.

And we finished the night off with watching the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in German! And we couldn't get subtitles on. It was pretty bizarre and very hard to take the serious parts seriously. Luckily I've seen the movie enough times to practically translate the whole thing. And I don't speak a word of German...

The next day was spent in Munich which despite the gray weather was quite amazing and very fun. We had Mass in the church of Joseph Ratzinger, better known now as Pope Benedict XVI! After a short tour of the main center of the city, we had the rest of the day to explore and experience Munich. For me, that included walking around the city with three of my friends, Katherine, Caitlin, and Mary, and eating lunch at this cute little cafe called Ludwig's. It was the kind of place where locals walked in and the staff knew them by name. I got a very delicious and reasonably priced bowl of soup there, and it was very difficult to leave and get back in the cold. But we stopped by a coffee shop and got the best hot chocolate I've ever had and continued on our way. The rest of the day mostly consisted of exlporing only a small handful of the many beautiful churches in Munich and running into our friends Chris and Griffin in one of them. The most pleasant surprise for the day though was definitely this little hidden treasure

 

Now at first glance, it looks like some sketchy nightclub or an underground operation headquarters. It turns out though, that off the busy streets of Munich, these doors conceal an adoration chapel. How typical humble of the Lord to make himself available without being flashy and excessive?

We returned to Salzburg that night and the next morning (Sunday) we were able to attend Mass at the cathedral where Mozart was baptized! And since it was Mozart festival weekend, it was a Mozart Mass. Now, I'm not entirely sure what that means except all the music was written by him and they had a full chorus with the big grand organ and everything. And the entire thing was in German! Definitely different but such a great thing to experience. After Mass, we got back on the buses for a half hour drive to Mondsee a.k.a. the town with the church from The Sound of Music!

Amazing. All in all, a blessed weekend filled with the Sound of Music stuck in my head, good company, some of the best food yet, and grand adventures! Ok, I promise, I really am going to get better about updating this. Trust me, trying to catch up on a good 3 weeks in Europe is no fun. So more to come soon! I mean it this time...