Date: May 14th, 2023
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Today, I woke up and got dressed, and prepared for the day like I usually do. But to my surprise, I woke up to find my voice almost completely gone! It turns out, I might be a little worse than I thought I was. Oh well. Eventually, I was ready and dressed for the day so I went downstairs to grab some breakfast from the hotel lobby. I got my usual toast but I was able to get a lot of fruit so that made me feel a bit better. Additionally, I made myself a cup of peppermint tea to help with my throat. As the minutes passed on, some more people from my program came downstairs to eat with me. Everyone was pretty sympathetic to me losing my voice but there wasn’t much anyone could do. Especially because we had a big event coming up and planned for the entire day- a scavenger hunt around Salzburg!
One of the Penn State professors with this program has a lot of family in Vienna and he used to live in Salzburg for some time. So he opted to put together a big scavenger hunt to make sure that I and the people in my program were able to see all the different parts of Salzburg from both a tourist's and a local’s perspective. We were all separated into five groups of four for this activity. The scavenger hunt had two big rules. The first one was that we had to fill out this form with answers to questions related to places we visited to win a prize. And the second one was that we couldn’t use our phones at all. That second rule felt like it was going to be a bit of trouble at first but then we were provided with maps! And since Salzburg feels more like a town than a major, busy city, navigating with just a map was extremely easy.
So off we went, walking around Salzburg and discovering new things. The scavenger hunt made sure to highlight, big tourist locations such as Mozart’s resting place and Fortress Hohensalzburg, a castle in Salzburg (which was pretty expensive to get inside of, mind you). But it also highlighted little-known locations that I probably wouldn’t have looked for such as Salzburg’s oldest bakery and a famous little stand that sound like Salzburg Spicy Sausages called Bosners! I think I really liked this garden area called the Mirabellgarten. It was this extremely pretty garden right next to Mirabell Palace. I really loved this little greenhouse in the garden, but the dwarf garden nearby was also pretty cool. Here are tons of pictures of a bunch of the things I saw on the scavenger hunt today too!
I got to go inside the catacombs and look at different sculptures, fountains, and all sorts of things! The whole experience was a lot of fun and really allowed us to take in so much of the city. And in the end, the scavenger hunt lead us to a Beer Hall where a tasting festival was happening.
The professor who had family from Austria met us there dressed in some traditional lederhosen once we all met up once more. But he told us to cut loose at the beer hall for a little bit and once everyone was there and settled, he would announce which team got the most right answer and would give out some prizes! At the beer hall, you were allowed to try all sorts of different beers after being a mug for taste testing. But there were tons of vendors there selling baked goods and meats and so many yummy things. It was extremely cool to experience! And unfortunately, my team didn’t win the scanger hunt. But I will say we probably were a close contender! Either way, the competition was fierce, and admittedly, things are a lot harder when you can’t use your phone and everything is in a different language. Though we tried our best.
After a while, I decided to leave the Beer Festival and head back to the hotel. Luckily, all that running around without a phone allowed me to get used to the area so much that I didn’t even need to look at my phone or a map to make it back to the hotel. I was able to do it from memory alone! But after I got back to the hotel, it was about mid-afternoon and I was still feeling under the weather. So I decided now would be a good time to get my laundry done! The closest place was unfortunately about a twenty-minute walk away but it was a straight shot from the hotel so I didn’t mind the walk while it was still light out. Plus a couple of other people from my trip had the same idea so I saw them around the laundromat once I was able to get my clothes started.
Doing laundry (even in another country) was unsurprisingly, uninteresting. Though a guy did steal my dryer after I paid for it so I was pretty annoyed about that. And since I didn’t have a voice, I couldn’t exactly confront. So, unfortunately, that was six euros down the drain. But besides that, nothing else really happened. I was able to get my laundry done after a couple of hours and I caught a taxi back to the since it was getting dark and I was out by myself. And once I got back to the hotel, I went ahead and grabbed some dinner and took a long shower, and take care of organizing my clothes.
I had been taking it easy for the past couple of days but after losing my voice, I figured my best course of action was to grab another cup of tea from the lobby and get some more rest. Tomorrow, we were going to a different country: Munich, Germany. So I really wanted some energy to explore there! And before that, I knew I had a couple of stores I needed to visit so I could pick up souvenirs. The scavenger hunt was a lot of fun but it was a lot of walking so I was pretty tired. So if I was going to be prepared for tomorrow, I needed to get my rest now so I can be prepared to take on anything!
Thanks for tuning into this entry! Hope you enjoyed reading it! Until next time!
-DD
Picture Sources (in order of appearance):
Top View of Salzburg -My photo!
Flower Shop - My photo!
Man on Golden Ball - My photo!
Window in Catacombs - My photo!
Inside the Catacombs - My photo!
Mirabellgarten Statues - My photo!
Beer Mugs at Beer Hall - My photo!
Food Stall at Beer Hall - My photo!
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