May 30th, Salzburg and Almbachklamm Hike

May 30^th , Salzburg and Almbachklamm hike

Erik

A few of us woke up (Mary, Frau Spence, Herr Spence, Aric, Mathew, Alex and I) and went on a morning run at 6:15. We ran for twenty minutes, turned around and ran back. A few of us ran to the bottom of the hill near our hostel once we got back and ran back up. It was a fairly easy run, the first twenty were a good majority slightly up hill so that added a little difficulty but the last five minutes were slight and steep downhill so the way back was a little up hill with lots of downhill. The hill after the main run was very easy going down so I was able to talk to Mary pretty simply. On the way back up we still had a conversation but our pace was slightly slowed and the responses in the conversations were slightly shorter since we had to focus more on breathing and the actual process of running but I still had fun getting to know Mary. After our run we returned to our rooms and met up with our now awake roommates and took showers and went down to breakfast with the whole group.

Some of the more interesting views we saw while running included a military base. We first thought it was a school and my first thought was “They really don’t want these kids leaving early” because the fences had barbed wire on the top, however it turned out to be a military area. Also at the end of our twenty minutes away from the hostel we entered a down hill area in the woods and the woods were very fun to run compared to running on the road. Also slugs, we had to make sure we didn’t step on any slugs on the sidewalk.

We took a bus into Salzburg and met with Frau Brandt’s host family and had a tour of Salzburg led by Frau Brandt. After the tour we set a meeting place next to an old fountain. Maggie, Sofie, Orion and I decided to go look at some stores that caught our eye during the tour. These stores included a fancy McDonalds, a watch store called Swatch (I have my own watch from Swatch so I wanted to look at the newer selection) and Redbull World.

We first visited the fancy McDonalds just to look inside. Probably the snazziest fast food place I have ever been inside. Next was the Swatch store. I tried to convince Orion to buy a Swatch but he decided against because of the price. I found tons of watches I liked but since I already have a watch decided against it also. Last we checked out Red-bull world. I didn’t find anything I liked too much, but it was a cool store to look at.

We spent the next hour or two walking around looking at the various bakeries, tourist shops, and shopping stores. I purchased gifts for my family and a pretzel, plus drinks to keep me from being hungry till we could eat our lunch packets.

Once we all met up and took off, we began walking toward our bus. On the way we ran into Service high school from Anchorage, AK, and I saw my friend Zach who was with his school. It was pretty cool just running into a friend from Anchorage in Salzburg. We took a few pictures, but a few minutes later we went on our separate ways.

The bus took us to our Almbachklamm hike. Our tour guide from Berchtesgaden was our guide on this hike. We learned about the various wildlife living in the area, how big a square meter of water looked, and how much it weighed. As we began walking it looked cloudy but cleared up for a little, however eventually we were later turned around by rain. At the base of the hike we ate at a café. I had three scoops of ice cream.

After our day full of touring, shopping, eating, and hiking, we took a bus back to our youth hostel so we could eat dinner and clean our rooms in preparation to leave the next morning. The cleaning included picking up dirty clothes, picking up trash, emptying the trash can into various groups in cans outside, and sweeping. We left the bedding on to sleep on for the last night.

After all this, a few people in the group got together and played cards, something that a lot of us seemed to enjoy doing every night.

I was sad to leave our hostel. It was the first place I really got to know Mathew and Aric which was a fun experience. The biggest surprise from the day was seeing the kids from Service, mostly seeing my friend Zach, I never expected to see him in a foreign country like that. I had a lot of fun and knew we had a lot more fun coming in the future.