We arrived in Vienna to be met once again by someone from our normal lives who has been scattered across the world. Ellie, our housemate of last year and this coming year, had been in Vienna studying German for the last 4 weeks, and had just enough days left there to show us around a bit before heading to Germany. 
As soon as we stepped off the train it was gogogo- since it was the last few days of Ellie's program there were a lot of activities to which we could tag along.  After checking into our hostel and getting briefly but amusingly lost, we made it to a wine garden and met some of the professors and students in Ellie's program (but not in her class). After a bit of time there it was on to a club in the Prater (which is a public amusement park that's free to enter-you pay for each ride individually). The club was enjoyed by all except Emily who affirmed her dislike for all clubs. We didn't get back til about  5:00, which made the fact that we slept in till 3:30 slightly less ridiculous. 
We got ourselves together just in time to be swooped up by Ellie to  join an after hours tour of the oldest zoo in the world. It was okay, but not very impressive, possibly because they haven't been allowed to change the shapes or sizes of the cages for at least 100 years since it's a monument and part of the Schonbrunn Palace grounds. We spent that night hanging out with Ellie's classmates in their dorms and helping them get rid of all the food and drink they couldn't/didn't want to take on the planes back home. It was great to meet and hang out with a bunch of people we could both communicate with and actually liked- most hostel people are doing their own thing or not very interesting or only interested in getting smashed in every country. Unfortunately Leah got a little ill again and had to turn in early, but otherwise it was a great night.  We slept in the vacated bed in Ellie's dorm, and by the morning (when we woke up at ungodly-o-clock to help Ellie move out) we were all feeling a little ill. Since we woke up so early though, we had a huge long day to do Vienna things. We:
- went to a big flea market where Leah got a new scarf and Ellie got a funky shirt/coat/patterny thing. 
- went to a pool Ellie had discovered that looks out over the whole city from a high hilltop. We had it all to ourselves because it was pretty much way too cold to swim (we swam anyway). 
- had a Viennese food experience of dessert and coffee with Justin- the last classmate to leave town before Ellie. 
- wandered a bit and hung out at an excellent playground
- went out to find a karaoke bar with our new hostel friend Flora. The goal was to hear Austrians hilariously singing English songs, but the place we found had a lot more talent than we were expecting. Emily discovered a love for karaoke bars, but everyone else was in favor of moving on, so we ended up at an Irish pub and played never-have -i-ever into the wee hours. 

After sleeping through breakfast for the third time, we had a planning day and saw Ellie off, then wandered around for ages trying to figure out how we were going to get to the airport in a couple days. Eventually we gave up and went to the Prater again, this time to actually ride one of the rides. We chose a swing ride... the mother of all swing rides

It was absolutely terrifying. 

The next day we had another Vienna exploration day, this time without Ellie to guide us. We:
- went to the Kunst Haus and Hunderwasser Haus which were reminiscient of all the Gaudi stuff in Barcelona but more recent and arguably better. 
- couldnt figure out how to get into the church at Stephensplatz (eventually we realized it was closed derp derp). 
- went to the Leopold  and saw a fake Jonathan (see previous post)  along with a lot of Egon Schiele and an interesting exhibit that included a fair amount of Gustav Klimt. 
-finished buying flights and booking hostels for the rest of the trip!!!!!! YEAH!

The whole time we were in Vienna we were on a fast food binge, since we were surrounded by such delicacies as noodle boxes, kebab boxes, falafel boxes, ice cream, pizza, etc. and we were afraid the UK wouldn't have any of our beloved kebab. (No worries, they do) 

Now we are in Scotland, in a town called Fort William. More on that later, since we have to check out of this hostel very soon and go hiking on the coast

Jonathan what are you doing here!!

doppelgänger

JONATHAN HOW DID YOU GET TO VIENNA

AAAHHHHHH

RIDICULOUS

***this is in the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria.

Munich and Innsbruck

After Amsterdam, our plan was to stay with Leah's great aunt and uncle (Jerry and Rita) in Rutzhofen for a week, which meant we were traveling through Munich to get to their very small town in southern Germany. Unfortunately, Rita ended up coming down with a serious case of pneumonia about a week before we arrived in Germany, and was still very ill once we were in Munich. 

We lit a candle for Rita in a church we found (pictured below)

 Even after a lot of thinking and trying to figure out how to make it work, we weren't able to stay with them. Instead, after a few fast decisions and a lot of generosity on the part of Jerry and Rita, we ended up with tickets to Innsbruck, a small city just barely inside Austria in the foothills of the Austrian Alps.

We did spend a full day in Munich though while all this was being figured out. Having time to explore was the silver lining of missing Rutzhofen, since we weren't planning on spending much time there at all. We knew things were good because on our first night we were greeted with a mysterious fireworks display that went on forEVER, which we stood in the middle of a road to watch. The next day we went on a long and excellent walking tour of the city, on which we learned about beer, maypoles, nazis, beer, rebuilding of churches, the Glockenspiel,  beer, etc.

We also saw this guy play. Munich has the BEST buskers.

And we went into a church that was all white inside - quite a relief after all the gold leaf and crazy marble. This is where we lit Rita's candle.

That evening we headed for a Biergarten that we'd heard good things about on the tour. It was a confusing place but we ended up with absolutely delicious food (Leah's favorite so far!!) and some weirdly disappointing beer. It was a relief to be in a place where food was affordable again (Amsterdam was wonderful but pricey).

Heading to Innsbruck, we had a really beautiful train ride through the mountains of southern Germany- we passed through bundles of little adorable villages, between cloud-topped peaks, and above grassy countryside. After that double-shot of charm and beauty, we were a little disappointed by Innsbruck itself- it was fairly industrial and not very interesting or cute (from what we could tell on our walk away from the train station). We found nicer bits later, but the real appeal was the mountains. On our first full day, Leah ended up feeling pretty sick, but by the afternoon was in shape for a hike to a cable-car trip that took us to the top of the peak behind our hostel.

Leah is (almost) on the top of a 3300m tall mountain in the Alps!

It was absolutely awesome, even though we only got to be up there for 10 minutes because we'd made it just in time for the last car up and down. Feeling the temperature change from the bottom to the top was surreal.

The next day, we were set on doing a real hike, but had to figure out where such a thing was and how to get to it. After some searching and whining, we decided to follow a path through the alps described by some guy on the Internet 30 years ago. It worked out great!

Before it started raining.

We cable-carred up, walked through beautiful beautiful mountains, got rained on, saw cows with bells (they sounded like windchimes) went down horrible steep wet hills, got chair-lifted the rest of the way down, saw a little bit of the cute city/village of Hall-in-Turin (not much to see), and then caught a bus back into Innsbruck.

These are some of the cows we saw. They were scary. And big. And one was a bull (on the left). We were like a foot from them. Eeeeeeee!

Leah's 'hiking picture' pose. The path was crossed by a couple rocky creeks falling down the mountainside.

It was an adventure, especially finding the buses and lifts we needed, but everyone there was soooo helpful and friendly! If they didn't speak English, they were happy to find someone who did, and if they spoke English at all, they were thrilled to practice with us.

After Innsbruck it was back on to Munich and straight through to Vienna to find Ellie!