Salzburg Weekend

This past weekend we, as in the exchange students, had a Rotary meeting. It was full of ups and downs, seeing everyone and exploring a new city was fantastic, but it was also our last weekend with the oldies. "The Oldies" are the exchange students from New Zealand, Australia, a few from Argentina and Brazil, they came last January and will be leaving with in the first week of January. It was amazing to meet them all but saying Bye will be one of the hardest parts of my exchange.

 

Salzburg at evening

We all arrived on Friday evening, had a German test-yikes, and then a little free time and it was lights out for tomorrow. On Saturday we had a city tour led by our amazing youth coordinators. There is a castle at the top of the hill that we hiked up to and were able to go through.

Hiking up to the castle, Salzburgs city line

View at the top. I am in love

Being a castle it needed protection, this is a view from looking down a cannon barrel into Salzburg

Christmas Market in the castle grounds

Quick sword fight between our oldie and newbie. Please note they are fake swords, made out of wood and no one was injured!!

A real Christmas Market.

Quick Translation of the sign: Mozarts birthhouse. 

In this house Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 27th of January 1756 was born. 

Lock bridge in the distance

Hanging in the city with my best friends, Maria and Milena. 

Hugging my oldie Kat 

My best friends

Saying bye to the oldies :( there are two missing, Jack and Julia from Brazil. 

I wont ever forget them or this weekend!!! I will miss them so much and know we will meet in the future. On a happy note this weekend we also met with the exchange students from Croatia and the short term exchangers here from South Africa!!

Bye oldies, miss you and love you!!

Merry Christmas 

and

Happy New Years

A weekend in Innsbruck

HI! This past weekend, the 5th and 6th I spent in Innsbruck with my host mum, host aunt, host cousin and host grandmother! -I have the best host family!!- This is one of the most beautiful cities I have been to in Austria! A few photos from the weekend!

The post card photo!

Christmas Market and Glühwein

Innsbruck at night

Lit up crystals

Christmas tree

Elves being sold in the Market

Fairy Tale street!! This street has fairly tale creatures all over!

Ski jumping Arena

Can I just say Im moving here

In front of the Olympic Rings!!

This was amazing and I cant wait to go back!!!

Bis bald-Till soon

Thanksgiving Weekend!

Hello! I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving- I know I did! Since Austria does not celebrate Thanksgiving I met with a group of exchange students and we had our own Thanksgiving dinner in Vienna!! This was one of the most amazing things ever!! We had lots of fun cooking and attempting to make our own Thanksgiving dinner without parent's there, helping us! It was a very Viennese Thanksgiving!

The entire group of us!! and 2 Canadians and the host siblings!

That turkey looks good!

We think its done but....

Watching football-like any good American 

First Snow!

Advent Wreath  

  

Advent Calender-with REALLY good chocolate. 

Also a few days before the Vienna Thanksgiving, was my friends Conner's birthday so we just added that into the celebrations!

Happy Birthday and nice hat!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Until next time..

Concentration Camp in Ebensee

On the 10th of November my Rotary Club invited me to come and have a tour of a Concentration Camp that is about 20 minutes away from Bad Ischl, in a small town called Ebensee. This Concentration Camp was not only used for killing people, but was also used as a work camp. This was not the largest or one of the well known camps but is considered one of the most gruesome camps. More than 27,000 people came to this camp during the war. To put this in perspective the town, Ebensee, at the time had about only 9,000 inhabitants. Over 8,300 died, over 1,700 were so sick from the conditions they were unable to work. After the camps liberation, many more died from the poor life they had.

This was looking into one of the tunnels. There are 10 tunnels and all together is about 5.7 km long

The Ebensee camp was also part of the Mauthausen network, one of the biggest networks in Austria during World War II. The center of the Mauthausen network is located in Linz.

In memory of everyone who stayed in this camp or died here

Tunnels that the prisoners were forced to work in

The rags are actually scarves that were tied around prisoners necks. Different colors meant different race and a different status. Jews were at the bottom and German speakers were near the top. 

About 1/3 of the camp were Jews, others were from Poland and also there were several Gypsies. 

More of the tunnels that they were forced to work on/in.

Towards the end of the war, the Nazi's attempted to cover up the awful crimes committed and tried to kill any survivors. One way they did this was sending all the workers/prisoners into the tunnels and then bombing the entrance. This would kill anyone by the entrance or leave people trapped inside, eventually killing them as well.

These were identity cards from the prisoners

  

This was a prisoner request form. The generals running the Concentration Camps would send requests for more prisoners and also the fittest ones. Many times they would trick other camps into taking the weak prisoners.

A door leading deeper into the tunnels.


Thank you Rotary, though this a darker point in history it is very insightful and was a good experience, thank you.

Halloween Weekend!

This weekend was not only Halloween, but also on Saturday night, the 8th class had there Matura Ball. This is the ball they have for graduating and it being their last year.

Getting ready to leave. 

I'm in the red dress, then Kat another exchange student from Australia, then my amazing host mum Martina!! And last but not least Fabi, my host brother.

With Kat, my oldie. Will miss you so much when you leave in January!

On Sunday after the ball, that went to 12:30, my (host) family and I went hiking!

On the way up!

Impressive!!

Wolfgang See (lake)

Hole in the mountian

Me and Fabi ( host brother)

Speechless

Bike back from the stables.

This was an amazing weekend and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year! 

City Tour!!!

This has been one of the coolest experiences yet!!! For those of you who don't know what City Tour is, we went to three cities in five days. We spent one night in Linz, Austria's third biggest city, five to six hours in Prag ( Praha) the capital city of the Czech Republic, one night in Dresden Germany and two nights in Berlin, Germany!!

So first we spent overall about 24 hours in a bus the entire trip!! Super tiring, but it was fun talking to all the other exchange students.

Sleeping

Connor gracefully accepted ponytails 

Palace in Prag

Nikkole and I with guard in front of palace 

 

Wow!! The church! Wow!

More of the church

the city!

more of the city

the garden

Nikkole, Jade, and me

Biggest music club in middle europe

another palace

part of the city

czech dessert 

Cool

Sunset

Leaving Prag :(

After we left Prag we drove to Dresden, we were on the bus for three hours and then spent the night in Dresden. This is the following morning as we started our tour through Dresden

Start of the tour

Garden surrounded by a moat  

Incredible Fountian

The sandstone turns black with age, where the white sandstone is, they have recently replaced the stones that were starting to crumble

Theater Haus, the billboard on the front is the staff from the Theater house promoting being open to all, since there are a lot of marches saying that the immigrants should not be allowed to enter the rest of the country.

Catholic Church

This is a painting showing all the kings or rulers of Dresden

Dresden "Balcony" This is a part of the city above the river and the king/ruler called this the Balcony of the city.

This is a part of a church that was completely flattened in World War II. The black stone is part of the church that was salvaged, the white is the new stone they needed to finish rebuild the church

The entire church

Royal Door Handles, ya know the normal. This was a door handle to a palace, and this was not even the front entrance

Mannequins in Germany.

Im in love with Dresden

This is part of the city that was destroyed in World War II, you can tell just from this how flattened this beautiful city was.

I found the horses in Dresden

Curry Wurst, a common food to eat in Germany and also Austria. Its really good!!

Exchange Friends, from Canada, Italy and the States.

This city

This court yard was used for parties, for the Royals. I want to go to one of these parties!

Proof I was there

Bell Tower/Room

Leaving Dresden :(

But headed to Berlin!!

The bus ride from Dresden to Berlin was about 3, 3 1/2. We arrived in Berlin about 7:30, had dinner in the hostile and then had free time!! In this free time we all headed into the city and explored! The next morning we had breakfast and got on the bus for our tour through this amazing city. 

Statue of Nike, the goddess of Victory

This church was ruined in World War II, and was left ruined as a reminder of hardships.

Brandenburger Tur.
 This is a very popular place to visit. This was the gate that the royals entered through, there were 12 entrances to the city at that time. World War II

The memorial for the Jews killed in World War II, this is the only one that the government would pay for. This is taken from the center, as you walk to the edge the stone walls become shorter to about knee height.

At the Jewish Memorial

This was a bunker for war, when an invasion or bombing was occurring, people would either hide in basements or in in a bunker like this. It is kind of hard to see, but on the side of this building there are holes from where bullets and small bombs were dropped.

Giant Teddy Bear, the Mercedes Benz Arena is behind here!

The second stop on the tour is......

The Berlin Wall!!!

The Berlin Wall, is all wall that went straight through Berlin, separating the East from the West. The East was a communist side, and the people had a very hard life. They were not allowed to have anything beyond the basics. No chocolate, newspapers, coffee, anything.   

Along the wall now there are paintings, they are all unique and different.

In front of the all Berlin Wall. These were all taken from the East side of the wall. 

This was one of my favorite parts of the wall, sorry that the photo is blurry.

Bus ride with Gabe, from Oregon.

After visiting the Berlin wall we had free time for 5 to 6 hours. Jade, from Canada, and Nikkole, Oregon and I wandered the streets and explored Germany's capital. 

What were we up to!

Gorgeous building in the distance.

River in the city

Theater Haus

Inside the Theater Hause

Courtyard of the Theater Hause

Sunset in Berlin

Berlins night life is starting up

10 hours bus ride back to Linz!!

This was one of the coolest experiences ever and I have never seen or been exposed to so much culture. And also probably never been so tired either!!

Thanks