This feels like ages ago, but I'm finally going to tell you about my trip to Salzburg! We went on Oct. 3rd (yikes, like two weeks ago) because that is the Day of German Unity (national holiday) and EVERYTHING in the country was going to be closed, much like Sundays. So we just crossed on over the border to Austria! The train was so full that everyone got split up and I ended up sitting on the stairs that led up to 1st class with three other girls from the international program, one from England, one from Finland, and one from Spain, sooo awesome :)) Anyway, because we were sitting on the stairs that led to 1st class people kept insisting on walking up them and I had to keep moving out of the way. My friend Kate however, was lucky enough to keep sitting while the 1st classers did this, but unlucky in the fact that all their butts were right next to her face. This led to a new game of "rate people's butts as they go by", but then a bunch of older men wanted to go up and we axed it pretty quickly, hahaha.

So Salzburg, the first place we went was a garden I don't remember the name of in front of a "castle" that looked very un-castle like by Bavarian standards and was said to be for official "meetings" of the king, but was actually where his mistress lived. Classyyy. It had a lot of unicorns in it.

Or I guess that would be a Pegasus? and some very nice flower designs:

The actual castle is the distant building up on the hill, but on the way there we stopped in the "city center" area to get some foooood. And see this fountain:

Complete with even more unicorns/pegasi(?). They also showed us the smallest house in all of Austria:

Someone does actually live there, only in the top part :/ the bottom floor is a watch maker's shop. Oh speaking of bottom floors! Another observation about Germany, they start the numbering for their floors at zero, so the ground floor of every building is 0, not 1. For THE LONGEST time I was trying to find my window from the outside of the building and I was always thinking that I had accidentally left my window open, when in fact I was looking at the window of the room below me. While I'm on the subject of observations: 

1. Handkerchiefs are apparently still a thing

2. There's always a large cluster of people smoking outside every building, at school or otherwise

3. Trash cans are tiny. They're like the chihuahuas of dogs, or hairless cats.

The ones at Oktoberfest were especially bad, they're just not built to handle the trash of 7 million people haha. Anyway, on to my favorite part of the day! Lunch! Here it is in all it's glory:

That, my friends, is deliciousness served in its true form. Schnitzel :)) Also some sort of creamy onion soup, potatoes, and a hand full of vegetables probably added as an afterthought haha. After this hearty meal they made us walk uphill for an hour to the castle :/ but we got a lovely view out of it:

We didn't actually go in the castle cuz that requires money that we would all rather spend on food, haha. We also walked past Mozart's birthplace, this lovely yellow building:

He was born on the 2nd floor I think? A few of our fellow internationals went into the museum they have in there, but instead we went to get Starbucks and walk around the street, which was a little full.

Things we discovered: 

1. The Starbucks pastry section in Salzburg is full of wondrous things, like donuts.

2. Starbucks itself was fit into what was once probably a courtyard/basement, instead of a free standing building with a drive-thru.

3. McDonald's sells hamburgers on baguette rolls with waffle fries. Whaaat.

4. The city of Salzburg puts Mozart's face and/or name on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: chocolate, coffee shops, flower stands, rubber duckies, puppets, ice cream flavors, pretzels, need I go on?

Speaking of Mozart pretzels, I didn't get one, but I did get a close imitation. Directly next to the Mozart pretzel was this chocolate covered woven pastry thing, which ended up having cinnamon sugar inside it! Magic. That is all for Salzburg, I don't think I ate anything else worth mentioning :) haha.