Sounds like a plan

Our last night in Budapest, after getting out of the caves, we went to dinner with a couple that we had met in the hostel; Denelle and Calem. They had joined us for our Thanksgiving feast the day before and were the ones that had the original idea to go caving. Throughout dinner we went through the typical travel conversations about where we each had been and what still lay ahead on our respective journeys. At the time, Graham and I were planning on heading west to Austria for a couple of days. Turns out, Denelle and Calem were doing the same, however they weren’t headed for the quite the same place as we were. Our original plan was to head over to Vienna and check out all the palaces/castles etc. and see all the other touristy things that it had to offer. By the end of dinner we were convinced to do otherwise. They were planning on going skiing, they just didn’t know where yet. It’s so easy to get call caught up in travel mode that all you think about it seeing he famous sights and not even thinking about the other possibilities that are around you, especially the ALPS. On top of that, we were ready from a break from all the cathedrals and things we had been running in and out of at each stop. That night back at the hostel we scoped out all the local ski resorts around Salzburg to find a place that we could take a good day trip.



We got up at 5:45 a.m. and caught a bus to catch a train to catch a bus all to get to Obertauern ski resort by about 9:00. We were really just winging to the whole trip so one missed bus or late train could have messed up the whole day. However, we got there just in time to get rentals, passes, and for the lifts to open up. One little detail that was out of our control was of course the weather. The forecast, you could say, was a bit of an understatement predicting “light snowfall”. Once we got on the mountain there was a complete whiteout. Now, originally snow skiing was never part of our travel plan so it goes without saying that snow skiing gear wasn’t on top of our list either. We had sunglasses, which I think we all know how well that goes over in a snow storm and gloves that were good for strolling around town on a cold day, again not for a snow storm. All four of us were equally under prepared so we just quickly decided there would be no bitching about anything because after all, we were in the Alps. After lunch, which was wurstel & some spicy cheese stuff, things started to clear up a little so we could actually see what we going down, which was nice, which was the Alps.



That night we got back to the hostel in Salzburg dead tired so unfortunately we missed the nightly showing of “The Sound of Music.” Im not kidding. The place we were staying shows it every night at 8:00. Apparently people come to Salzburg for this reason alone, to see where they filmed the sound of music. All over town you can see tours being advertised that take you to all the different scenes from the movie. As thrilling as that sounded we decided to explore a little on our own the next day. Again, we climbed up as high as we could to get a good view of the city. In Salzburg, it would be from one of the famous fortresses from the 15th century. With a couple days of fresh snowfall all over the city it was a pretty awesome sight. After lunch we went and visited the birthplace of Mozart and then caught a train onto our next stop. No Sound of music stuff.