Dorfgastein

DAY ONE: Meet Dorfgastein....one of the prettiest places on the planet. You can walk from one end of town to the other in about fifteen minutes. After Salzburg we took the train out for about an hour and spent the next two days in this beautiful place. The sun even came out for us on the last day.

The night we rolled in after a train from Salzburg, the B&B owner himself came to pick us up from the train station. Every morning we were served hot chocolate in our personal hot chocolate pots and cup&saucer. So cute! Breakfast will never be the same without hot chocolate. The family who owned the B&B didn't speak any English, but it was fun using our miniscule vocabularies to talk about our plans. (Okay actually the mom would bring out breakfast and the dad would sit and try to talk to us.)

The first morning was really neat because we were there for their celebration of "Corpus Christi." (yeah, my favorite painting come to life!!) The ceremony was in their little church with men on the right side of the aisle and women on the left. Afterwards, their band marched around and played through the streets. The townspeople then spent the entire day celebrating in the only open restaurant. We found them later them night at dinner. Their day of drinking culminated in one of them on the accordion, one man dancing on the table, and the rest of them singing and swinging back and forth.

Anyway, after the ceremony me, Jess and Amelia hiked up to a family's house up on the hill. They own a restaurant and serve the biggest slices of homemade cheese torte you will ever see. The dad was so nice and sat down and tried to speak German with us...we had quite the conversation considering the language barrier. Oh--the whole way up we saw cows grazing on the hillside. This one had an itch...which it tried to catch with its tongue. Gross. The funny part was that the giant bell on its neck kept banging back and forth while it was itching in this awkward position. The video we took is hysterical! On our hike on the other side of the mountain we ate lunch and took a nap on a picnic bench. incredible.

DAY TWO: We took a tram to the top of the mountain and hiked down. We got to the top and couldn't see a thing on account of all of the clouds and the fog. Looking out off the mountain made you feel like you could walk off the edge of the earth and step onto a cloud. So much for seeing the highest peaks in Austria. Of course anytime is "have a drink" time in Austria and so we sipped on mugs of hot chocolate overflowing with whip cream for a little bit. Best hot cocoa ever!!

Halfway through our hike down the mountain the sun came out!! We hadn't even seen the sun yet in Vienna and so this was an amazing moment. We stripped off all of our jackets, stuffed them in our backpacks, and let our skin get sunburned! hooray.

DAY THREE: Five of us decided to look like we were at a family reunion in our matching navy blue t-shirts, jeans, and soccer mom tennis shoes. It was time to go back to Vienna and we hoped we would take the sunshine back with us.