My 13th and final full day of being in Germany was our group’s only free day, where we could chose what we wanted to do. Hearing positive things from last year’s group, we decided to go to Salzburg, Austria. It was about a two and a half hour train ride from Austria, which wasn’t so bad. We got to Salzburg at about 11 am on that Friday. It was a cloudy day there, and raining off and on. We walked to the city center as a group before splitting up.
My little group was pretty hungry by the time we got there, so we went to a little Austrian pub near the city centre. I had pork schnitzel with potatoes and a light beer. One thing I’ll miss about my trip is all the great schnitzel I ate, and this schnitzel was no exception! After we finished lunch, we walked around the city. I actually ran into another, totally separate, Pitt study abroad group! Somebody from their group saw my Pitt sweatshirt and called out to us. I couldn’t believe it! Pic with their professor for proof!
We also went to one of the castles there (and I have to specify just one cause there were many), and walked around the gardens. I was not the only one in my group to say something about how “Bridgerton” the gardens were. We promenaded around the gardens for a bit before stopping at a candy store on our way back to the train station, and dodging rain along the way.
We then started our train ride back to Augsburg. We had to go from Salzburg to Munich, then Munich to Augsburg. We managed to grab some food at the McDonald’s in the Munich Hauptbahnhof. I was shocked to realize you can’t get a 10 piece, they only sell 9 piece nuggets! I ate my 9 piece nugget begrudgingly on the train back to Augsburg. When we got back to Augsburg, it was time for me to start packing for the next day’s flight!
Although I was only in Austria for a short amount of time and in one city, I noticed that Salzburg felt very similar to the other little towns I’d been to in Germany on this trip. In later research, I found that Salzburg shared a lot of history with Germany, as it was a part of Bavaria at one point as well as the Holy Roman Empire. It’s interesting to see how some countries in Europe can share such similar culture and history, while I’m used to our bordering countries being very distinct. That, however, just may be my point of view as a foreigner.