Today was the day built into our schedule for us to conduct our own travel, wherever we could reach in a few hours by train. Myself, Ashlyn, and Kayla decided to travel the 2 and a half hours to Salzburg, Austria. We left for our 8 am train, and realized on the way that Kayla and Ashlyn had forgotten their passports. Though Salzburg is still in the EU and it may not have posed a problem, after further research we discovered that apparently the train from Salzburg to Munich, which would have been a part of our return journey, was a train where it was common for passports to be checked. They both decided it was smarter to stay in Munich for the day instead, so I went on alone.
I hadn’t made many concrete plans of what to do with my day, so I decided when I arrived to get lunch and make plans while I ate. I found myself at a Chinese food buffet, which was not exactly what I had wanted, but it filled me up nonetheless. I decided there to simply wander towards the old city, which offered views of Mozart’s birth place, a church, and a fortress if I decided to wander further.
It was raining, which meant it was my umbrella and I against the world. I had a very good time, despite the weather, and the views of Salzburg were beautiful. It was funny, at the top of the fortress I looked out and saw the same track field I had noticed when we went up the cable car in Oberammergau, only closer. It was somewhat shocking to me to realize that I was looking at the same view in the same direction as before, unintentionally.
After I became fed up with my wet shoes and pants, I began my meander back to the train station to make the return journey to Augsburg. On my train back, it just so happened that the police did come by to check IDs and passports. The police officer rifled through the pages of my passport multiple times, asking me questions about the German visa I had from the fall semester and other things, all in German. It was a good thing Kayla and Ashlyn hadn’t come with me.