Happy free day and last day abroad! Most of our group woke up bright and early to catch our eight AM train to Salzburg, Austria! Thanks to the help of the German students, we were able to figure out how to get tickets for relatively low prices at the times we wanted. As a huge fan of The Sound of Music, I was so excited to go!
After a quick breakfast and a train ride to Munich, we had to catch another train to Salzburg, which would take about three hours. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the public transportation here is much more efficient and reliable than what I am used to in America. Even with a train change, the process felt easy. I think this is because train travel is so normalized here that it’s designed to make traveling between cities and even countries trouble-free. I also felt strange that we were able to travel between countries without having to show our passports, but since both Germany and Austria are part of the EU, crossing borders feels much less strict than I expected.
Once we made it to Salzburg, our first stop was Mirabell Palace, where the famous “Do-Re-Mi” scene in The Sound of Music was filmed. The gardens were beautifully kept, and it felt surreal having the movie scene come to life.
It was the hottest day here, so after the gardens we stopped for a coffee and snack refuel before a small group of us parted ways to go on The Sound of Music Trail. To get to Werfen, where the trail started, we had to take another forty-five-minute train ride. Although this sounds awful, the views the ride gave us were unbelievable! This made the time pass quickly.
Once we arrived in Werfen, we grabbed some water at a local grocery store to prepare for our hike. As we started up the mountain, it proved to be a little more intense than we had planned, and I even fell at one point due to my inadequate shoes and jeans. However, once we finally made it to the top, all of that was forgotten because the views were spectacular. Looking out into the mountains felt like the perfect way to spend our final full day abroad. They even had cows!
After frolicking around the field and taking around 200 photos, we descended the mountain back to the Werfen train station to get back to Salzburg and meet up with the rest of the group. In the train station, I made sure to buy a Sound of Music postcard to remember this trip, along with a snack to hold me over for the four-hour train ride home. While looking out the window on the train home, I reflected on how much I am going to miss this place before falling asleep.
Once back in Augsburg, we showered and met up with the rest of our group and the German students for one last hurrah before parting ways. The entire day felt like the perfect ending to the trip because it combined beautiful scenery, friendships, and reflection all at once.
