Mozart's Balls and Skiing the Alps

Just got back from an EPIC WEEKED in Austria!

I was originally signed up to go to Linz and Salzburg with a school tour this weekend, but they cancelled it on Wednesday because they suck. So a few of the girls in my apartment and I decided we were still going to go, and we were going to do it even better. After assigning appropriate Captain duties (train captain, snack captain, hostel captain, etc), we did research and decided to conquer Salzburg and Innsbruck.

We left the kolej in Prague at the ripe hour of 5 am on Friday and arrived in Salzburg in the afternoon after 6 hours on a train reminiscent of the Hogwart’s express. Salzburg is the 4th largest city in Austria, which makes it pretty damn small. But they have a few claims to fame that they exploit shamelessly. One of these is Mozart. We visited his birthplace and museum, and heard his music everywhere. We also sampled his balls. According to a guidebook, “Mozart first requested to have his balls dipped in chocolate at Café Tomacelli”…. Now there are these delicious round candies all over the city with his face stamped on the foil wrapper. They are the best candy ever.

After having many Mozart balls and hiking up to an intense castle on Friday afternoon, we retired to the excellent Hotel Turnuit just outside the city center. It smelled much nicer than my dorm in Prague and it very nice and very cheap so I was very happy to stay there.

On Saturday we got up at 5 am again to take a train to Innsbruck, which is a town in the Alps. We arrived with the intention to ski, but had no idea how to actually execute this idea. Thankfully, Austrians are 10000 times nicer than Czechs. Everyone from waiters to train conductors to dirty teenager skiers were very helpful in helping us to find our way. Three of us decided to go up to the ski mountain so we took a bus to Axums, which was one of the sites for the 1968 Winter Olympics. We rented skis and got passes and then hoped on the closest lift. (Side note about my skiing skills: I have been skiing approximately twice. The last time was in the 8th grade and it was in Maine, where the mountains are significantly smaller than the fucking Alps.) This lift took us up past the cloud line to what the sick Austrian ski maps call an “intermediate trail”. I would rename it “the steepest ski trial in the universe”. But I made it down with only a few epic falls as I tried to remember how to ski. I spent the rest of the day both terrified of plummeting to my death and also extremely proud of myself for being adventurous. I even took a covered lift to one of the trails used for the Olympics that was at a height of over a mile. The clouds were so thick that I couldn’t even see 10 feet in front of me- I just watched my own feet and skied blindly into the abyss…

After being very ballsy in Innsbruck on Saturday, we returned to Salzburg on Sunday for some good ol’ musical fun- aka The Sound of Music Tour. Our guide Carlos led my group in a little red van for about 4 hours of sing-alongs and sightseeing. It was awesome. We saw all the houses, castles, and mountains used in the film and also saw the lakes of Salzburg which are just really beautiful. Mam rada The Sound of Music.

After all of that touring and waking up early, we took the 6 hour train back to Prague with lots of Austrian beer and snacks to keep us happy. When we got back to Prague, we got on the Metro from the main train station, where a gypsy proceeded to take my money out of my bag in the hubbub of the busy station where everyone had luggage. Said gypsy took 4000 CZK, which is $200 US, which was my eating money for the rest of the month. FML.