| austria trip |
[Oct. 3rd, 2011|01:33 am] |
Yes, we (my dad and I) went to Austria for a week. Organised hiking trip by bus. Destination: Sankt Kanzian am Klopeiner See. Google Earth it, or something. If you're too lazy: it's in the south of Austria, not that far from the Slovenian border.
Das Wetter!
We didn't have rain at all (well, a few drops in the evening), which makes it our most successful Austrain holiday ever. Of course, usually we're higher up, and the Karinthian weather is apparently influenced by the mediterranean. Anyway, my dad (and lots of other people) complained about the heat, but honestly, I didn't think it was THAT bad. Yes, it was probably around 30°C for most of the afternoon, but I somehow wasn't that bothered with it. I usually hate it, but idunno. Maybe I was finally happy to have some warmth, after a very gray summer.
Mahlzeit!
The food was alright, very much so. One thing that bothered me was that they gave us A LOT of meat with every meal, at least twice as much as what I'm used to. I ate most of it (actually, apart from the opening night, I ate it all!), but I could feel my body wasn't used to this heh. Also - but this seems to be common - the food was extremely salty. Which resulted in us drinking a lot, and then waking up once or twice a night to pee -_-
Wir marchieren!
The walks were...a bore. Most of it was on regular roads, or concrete paths. I walked the first two days with my heavy "mountain" boots, but, obviously, there were no mountains. It was horribly flat and unexciting. So, for the third walk, I decided to go with my regular shoes, and guess what? Suddenly they go into the woods, and onto narrow rocky paths. But it was no problem for me actually, I have good regular shoes :) And on our 'free' day (without the group) with did another forest-y, mountain-y (well, hill-y, it was only a height difference of 200m) hike. We took our sweet time and actually rested a lot. I think we were both happy to have some peace and quiet on our walks ahaha.
Last day was boring, because we couldn't go far, but still had a lot of time to kill (we got kicked out of the hotel at 10, and the bus only left at 4PM, where's the sense in that?). Oh well.
Oh, and it was pretty fun that on day one, we started with around 35 hikers, and on day 3 there were only about 20 left.
Nationaalsozialismus!
You know my dad and I are rather antisocial, so we kept to ourselves for most of the time. That is, until my dad started talking to some other guy, and they developed a 4-day long bromance. It was pretty cute. Especially because the guy was a biker, lots of tattoos, ear pierced. Stuff my dad hates with a passion (...or maybe he's secretly jealous of them haha). But they had fun talking about racist stuff, and I noticed the guy actually had a swastika tattoo ahaha. Pretty small, but noticable. For a tattoo-obsessed person like me at least. When I told my dad about it, he said "oh, well, maybe he was in a biker gang and had to do it as an initiation or something." See, he was already looking for excuses and trying to defend his buddy! Ha.
Rest of the group: eh. I think I was the youngest one there, the average age must've been 50 or something. No joke.
Kriegwunden!
Every time we go on holiday, -something- happens to me in a physical, not so nice way. This time, on the second walk, my knee started bothering me. The inside of my knee. Now, I had that last year as well, but this time it was really very noticeable, and I definitely thought of skipping the hike the next day. Told my dad about where it hurt. "There's nothing important there!" Well, okay, guess it's all in my head. Anyway, it still troubled me the next day, but like I said, I started wearing my normal shoes, and after walking for about an hour...the pain was gone! So weird. And it didn't come back, so it really had something to do with my "good" (but super-heavy) hiking boots.
...except the pain did come back, I sometimes still feel it when I wake up. Well, it's only half-pain, if you know what I mean, but it's definitely in the same place, and I'm half-worried about it. I'm guessing it's a ligament or something, that isn't 100% right anymore. Too scared to go to a doctor about it, because he'll obviously say it's all in my head as well heh. No, but, yeah, but, you know. (fake edit: this half-pain lasted about a week, everything's fine now!)
Freundlichkeit!
I have to say, one thing that surprised me was how friendly the locals were. Austria has the reputation to be somewhat, you know...facist, especially when it comes to non-Austrians... but I guess they don't mind tourists that much. Like, several times I stood at a zebra crossing, thinking "oh, after those 2 or 3 cars I can cross over". But guess what? The first car almost always stopped to let me cross! I mean, it should be like this all the time, I know, but living in a "big" city, close to a busy road, I'm not used to it at all.
Not just that, but when we were out in the group, we're basically creating a nuissance for everyone, but cars still let us pass, locals waved at us and said good morning and stuff, it was like...is this real life? Heh.
Grüssgott!
I had a discussion with my dad about this. I take great offense with that word. Especially since it's used in the imperative form, they basically tell you to "greet god!!", or else!!! Compare that to, say, an arab, who says "peace be with you" as a greeting. So I wonder, who's the religious aggressor here??? Obviously my dad, notorious arab/middle east hater, said something like "yeah they say peace be with you, then stab you in the back!!!" Aah, it's always fun talking with my dad about things like this.
Wir glotzen TV!
TV was even worse than in France, I guess - no cycling, no F1, and most importantly - no US Open!!!! I followed the live score of the semis on my phone (was still on the bus on the way to Austria when they played), and learned the results from the finals through teletext (at least they had that!) the next day. There's more about that in my US Open post-mortem.
There wasn't much on tv on the whole - lots of US series though, Bones, House, The Mentalist, CSI (obviously!), etc. And Transformers was on at some point, and some other films. Oh well. As for other entertainment, I thought I had the entire season 6 on my hard drive, but I didn't, so I was able to watch just one episode. My ipod kept me entertained the most I guess, with my random addiction to Tiny Tower, and the fact that it, you know, plays music and stuff.
So anyway, general consensus was that it wasn't a bad vacation, but the long bus ride was annoying, and hiking in group just isn't our thing. So, next year, we'll probably be going to the Alps again, or at least have a 2-week holiday somewhere.
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