Wrap Up

Hello :) I know I have been extremely terrible updating my blog my last month in Austria but I am home now and can say that studying abroad was the best experience ever. I became good friends with people from over 50 countries, learned so much more German and about the Austrian/German culture and got to travel all over Europe! Thank you everyone for following my adventures these past 5 months. It really meant a lot to me. I have tons more pictures on my computer of all my travels if any of you are interested in seeing more. Hope to see those of you that I havent been able to see yet and hope youre all have a great summer! :)

Hallstatt

Hallstatt Austria is an amazing place! I really need to thesaurus the word amazing and find a new word. Maybe incredible, breathtaking, RAD...? :) Anyways, Hallstatt is a small city (one street) that is about 30 minutes away from Salzburg. You need to take a ferry to get to the town. My cousin Eric and my friends Patty and Muro took a day trip there on the 26th of June. Here are some pictures. We walked around, took a boat ride and visited the cemetery.

 The train ride there

 Waiting to take the ferry across the water

 City center

 Famous picture of Hallstatt

 Where we ate lunch :)

Exploring through the city

 The town is so small that back in the day when it was highly populated, there was not enough room to bury everyone. What they would do is bury the corpse and dig it up after 30 years. The persons skull would then be removed, bleach, dried and painted. They kept them all in one room. Still to the this day you can chose to have this done once you die but very few people chose it.

Happy Fathers Day

Hello everyone, I just wanted to wish all the fathers out there (especially mine) a Happy Fathers Day! Daddy, I love you so much and cant explain how much I appreciate everything you've done for me, taught me and of course put up with over the years :) See you in 13 days!

My time here in Austria is soon coming to an end. Ive been spending the past few weeks finishing up classes, hanging out with my friends and spending time here in Linz. I cant believe that I have to leave here so soon and that I am going to have to say goodbye to all these amazing people Ive met here. On the other hand, I am so excited to get home to see my family, Kyle and all my friends! Its pretty bittersweet :)

Deggendorf

Hello everyone. Happy June (or sad June because I only have 28 more days). So last weekend I went to Deggendorf for my 5 day weekend to spend some time with the family. It was great! I didnt want to leave. I just was having so much fun and felt like I really belonged there. Anyways, I arrived there late Friday night so me, Erika and Franzie went over to Elisabeths and just hung out for the night. Saturday morning me, Erika and Franzie headed off to the National Park and walked across this high bridge made of trees. At the end there was a giant dome (called the Tree House) that you can walk up. The view from the top is amazing. Being taller than all the tree tops is an awesome feeling. After we walked back down we went to the animal park. It was a three hour walk from beginning to start but it was cool to see all the animals just in open, natural land. That pretty much took up the entire day so we all went back home to change and eat dinner and then headed off to a festival. The festival was so much fun. There were tons of carnival rides, bands, huge German beers, yummy food and so many people. We walked around, ate tons of carnival food, danced and had a great time! Sunday morning we went to Regen to another music festivals. They had multiple stages with German bands playing folk music. We walked through the forest and along the way there were tons of families and people playing all kinds of instruments and singing. It was really cool to see so many different people partaking in the German culture. We stayed there for the entire day. There was so much to see. Monday morning me and Franzie drove to Schloss Neuschwanstein! Finally! When we got there I we walked around the castle across the street from Neuschwanstein and then hiked up to it. It was awesome. Sadly, they were doing construction on one side of it but it still looked just like in the pictures. I did the walking tour inside. It was really cool to see all the modern architecture it had inside. After Neuschwanstein we headed off to Kloster Andechs and looked at the church. We then spent some time in the beer garden and then made our 3 hour journey back home. On the way home we stopped at the cemetery and visited my great Oma and Opa. When we got back me and Franzie spent the entire night looking at old photo albums. It was amazing to see all my family members 20, 30, 40 + years ago. Tuesday morning we went to Uncle Jachs and Tante Annas house. We had chicken and french fries. It was super yummy. Lothar and Helmut came by and well to say the least... our few hours there were rather entertaining :) After lunch, me and Elizabeth went shopping and then ate dinner. Tuesday night I had to get back on the train and head back to Linz. The weekend was great and I saw tons of awesome things. Ill post some pictures at the end of this post but I just wanted to say thank you so much for those of you that have been reading and following my blog these past four months. It means so much to me to hear from my dad that a list of people tell him all the time how much they enjoy reading my blog, or hearing from Kyle that his grandmas love my blog! Im so glad Im not wasting my time sharing my stories with no one :) There are only 28 days left to blog about! In 3 days I am off to Santorini Greece for a whole week! After that AMAZING and lengthy blog post... they will probably start getting a little depressing as the end is coming. But until then... here are my Deggendorf pictures!

Tree bridge

 Tree house

 The view from the top of the tree house

 The festival Saturday night

 Music festival on Sunday

 Cutest little girl playing an accordion and singing

 Drive to Neuschwanstein

 View from Neuschwanstein

 Kloster Andechs

<3

 Throwback :)

 Shopping at Joska

FC Bayern München

Hello everyone  :) Yesterday I was in München for the day. The atmosphere was incredible! We left Linz Saturday morning at 4:30 a.m. to head to Salzburg. From Salzburg we caught a train to München. We arrived there at 10:30 a.m. and the streets were already packed with Bayern fans (and a few Chelsea fans here and there). The first thing we did was head to Olympia park. It was huge. There were tons of stands, booths, bands and people are hanging out enjoying the beautiful weather. We walked through and then headed to the Olympia stadium. There was a free game between the world all-star legends and the Bayern all-star legends. Usain Bolt (the fastest man on the planet) did the kick off. After the game we walked down to the railing in the very front to watch the players get interviewed. Cafu (world famous Brazilian player) was throwing autographed soccer balls into the crowd. One went right behind me and one right in front of me and Cafu saw. He pointed at me and pointed to the railing above the entrance where the players enter and exit the field. I didnt know for sure if he was pointing and me or not and nor did the guy next to me so we both pushed our ways through the crowd and he saw me reaching my hand out from inside the crowd of people that wouldnt let me through. He handed it to me and everyone started grabbing for it. He took it back, shook his head no and pointed to me. Everyone turned around, looked at me and moved. He then reached his hand back out and gave me the ball. I WAS SO EXCITED! After that we went to BMW World. For those of you that know my future goals, I was ecstatic. It was so awesome and the cars were of course beautiful. After that we took the metro to the Allianz soccer stadium where the game was going to be played. We then headed into the city center. The streets were PACKED. There was broken bottles everywhere and so much trash on the streets. I cant believe the mess thats there today. Everyone was screaming Bayern and tons of other chants. After hanging out around the streets with all the fans we went back to Olympic park to find somewhere to watch the game. There were no big jumbo trons showing the game like we expected so we were walking out as we saw a bunch of people our age sitting on a hill. We asked them if they were going to show the game and they said yes and invited us. They gave us blankets and food and we all hung out. They projected the game onto one of their dorm buildings. It was fun sitting out with all the fans watching the game. Seeing them lose during the shoot out wasnt so fun but the experience was still awesome! Here are some pictures of the day :)

 Usain Bolt

 Cafu

 Me and my autographed Cafu ball

 Allianz arena

Where we watched the game

Friday night I will be heading to Deggendorf until Tuesday to spend some much needed time with family. Also, I just got the news... Its official. Eric will arriving here in Austria on June 22nd and will spend a week with me here in Linz. I am so excited to see him and show him all around Austria. Hope we dont get into too much trouble :)