Spring Break in Austria: Stud-man, Giant Chess Games, and Our Boy Levi

I had Spring Break last week, and I somehow managed to convince David, the son of two schoolteachers, to skip his classes and come to Austria with me. On Thursday (March 27^th), we woke up ridiculously early to catch a 5:30 train to Innsbruck. We were staying on a family-run farm called Studlerhof in Oberperfuss, a small village outside the city.  Hannelore, the mother of the family that owns the farm, picked us up from the train station and drove us to Studlerhof. Once we were settled, we took her husband, Johann, up on his offer to teach us to milk cows. They smelled like cows, and milking them was easier than we expected. After we’d showered, we walked around Oberperfuss and then to the only restaurant we saw in Oberperfuss. The food was tasty. David had three types of traditional Austrian dumplings, and I had a baked potato with roasted veggies. We shared a tomato soup with whipped cream. Originally, we thought the “whipped cream” on the menu was a funny translation mistake but it wasn’t. There was actually whipped cream on the soup and it actually tasted good.

View as soon as we walked out of the train station in Innsbruck

The apartment building at Studlerhof

David petting a cow at Studlerhof (her tongue freaked him out)

David and mountains (mountains, mountains)

The next morning, we missed the bus we meant to catch into Innsbruck. The next one came an hour later and we made that one, after going to the grocery store. Once we made it into town, we caught the Sightseer bus that drove us around the touristy parts of the city. After we’d ridden it once around its route, we got off and walked to an Indian buffet restaurant that was pretty good. Once we were full, we walked through Old Town to a funicular that took us up to Hungerburg. Along the way, we stopped at the Alpine Zoo, a zoo built into the mountains filled with animals specific to that region. 

Adorable sheep at Alpine Zoo

Wolves howling at the Alpine Zoo

At the next stop, we played in snow and marveled at the amazing views. There was a restaurant there called “Cloud 9” that was serving free hot soup for some reason. At first, we figured it was an exclusive event but then everyone went to get soup. We decided not to question it and enjoyed the yummy (and warm) treat. 

David enjoying a bonfire at Cloud 9

Snowman that we drew in the snow by Cloud 9

David enjoying the snow

Adorable snowy selfie

View from the benches at Cloud 9

David in the snooow

Sun setting behind the mountain

Katie in her natural element

Mountains mountains mountains mountains. (David and I decided that we don't use that word nearly enough in everyday speech, so every time it came up we said it a lot.)

Once we were quite cold, we made our way back down the mountain. We knew we’d be lucky to catch the bus we wanted back to Oberperfuss, so we rushed to the train station. Just as we walked up, the bus we wanted pulled away, so we waited for an hour once again. Once we made it back to Studlerhof, we made some tomato soup and cabbage before going to sleep.

On Saturday, we headed into Innsbruck by bus again, and went to the Golden Roof museum. The Golden Roof is one of the main tourist attractions in Innsbruck, and it is just what it sounds like: a roof made of shiny golden tiles. The museum housed in the building with the famous roof explains a lot of the history of Innsbruck, specifically focusing on the reign of Maximillian I, who oversaw the building of the Golden Roof. After we’d educated ourselves a bit, went hunting for lunch and discovered that food in Innsbruck is expensive and very gluten-filled. We ended up at a Nepali restaurant (unsurprisingly, Nepali food is quite similar to Indian food), which was tasty. Next, we went to Schloss Ambras, a huge castle surrounded by beautiful gardens. While we waited for our bus to the Schloss, David got some lemon and mango gelato, which he deemed delicious. The museum housed within the Schloss was very cool. There was a medicinal garden and a few plaques about female doctors in the Middle Ages who were largely displaced with the advent of modern medicine, which took place in male-dominated universities and medical schools. There was also a cool exhibit on armor and weaponry, as well as “curiosities” like engravings in ostrich eggs and incredibly intricate jewelry boxes. The museum closed at 5, and we wandered around the grounds after that. It was a gorgeous day, so we spent awhile just laying out on the lawn soaking up the sun.   

View of the mountains from Schloss Ambras

Wedding armor, wait wedding armor??

Super intricate jewelry box, there are over 100 drawers somewhere in there

Drinking game chair (people had to drink a certain amount of wine to be released)

Apparently people in the 1600s decorated with fake fruit too, Mom. David still doesn't approve.

Adorable selfie at Schloss Ambras

Once we were back in the heart of the city, we went to get gelato again on our way to Hofgarten, a park with an awesome playscape and a giant chess board. We sat in the park and watched old men smoke and play chess before walking to the train station and heading back to Oberperfuss.

The next morning, we took a bus from Innsbruck to Igls, a small town to the South. We absolutely loved Igls. It was the most adorably perfect town I’ve ever seen. As we walked toward the middle of town, we passed a row of houses overlooking the mountains with a little stream running behind them. The center of town is oriented around a small park and playscape. After we wandered around for awhile discussing the adorable perfection of this little town, we ate yummy Austrian food at a restaurant we had read about online. We each had a brothy soup (David’s had shredded pancakes in it and mine had a dumpling), and I had this awesome traditional dish that’s a skillet of sautéed potatoes and meat (beef/pork) with a fried egg on top. My family had always warned me of the grossness of egg yolks, but I decided to be brave and try it the way it was served, and I liked it! The egg yolk by itself was gross, but mixed in with the potatoes and meat, it was super tasty.  After lunch, we took a funicular up a mountain called Patscherkofel. At the top, we walked through the snow while skiers whizzed past on their way to the restaurant operating up there. We built a snowman (who we named Stud-man after our farm stay, Studlerhof), we made snow angels and threw snowballs, we soaked completely through our shoes, and we got a little sunburned. Once we had tired ourselves out, we took the funicular back down and took the bus back to Innsbruck. We stopped in an abbey and a cathedral near the bus stop before heading back to the middle of town, where we shopped on a cute little street filled with shops that we dubbed “Diagon Alley.” At 9:15pm we caught a bus back to Oberperfuss, but almost an hour into what was supposed to be a 45 minutes drive, we realized we were not going to get to the right stop. The line ended soon after that and we moseyed up to the bus driver to show him the name of the stop we needed. He simply said “No” at first, and our hearts sunk. It was dark and cold and we were tired. We were well outside the city, surrounded by farms that seemed indistinguishable from one another, with absolutely no idea how to get back to Studlerhof. And then the driver said, “Sit down.” We really had no other choice, so we sat down and waited as the bus winded through dark country roads. After about 15 minutes, we recognized the restaurant we had eaten at the first night in Oberperfuss. The driver took us up to a bus parking lot between the restaurant and our hotel, dropping us off about 200 meters from Studlerhof. We were so, so grateful. I’m really not sure how we would have gotten back without him.

The next morning, I woke up at 6:30 to a call from my family. I didn’t pick up because I couldn’t imagine why they would be calling me at such an absurd hour. In my dreariness, I figured they had forgotten about the time different between Austin and Austria, considering it must be almost midnight there. At that point, I started to get a little worried. Then I saw my dad’s text: “Good morning Katie. Grace, Madre & I are fine. Levi is having a hard time. Can you FaceTime with us?” My heart sunk, but I held on to a little hope that maybe he was just sick. I couldn’t let myself imagine what was actually happening at home. I laid in bed for a few seconds willing myself to wake up, hoping it was just an unusually realistic and awful dream. Then my phone began to ring again, and I answered it as I stepped into the kitchen. My dad told me that Levi was sick. I asked how sick. He said, “Really sick.” I still hoped. My parents described the whole saga of the earliest signs and the rapid decline and the hospital visit, and the whole time I hoped. Then my mom explained the vet had given them two options: an expensive and long shot surgery or euthanasia. She said that they had opted to take him home instead, and I stopped hoping and started crying. We talked for about an hour and half about how we hadn’t seen this coming at all, how we’d always said he was immortal, how much we would miss him, how frustrating it was to be separated during this process, how good a dog Levi had been, and how we could love him through this like he’d loved us so much over the past 12 years. After awhile, we ran out of this to say and it was almost 1am in Austin. We hung up, and David and I went for a walk around Oberperfuss while I cried a lot more.

Eventually, the day had to go on, so we took a bus into Innsbruck. We rented bikes as we’d planned, since they came free as part of our “Innsbruck Card” which gave us entrance to all museums and funiculars in the city, as well as public transit. Once we started riding, it quickly became clear that my knee would not let me ride, so I took my bike back while David explored the city. Meanwhile, I tried to find a replacement pair of jeans since my only one had ripped, but all the ones I found were too expensive. We met up after his bike ride and sat in a park by a fountain before heading to a cafeteria-style buffet lunch place that was decent (it reminded me of the Guilford cafeteria). As it was our last day in Innsbruck, we did some tourist shopping. David got a t-shirt and I got a patch for my backpack. We caught a much earlier bus than normal back to Oberperfuss because the daughter of the owners’ of the farm had offered to take us horseback riding. David had never been, so he was kind of nervous. He rode a 20-year old horse named Arizona and I rode a miniature horse named Flora. The owners’ daughter led us around Oberperfuss for over an hour, and helped us alternate between walking and trotting a few times. Afterwards, we got to feed and brush them, and it was just a wonderful experience. Our whole day was great, but it was really filled with talking about Levi. I had never really let myself think about him dying, and it was absolutely awful to consider my world, and especially home, without him. The rest of our trip really was great, but it was definitely colored by dreading the news of his passing and the countless realizations of more things I would miss about him.

This picture makes me wish that Levi had been there to play in the snow with us this week

Candle that I lit for Levi in a cathedral in Innsbruck

The next morning, we checked out from Studlerhof, said goodbye to Hannelore, caught a bus to Innsbruck, and then took a train to Salzburg. When we arrived, we walked to the youth hostel where we were staying and got settled in our 8-person room. Then we had a picnic lunch and walked around the city, before returning to the hostel to watch Sound of Music (which neither of us had ever seen) and eat dinner.

Adorable selfie in Salzburg

View of Hohensalzburg Fortress from the street across the river

On our walk to Hohensalzburg Fortress on Wednesday morning, we happened upon Mirabel Gardens. They are immaculately groomed and full of paved walkways lined with green grass and beautiful flowers. We stopped and sat there for awhile, and we ended up returning there the next two days as well. After our lovely stroll through the park, we took a funicular up to Hohensalzburg Fortress, a huge castle complex that has been repeatedly added on to throughout the past 600 years. We got to walk through part of the inside on a guided tour and then explore the grounds on our own. We then made the poor decision of walking back down to the city instead of taking the funicular. It was a pretty walk, I’m sure, but I was much too busy staring at the ground in an attempt to minimize the stress on my knee to notice. 

View from the top of Hohensalzburg Fortress

View from the top of Hohensalzburg Fortress

Once we’d made it down, I found some soup and gelato (which felt good on my throat because I was getting sick) and we watched some chess played on a giant board outside the city’s main cathedral, the Salzburg Dom. Once we’d rested, we visited the Salzburg Dom, St. Peter’s Abbey, and the gothic church nearby (the name of which I’ve forgotten). Then we sat on a bench by a pretty fountain and talked until we got hungry and went to a pho restaurant we’d seen earlier. David was less than pleased with his meal, but I was very happy with my noodle soup. Something about chicken and noodles and broth has healing powers. We walked back to the hotel after dinner and we were pondering watching a movie, but I ended up looking at pictures of Levi for an hour and half instead. It was good therapy to go back and remember lots of happy things about him.

Thursday morning I ate breakfast at the hostel with David. It was a cheap, low-quality buffet breakfast but we got full and headed out for the day. We happened upon a cool market where we got some fruits and veggies for lunch before catching a bus to Schloss Hellbrunn. This complex was a summertime retreat for the upper-upper-upper class in the 1600s. The grounds are absolutely enormous and the gardens are beautiful, but it’s most well known for its trick fountains. All over the grounds, there are these awesome fountains that shoot water in arches over or into pathways. There’s a stone table rigged so that water shoots out of every seat but one so that the head of the table got to laugh when everyone else flew out of their seats. My favorites were little scenes with moving wooden figurines that were powered by water. After our tour through the fountains, we spent about an hour wandering around the grounds and playing on a playscape they had there. There was zipline that positively demanded to be played on. We ate lunch on a bench in the grounds, and then we went on an audiotour through the castle, which explained that the prince archbishops were expected to collect rarities of nature and gave some examples (mostly especially big or rare fish and animals). 

Hellbrunn fountains

Hellbrunn Castle fountains

Fountains at Hellbrunn

David running through the fields at Hellbrunn, singing "The hill are alive...!"

Sound of Music pavilion in Hellbrunn ("I am 16, going on 17.")

The Salzburg Zoo is on the grounds of Hellbrunn, so we went to see some animals real quick. Mostly, we wanted to get a picture of their rhinos for David Trullinger (one of David’s friends from Texas State, who apparently really likes rhinos). 

Baby goat in the Salzburg Zoo

Prairie dogs at Salzburg Zoo (reminded me of "Little Dogs on the Prairie"!)

Rhino picture!

 Once we’d gotten our pictures, we took a bus back to Salzburg and explored the city a bit on our way to an Austrian restaurant. David got brothy soup with a cheese dumpling and cheese fried pork schnitzel with potatoes, and I got an off-menu soup with an egg in it and the same dish I got in Igls (it was the only gluten-free main dish on the menu). After dinner, we walked around for awhile and sat in Mirabell Gardens until it got dark.

David's cheese fried pork schnitzel

My potatoes and meat with fried egg

Friday was our last day in Salzburg. We ate breakfast at the hostel before hiking up a hilly mountain (or a mountainly hill, depending on who you ask). I tried taping my knee a new way that morning and was ecstatic to be able to make it up the 411 steps (and mile or so of uphill climb without steps). The view was just gorgeous from the top and the whole walk was great.

View on our hike in Salzburg

View of Hohensalzburg Fortress on our hike

Painting of Hohensalzburg Fortress from the city wall (where we hiked)

View from the top of the hill

Old city wall on our walk

The forest on our hike

Once we reached the bottom, we at a picnic-y lunch in a coffeeshop because it was cold outside and we are poor college students. After lunch, we went on a museum run trying to see as much as we could before everything closed at 5. First, we went to the Salzburg Museum, where we learned about the prince archbishops of Salzburg. At a base level, they were discriminatory and corrupt, but the curators did a good job of describing how they also made Salzburg into the tourist city it is today. Next up was the Panorama Museum, which houses a huge, amazingly detailed 360-degree painting of Salzburg as viewed from Hohensalzburg Fortress. There were also a couple dozen smaller paintings of beautiful scenes from around the world, which were cool. After that, we sprinted to Mozart’s birthplace and speed-walked through the museum there (we’re not big classical music fans). It was cool to see the violin he received when he was six and the place where his family lived. I had no idea, but apparently his sister was also a piano prodigy and she travelled with Mozart until she was seventeen, when she had to stay home to “become a woman.” She ended up marrying a twice-widowed man, having kids, and teaching piano lessons in Salzburg. Our last museum was the Toy Museum, where we had about 30 minutes. They had trains that David loved, and marble mazes that were awesome. They also had a few large-scale interactive games and a lot of old games, but we only had time to see the highlights, so we played with the marble mazes a lot.

Old board game about Salzburg (the rest of the words were in German)

When the museum closed, we walked to the playscape at Mirabell Gardens, which we had admired but not actually played on. They had one of the coolest slides I’ve seen. It was super tall and the ladder up when through a tower that had platforms every few rungs. The first platform could be reached by rock wall or ladder. The rock wall was actually rather challenging, and I probably shouldn’t have tried it with my knee, but it was just so cool. I managed to make it to the top without catastrophe, though, and had a blast playing on the slide.

The awesome slide in Mirabell Gardens

View of David on the swing from the top of the slide

Rock wall leading to the slide

Once we started getting hungry, we walked to an Indian restaurant recommended by our hostel. It was yummy and affordable. We walked around the city after dinner and then headed back to our hostel. Each night, when we’d arrived back at the hostel, I couldn’t quite breathe easy until I’d checked my email and Facebook for news from home. I knew when I saw I had five Facebook messages that it had happened. Levi had gone downhill fast the night before and they family had had to put him down. I was glad to learn that it was apparently as idyllic as something like this could be: at home in the backyard out by the Greenbelt in the sun. As I was trying to process, we gained three talkative roommates who were very interested in our lives. I didn’t really feel like crying while trying to explain what was going on, so I just tried to act normal while messaging my family about the details. Eventually, I went downstairs where the wifi was better and loaded a bunch of Levi pictures to Facebook before falling asleep late.

David and I had planned on going to Vienna today (Saturday, April 5^th). We were going to leave Salzburg early in the morning and then spend the day in Vienna before taking an overnight train to Prague. When we found out about Levi, though, we decided to spare ourselves the stress and just head back to Prague today. So I’ve had a little over 6 hours to write this blog post while on three different trains between Salzburg and Prague. We’ll be arriving in Prague in about half an hour. The rest of today will be filled with laundry and grocery shopping, before I get to talk to my family around 10pm. It will be so good to see them and catch up. It’s been a rough week to be away from regular wifi and my own bed, so I’m happy to be heading “home."