Salzburg, Austria

when we left vienna, we decided to hitchhike to Salzburg, about a three hour trip in car. we took the U4 to the last stop and got out and waited by the A1, which goes directly across the country.


it took about ten minutes to get a ride. check out the interior of our vehicle.


hell yes, we got picked up by a giant, empty tour bus. what a view this was, driving through the hills of Austria, looking out a the giant front window in some plush bus seats.

the driver was a super a nice swiss guy. he even gave us beer.



we got dropped off at a rest stop near Linz and caught a ride out of there. it took us much longer and what eventually worked for us was just asking people who were stopped if they were headed towards Salzburg. we got dropped off right by the exit and walked along the highway to the city.


Salzburg is sort of just like super awesome views, all the time. maybe the best part of Salzburg was walking into it, trying to find it.

wild blackberries! delicious!



travelling glamour shot. expect more of these now that we have figured out how to put the ten second timer on the camera.


we made it. place is really pretty. thats the most i can say for it, for now, i guess.



we made a friend, Anna, at the place where we got food when we got into town. she took us to this really comfortable bar where the music wasnt too loud and there were couches and places to sit. everyone was real nice, too, and it was a pleasure to hang with some local kids. we got these really delicious peach beers, drinking in preperation for the hard night of sleep ahead of us.


sleeping outside generally sucks. especially without a tent and only one sleeping bag.

outdoor experiences with dward can tend to be disaterous. i remember right before i moved to ohio, we went on a weekend hiking trip to the white mountains in New Hampshire. its kind of stupid how unprepared and halfassed we were about the whole thing and, for my own sake, might not be worth recounting.

if you do pack a tent, its important that you remember to bring the poles for it. the first night in New Hampshire we managed, rigging up the tent on some trees with some rope and sleeping in a flimsy structure that had altogether collapsed by the time we woke up.

the second night was more of an issue. as we were walking down from a mountain peak with no drinkable water and hardly any food (the only food we did have were those meals you buy at camping stores that come in pouches and you add hot water too, but we didnt know how to use our camping stove), it started pouring rain, thunder and lightning and all. scared shitless and thinking we were for sure going to die, two other people came running down the path we were on, a father and son. we told them we had a tarp from a tent and some string and we together rigged up a structure to cram together under while it poured rain.

the guys pretty much saved our ass. the father had to be in his late thirties or early fourties and the kid was probabally twelve years old. they were hiking something like 15 miles a day and were all sorts of prepared and nature savvy. it was pretty embarrassing. they let us cook on their stove and the dad helped us set up our crappy tent with string as best he could. we would have been really screwed otherwise.

we sat huddled in the one square foot of dry-space for the whole night in soaking wet-clothes, waiting for the sun to come up so we could hike out of the mountain, as buckets of water flooded the tent. i remember the morning, hiking down in my long johns with a totally soaked, super heavy pack on, on pretty much no sleep. we got to the bottom and got into a car and we drove to a Burger King rest stop and slept for four-hours in a parking lot with no shade on a hot summer day in the middle of August.

so in Salzburg, we were able to remind each other that it wasnt nearly as bad as New Hampshire. we found some tarps in the city, laid them down in the woods, put on all our clothes and got real close under the shared sleeping bag. it gets pretty cold in Salzburg at night, being up in the big mountains and all.

we woke up something like this.


we slept about 100 yards from a statue of this guy. without him, Salzburg might as well not exsist.


we are idiots.



if you walked up these gates, youd find our home for the night.


it was sunday morning when we woke up and there were crazy ammounts of bells going off. they went on forever, for real.

i pretty much felt like shit the whole next day and we laid about the town, not wanting to blow any of our cash in this super-exspensive place. being unprepared can suck. it can rule too, though.


we found a hostel that night, took long, hot showers, slept in beds, and got out of Salzburg in the morning.