Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Coming Home

Heading home soon. In the airport in Paris. Really can't believe it.

Final posts will have to wait until later when I have a keyboard again because the one I've been using with my iPad spontaneously decided to stop working, and poking one letter at a time is really annoying and time consuming. But I'll give a quick summary of the last week.

Decided not to write about Interlaken. It is a great little town but I was only there one night because it was in between seasons- too cold and wet for outdoor adventure sports and too warm for winter sports. The hostel I stayed at is one of the best and well-known hostels in the area, with the ability to sleep at least one or two hundred people. When I was there, I was one of six. Even got excited to do a bit of hiking before I left, but sure enough it was raining cats and dogs that day.

Slightly defeated, I kept my hopes up as I went to meet up with friends Brittany, Annah, and Susannah, whom I had met in Antwerp. They had kept in touch with me via facebook since our last time together, and when they asked if I wanted to go skiing with them in Bad Gastein, Austria, i jumped on the chance. The following morning we all woke up early to catch the 7 am train into the next town over, and then took a taxi up to the top of the mountain, excited to rent some equipment and hit the slopes. We thought it was kind of strange that the taxi driver offered to bring us back down too. Apparently he must have seen the sign at the bottom of the mountain informing potential skiers that the summit was too windy that day and the mountain would be closed...which was in German, of course. He must have chuckled to himself the whole drive up the mountain, thinking about the 40 euros we were about to give him for driving us up to a ski resort for the view of the base.

We ended up making the most of the unfortunate situation. We hitched a ride back down the mountain with a nice Austrian man on the way to another place to ski, then again with a very kind woman that had overheard our conversation with a bartender when we were inquiring about buses back to the train station, only to find out that they too were cancelled due to an Austrian holiday. she gave us a ride back to the station and wouldn't even let us buy her a coffee, she was too kind. Good job austrians.

Then went to Vienna, Slovenia, Venice, and Rome. Sorry but this is getting too annoying. One of the worse posts so far, but I can't stand typing one letter at a time anymore.

Will do the rest from home...

USA here I come.


- Matt

Location:Paris, France

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