Adventures Overseas 11/16

These sixteen updates will be the condensed and often more erratic version of my adventures overseas, comprised of the updates that I sent home to my family at the time.

Author's Disclaimer: The following were written when I traveled overseas with my sister. They were the short and sweet version of what was going on in my daily journal. Often, I watered things down so that our parents wouldn't know how scared we really were or how bad a hostel really was. We didn't want to scare them. Also, I wrote these updates on my iPod, and in the interest of authenticity, I haven't edited or changed the formatting much. This may be less to do with authenticity and more to do with all those darn buttons I'd have to press if I edited it all. Anyway, there are plenty of little typos to go around I'm sure. I'm sorry. They bug me, too.

11-3

11-2

11-1

Update 11: November 2, 2018 FRIDAY

This time, I think I’ll keep tabs on the week’s events as they come, rather than trying to splat words into a page in an over-tires state as I did last time. Though I am keeping much better tabs in my journal, I’d still like to keep all of you back home updated.

So: Saturday.

This was a pretty rainy and cold day so we made very simple plans. Our only goal, really, was to go out to the oldest bakery in Salzburg, buy some bread, and eat that for breakfast. The bakery uses some of its own water-wheel-milled flour, and cooks the bread in an old log oven. It’s a pretty neat little building, and the bread there is lovely! We had bought some butter to eat with it, so we found some shelter under an archway and had our breakfast. After that, we decided to meander our way back towards home, but we didn’t take a direct route. First, we stopped in at a market square and bought some fresh strawberries. They were as good as home grown strawberries; so much better than store bought ones!

We wandered some more, browsing through some shops (partially to warm up and partially because they were interesting), and then Sister decided that she really should get some pants.

We went into a mall that we had previously been in for James pants-search. A few days ago, she had found a 3€ rack, tried on dozens of pants, found the perfect pair, and taken it up to the till. The scanner displayed 25€ pants. She left them there, much to the embarrassment of both of us.

After a few days of mulling it over (as well as tying on many more pants) she decided that, since the pants were really nice, and also since her elephant pants may not have much more life in them, she should get the 25€ pants. So on Saturday, after scouting the till to make sure it was a different employee, Sister and I went through the whole ordeal again and walked out of there with magenta pants for her.

It was exciting stuff.

The meandering spent the better part of the day, so we decided to get back to the hostel and stay warm for the rest of the day as we made some bookings for our next destinations.

On Sunday, Sister had discovered an English Mass, so we had a relaxed morning before heading out early to get to this church. When we got to the corner where the map took us, we decided to go clockwise around the building to look for a door. That was the wrong decision. The building was not a simple rectangular shape, and when we followed the border, we came to a huge church that was attached to it, but not the right one. Instead of continuing to follow the border, we panicked and decided to go to another Mass we knew was happening at the cathedral. We rushed over there (it was only about a 5-minute fast-walk away), but didn’t even go in, as we noticed a sheet on the billboard that advertised the English Mass we had failed to find. We looked at the map on that billboard, then decided to rush back to where we’d left off and continue to go all the way around the building.

It was another cold morning, but by the time we got back to that corner (the first corner; the one where we’d turned left instead of right), we were pretty warm with all the speed-walking. The ‘church’ was, in fact, more of a chapel inside of a college/seminary, which explains both why it wasn’t easy to identify as a church and why the building is so huge and convoluted.

In any case, we were still there decently early, and were able to peel off our jackets and cool down before Mass began.

It was a very small congregation; only twelve people, including the piano player. I think it is just a Mass that’s done for tourists, so they get quite busy in peak season, but not so much right now.

After Mass, we found a place that sells spatzel, a really doughy kind of noodle that Sister wanted to try. We had lunch there, ten decided to take a leisurely climb up towards the Capuchin Monastery again.

Monday was a travel day, and we left Salzburg for Chur, Switzerland, at about 8:30 am.

FlixBus is a really cheap bus company that has extensive route options through Europe. It is costing us 26€ each to get from Salzburg to Chur, which is about 6 hours of driving. Not bad at all.

We haven’t been having any issues with this bus company, but this morning, as we boarded, I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people.

The bus station was just a post with a FlixBus sign and the bus times, but people began arriving around 8am and lining up along the building by this post. It was all very civilized, I thought, and we got there early enough that I though we’d have a chance to get good seats. I thought.

Nope.

As soon as the big green bus pulled up, the knobs at the very end of the line straight up ran to the front, began throwing their luggage in, and proceeded to dog the driver until he scanned their tickets and let them board. It. Was. Anarchy.

Everyone was pushed against everyone, struggling to throw their bags in the storage compartment under the bus, then everyone pushed against everyone more as they vied for the attention of the driver.

Not being overly pushy ourselves, we ended up being two of the last ten people to board the bus. The prospects weren’t good, but we were able to sit together, surprisingly, though it was at the cost of being on the 5-seat back row.

The whole Neanderthal bus loading kind of tarnished my morning, but Sister had it worse. The girl beside her on the big bench seat (not me; the one on the other side) was kind of crumpled and laying on her man friend’s lap, sleeping. Unfortunately, one side of her rear was trespassing on Sister, and she had to sit for many hours with some stranger’s butt on her. It ruined her whole day.

As we got closer and closer to Chur, the mountains got bigger and the rain that had started as a sprinkle turned into a steady stream. Also, there was snow. More and more as we approached Chur. I began to think the elephant pants were not appropriate clothing for this climate.

Once we got to Chur, we went to our hostel to dump our bags. Though it was rainy and cool, and there was snow in the ground, it wasn’t too bad. We would definitely be layering up when we got the chance, though. At the hostel, we found a self check-in system that required a code; they had sent this via email 24 hours before check-in. Unfortunately, Sister is one of those stressful people who has roughly 1000 unread emails at any given time, so I didn’t have much hope. Yep. Nope. She hadn’t checked her mail in the last 24 hours.

We ended up wandering up and down for a while, looking for a cafe that would have wifi.

Chur really is a lovely little mountain town; just what you would imagine a little Swiss mountain town to look like.

Anyway, we found a cafe, wifi, and some hot drinks before we got our hostel sorted.

On Tuesday, the forecast predicted some rain, so we decided to make that our town day.

As pretty as Chur is, there is really not much to do there. It is called the oldest city in Switzerland, but the nice old part of it is really just a small town. We had a map planned out to take us to the old buildings and churches that a tourist map had listed. It only took us until noon to see these. Then, we decided to find some Switzerland journals. That only took us a little while, too. We did some wandering through the malls and grocery stores, but by 4pm we were at a bit of a loss. We decided to get the groceries we needed for the evening and next day, then go up to a lookout point and have a beer. So that is what we did.

Wednesday was our hiking day.

I can’t really describe what a terrible time we had climbing up that mountain.

Sister had mapped out our trail somewhat, but it looked a lot different in person than when we saw the squiggly line on the computer screen.

It’s not like we expected a fully enjoyable time, anyway. Nothing about us is equipped to make the activity of a 3-hour hike a party. We don’t look at our doughy physiques or half-worn Sketcher walking shoes and think, “Yeah, we are awesome! We are fully prepared to climb the heck out of that mountain, and it’ll be so fun!”

We did, however, pack six cheese-and-pasta-sauce tortillas, two bottles of water, four oranges, and some chocolate milk and think, “Yeah, we are awesome! We have some food that will make the climb bearable, and even though it still won’t be fun, we’re going to do it anyway!”

I’ve said it before, we’re very self aware.

I tell you this so you know that I never went expecting a nice, easy time.

But we also didn’t set out thinking we’d have to make life-threatening decisions on where to place our feet so as not to die.

So here’s roughly how it went.

The internet said that the downhill hike was around 2.5 hours. We figured we’d give ourselves 4 hours, then, to hike up. We thought that would account for the general hiking incompetencies as well as the added task of gravity.

Reaching the base at 9am, we thought we were doing pretty alright for the next few hours. By 11:30, we reached a switchback in the road that also forked off onto a trail large enough for a car. Spoiler: we should have taken that big path, but we did not.

Since we were pretty tired and hungry, we gave ourselves a goal: we would look for a place to stop and eat only after 12:00. That’s not so much a goal as just normal etiquette, but whatever.

We took the switchback and began walking.

I thought it would only be an hour more, having already hiked three hours.

I thought the trail would be much the same as it had been, which was quite pleasant, if a little taxing.

Nope, nope, nope.

We were picking our way over bits of trail that were covered in tree boughs from the logging that went on. We were stepping with extreme caution through the slimy, melting drifts of snow that had drifted or slid onto the narrow path. We were hoping beyond hope that the snowbanks we plunged our feet into did, indeed, have the trail beneath them.

All the while, we were looking for the three stripes, painted on the trees, that had been marking the trail, but which we had not seen for a while (white, red, and white). All the while, I was picturing the many, many ways we could die with any misplaced step that sent us down the steep bank into the rocks and spiky pines below.

I’m not even fear mongering here, which might be hard for you to believe, because I do tend to fear monger. It was really, really a not good situation we were getting ourselves into.

I told myself that if, by the time we stopped for our lunch break, I hadn’t seen a trail marker, we would turn back.

Unfortunately, we saw a trail marker.

Exhausted, more by the stress of the activity than the work of it, we stopped for lunch. What should have been delicious tortillas tasted like wood chips as we discussed the best plan of action.

To go back would be difficult, as the trail was really bad and would be worse going downhill. But to go on meant we didn’t know how bad it would be, and it had been progressively getting worse up to that point.

That being said, we were invested a half hour in this direction, which should mean (we thought) we were close to the summit. We didn’t want to be that blonde, in the joke, that swims 3/4 of the way to a destination then turns back. I have always sympathized with the blonde in that joke. What if she was going against the current? What if she didn’t know what was ahead? What if she didn’t even know she was 3/4 of the way there, all she knew was that she could safely swim back? There are a lot of variables that could have been in play there.

Anyway, after a short respite, and a whole lot of humming and hawing (an expression that I’ve just realized looks ridiculous when it is typed out) we decided to go on.

It didn’t get better. I wish the Me of now could go back and tell the Me of then to just cut her losses and go back to that wide road. Or back to bed. I mean, if the Me of now had that kind of ability, there are a lot of options.

After what seemed like an eternity of the trail just getting worse, I relaxed a very little bit, probably because my soaking feet had gotten some blood flow and didn’t feel like bricks anymore. Also, Sister was leading, which made me feel like the whole thing was in better hands; we took it in turns to break trail, letting one person test the path so that if they fell, the other one could go on for help. We may not be smart, but at least we’re not dumb about it.

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to die here. I don’t think that’s what God wants,” I said to Sister.

“That’s the spirit,” Sister said, kind of in the absent-minded voice that my Mom always says ‘yes dear’ with when I’m talking.

But I wasn’t done (I rarely am), so I continued, “He doesn’t want us to die, but I think He might just be getting a kick out of all this suffering.”

“Offer it up.” Sister threw back. She has a way of saying more with fewer words than I.

I made sure to offer up my suffering as a blanket statement, so that in three seconds, when I forgot to make it a prayer and continued complaining, it would still be an offering.

Loopholes.

Anyway, we were getting pretty desperate by the time we finally reached the switchback that indicated we were almost there. Well, not almost there, really, but closer. It was some form of benchmark. The trail got a little less treacherous for a while before relapsing back into its old, destructive ways. I could appreciate, at these moments, that this would be a fun trail to take in the summer, when there is no snow and they are cleared of trees. We even saw a couple of wild mountain goats! Once, one even sent stones hurling down the mountain towards my head. A couple whizzed past me before I ducked and scurried on, and I played out the scenario in my head of a rock clipping my glasses and taking them down the mountain. I think I would have found a place to curl up while Sister went for a helicopter. It would have been goat-inflicted icing on a hiking cake that I was already decidedly not thrilled about.

Anyway, that didn’t happen, so the goats were still our friends. They were especially good in our esteem because often it was their tracks that we followed along the trail. We operated under the logic that if a goat could do it, we could. I know that is grossly untrue, but it is all we had.

At around 3pm, we reached Brambrüesch!!!

With great relief, we breached the peak of the mount and looked upon the sunny valley below. The gondola, which obviously isn’t running or we’d have taken that, was there, as well as a few buildings. Since we had decided to take public transit down, as we were sick to death of hiking, we cracked out our celebratory summit drinks. I had some locally-made beer, and Sister had an orange Capri Sun.

As we walked down a blessed asphalt car path, we began to notice that the restaurants and resorts (so, all the buildings) were boarded up.

It became apparent, as we reached the heart of the tiny cluster of boarded-up houses that was Brambrüesch, that there was no transit system here.

Once again, we were stressed.

We found a sign that pointed us back to Chur, but it estimated another 2.5-hour walk, and the last 2.5-hour hike we took was actually 6 hours of death.

Finally, we saw a man by an information centre shack, taking pictures of skis and snowboards, probably using this off-season of no dumb tourists to prepare for more tourists. Sister approached him and asked if he spoke English.

“Leetle,” he said, shaking his head, “Leetle, leetle English.”

“We’re looking for Chur,” Sister said. “Chur.” She reiterated, hoping he would at least recognize the city name. Unfortunately, she was pronouncing it, ‘Tchur’. She even tried ‘Tchoor’ and ‘Shur’. Nothing. She opened her phone up and showed him the town name.

“Oooohhh!” He said, to our relief. “Chur!” He pronounced it with the ‘ch’ you’d hear in ‘Loch Ness’, then the ‘ü’ sound that’s like you’d hear in ‘true’, then a rolled ‘r’ at the end.

No wonder he didn’t understand. There was, indeed, no public transit, but he gave us directions to the road and assured us it was 2.5 hours on foot. The fact that he sent us on our way gave us hope that it wasn’t a summer trail that had been made perilous by winter conditions.

We found the road, and it was, to our very great relief, a paved car path. We could actually enjoy the spectacular view of the Alps that we had there.

The way was marked by those same white, red, and white stripes. They had given us hope on the previous trail, but they just gave us chilling flashbacks on the road home. If all the trails are marked the same, how are we supposed to tell which ones can kill us??!

It was pretty much 2.5 hours on the nose by the time we got down to the bottom. The road was blissfully uneventful and marvelously safe!

We got some groceries, then got back to the hostel by 6pm.

As we sat down to eat and let our muscles stiffen up that night, a friendly guy came and talked to us. Actually, we kind of inadvertently baited him by making microwave popcorn.

Anyway, we were chatting for a while, but when we mentioned we were heading to Venice, he told us to check the news, as Venice is currently flooding.

He was correct.

I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it (if it’s not too flooded).

Thursday was a travel day. We went from Chur to Milan to Venice. We didn’t go right into the famous watery part of Venice; they only have posh hotels there. Now they are posh and flooded.

We got to Venice pretty late, so we just checked into our hostel and went to bed.

Our muscles hurt.

Like, a lot.

Friday

Today, we took our time in the morning, since it was rainy outside. We opted out of the breakfast offered here at the hostel and instead walked down to a grocery store nearby. There, we got fruit, bread, and jam. Next door was a coffee shop, so we thought we might as well grab a couple coffees. The coffee culture here is a total flip from the Austrian. In Austria, there is a strong café culture. There, you have very nice, even fancy cafés where you would go to be social as you take your time drinking.

Here, it is very common to see café bars, where you’re handed a shot glass-sized cup of espresso in exchange for a coin and expected to be done in a few minutes, as you stand at the bar. I’m pretty sure we did it wrong this morning, but we got ourselves caffeinated, so I’m not too worried.

After that, we came back to the hostel for breakfast and prepared our hearts for what would await us across the long bridge to Venice.

The bus across only cost us 1.50€ each, so I figured that if everything was still underwater when we got there, at least we wouldn’t be out much.

As it turns out, I’m glad we didn’t cancel all of our plans! Venice is quite the crazy, beautiful city, and we didn’t even have to wade through it!

It’s pretty nuts that it’s November and they’ve just had a devastating flood, but the place is still teeming with tourists. It can be hard to see past the sea of people that annoy me to appreciate the beauty of Venice, but it really is a neat place. Also, it’s just too ironic for me, as a tourist, to really rag on tourists, so I try to stop myself.

Anyway, today, Sister and I pretty much just wandered through Venice and got massively lost. We saw the church where the relics of St Lucy are on display, wandered the crooked, narrow streets, crossed canals here and there, and looked in at shops. It’s definitely tourist central, but the ancient, leaning buildings would have some stories to tell if we could only know.

We were cautious of buying anything in Venice as we had heard a terrible story about tourists who bought four coffees at a cafe and were billed 100€; from what we saw, though, it’s no worse than London, Vienna, Salzburg, or Chur.

Well still avoid the cafés.

Anyway, we didn’t really have any goals for the day; just getting a feel for the city. In the evening, we did some foraging for a supper meal and came back to the hostel. We had fried cabbage for supper. As Sister was cooking it, she was getting all kinds of inquiries on what it was. I don’t think anyone was very excited about it after she told them it was cabbage. Kind of like the time we ordered a couple of waters at a college bar and they came in fun glasses. Lots of friendlies coming to ask what we had. Lots of disappointed people never speaking to us again.