A Month of Easter Break

Here in Austria, spring break works a little differently. It is nearly a month long. I finished up classes the week before last and am off until May 3rd, when I return to school for a final exam and the start of a new class. So what have I been doing/am planning to do with all this free time? Read on...

Last Sunday morning Ed arrived in Vienna for his long-awaited week long visit. I met him at the airport around 8:30 am, and we headed into the city to get in as much sightseeing as possible before he passed out from exhaustion after two overnight flights. We made it to a lot of the main sights of Vienna, including a tour of the Imperial Apartments at the Hofburg Palace in the city center. That night, we made dinner at my dorm and got to sleep fairly early.

Monday was another busy day in Vienna. We started with a 9:00 am tour of the Schonbrunn Palace, followed by some time spent in the palace's extensive gardens and finding our way through the hedge maze.

Schonbrunn Palace

The maze, from the platform in the middle

Giant eggs at the Easter Market outside the Schonbrunn

 Later that afternoon we did some errands in preparation for our trip to Slovenia and took a guided tour of Parliament. In the evening we went to see a murder mystery play at the English Theater.

We left early Tuesday morning to pick up our rental car, and arrived at the office around 8:30, only to find out that the rental car company we booked through had changed the pick up location and we were at the wrong one. Half an hour later we got to the right office, and by about 9:30 we were on the road. After figuring out how to get out of the city, we hit the highway and it was pretty smooth sailing until we had to get off the highway close to the Slovenian border, at which point Google maps took us on a road that looked like this:

It was a beautiful, nerve-wracking drive on a very narrow road that twisted up through the mountains with nary a guardrail in sight. Needless to say, we took it pretty slow and arrived a little later than expected. We got to Robanov Kot, a small village in the Savinja Alps of Slovenia, around 4:00 pm.We were warmly greeted at the farm/bed and breakfast by the owner, Marijana, with homemade blueberry schnapps and warm, delicious crepes. We dropped our bags off in our cozy room with two balconies overlooking the mountains, and drove back down into the valley to hike up to the waterfall before it got dark and/or started raining. We didn't quite beat the rain, but made it back to the car before it was more than a sprinkle.

The Govc Tourist Farm in Robanov Kot, Slovenia

The 300 foot Slap Rinka waterfall

 

 

 

 

 

The view from one of the balconies

At 7:00 that night, we had our first meal at the farm, as breakfast and dinner came included with our half-board accommodation (only 32 euros per night!) We had no idea what we were going to be served, Marijana just asked us what time we would eat and we showed up in the dining room. It turned out that dinner was a delicious four course meal with soup, salad, a main course of pork, potatoes, eggplant, and pasta, and some delicious cake with a maple-like frosting for dessert. After dinner we went to the sauna and hot tub for a bit, then headed to bed so we could wake up early for a day of adventure.


On Wednesday morning we went down to the dining room for breakfast, which had been scheduled for 8:30. This meal, like dinner, was a scrumptious feast of fresh-from-the-farm foods. We had fresh baked bread, homemade jam, honey and butter, a platter of meats and cheeses, a sweet cottage cheese made on the farm, eggs cooked to order, and plenty of coffee.

A great way to start the day!

At 10:00, our climbing guide, Andre, from  tour company called Adventure Valley, came and picked us up at the farm. We drove down into the valley to a limestone cliff popular for climbing, with a variety of routes for all different ability levels. We spent the morning working our way up to more difficult climbs, and finally both got stuck on a route called "Alien Trap".

Part of the wall (about 60-80 feet high)

Ed attempting to climb the "Alien Trap" route

After climbing, we went back to the farm to pack a quick lunch, and were then picked up by another guide for a bike trip in a closed mine. We drove through the mountains for about 45 minutes to the 300-year-old mine, where we were outfitted with bikes, helmets and headlamps before the metal gate was closed behind us. The tour lasted about two hours, and included a few stops along the way to see different areas of the mine and hear explanations of the history and the mining process. After leaving the mine, we rode downhill for a few kilometers to the mine's museum, then got a ride with the tour company back to our car at the entrance. It was a very interesting and unique experience, with a mix of history, geology and adventure. At one point the guide had us turn our headlamps off to see how completely dark it was in the mine, and get an idea of what a miner experienced when his light went out unexpectedly and he just had to sit down and wait for someone to find him.

WE got back to the farm that evening and once again had a delicious dinner. We were pretty tired from our day of activities and went to sleep right after we ate. On Thursday, our lat full day in Slovenia, we got up before breakfast to walk around the farm for a little bit. We once again ate a very filling meal at 8:30, and headed out for a day of hiking. We planned to hike to the end of the valley and up the mountain as far as we could before reaching snow, then back towards the farm and up the mountain on the right side. As we were leaving, the farms resident mischevious dog, Zen (probably not how it is spelled, but that's what it sounded like), began to follow us. We thought he would turn back a little ways down the road, but he seemed to be pretty excited to go on an adventure, and so we gained a loyal companion. We reached the end of the valley and started hiking up the mountain. We stopped for a break at a small waterfall, where Zen enjoyed drinking the fresh alpine water and splashing around in the pool.

Zen playing in the pool under the waterfall

Hiking to the end of the Robanov Kot valley

As we continued on, the trail got steeper and harder to navigate. We reached a point where there was really no discernible trail, just a rocky ledge with a wire handrail and metal spikes sticking out of the rocks as "steps":

The "trail"

 When we reached this point, Ed started to climb up a little ways to see what was ahead, while I stayed closer to the bottom, standing on one of the metal rungs and holding onto the railing. The loyal Zen tried to follow Ed up by climbing up the slightly grassy part on the right. He got about ten feet above me, lost his footing and started to slide down. I lunged to the right, holding the railing with my left hand, and used my right arm and leg to catch the falling Zen. If I hadn't caught him, he would have continued sliding down and off the cliff we had just come up via a very steep staircase.

Zen decided to lay down for a bit after his near death experience.

We didn't want to leave Zen behind, and were a little wary of the "trail" ourselves, so we turned back to bring our new friend home. We dropped him off at the farm, where he was distracted by some new people walking by long enough for us to slip away and continue our day of hiking. We spent the afternoon exploring trails going up the right side of the valley, passing through other farms up higher into the mountains before heading back down for dinner.

 We had our last supper on the farm that night, and a final breakfast the next morning before heading back to Vienna via the Mauthausen concentration camp outside of Linz. We stopped there for about two hours and took a very sad walking tour with audio guides before driving the final couple hours back to Vienna.

Saturday was the last day of Ed's visit, and we spent it seeing a few things in Vienna which we didn't get to in the beginning, including the Danube River and the Stephansdom cathedral and crypt. The crypt tour, which we had not planned on but happened to be there at the right time for, was interesting and slightly creepy. The older part was first built in the 13th century, and contained, amongst many caskets, metal jars filled with the preserved organs of the royal family. The "new" part of the crypt, built in the 17th century, was full of the bones of the more common Viennese, including a pit right under the center of the city where the bodies of the victims of the plague were dumped and buried. On Saturday night we got standing room tickets for the opera and went to watch the last 45 minutes or so, as we didn't really want to stand for an entire 3 hour performance. On Sunday morning I rode the train to the airport with Ed. Saying goodbye was hard, but we had a great week of new and exciting experiences.

Tomorrow I will kick off the second part of my spring break with an evening flight to Palma de Mallorca, and island off the east coast of Spain. I will meet up with the other three Florida girls there for a couple days on the beach, then fly to Edinburgh to meet my friend Bobby. I will spend a week there, then fly to Munich for a day and night with a few other exchange students and return to Vienna via bus. I haven't put a whole lot of planning into this excursion, besides knowing where I am sleeping most of the time, so we'll see how it goes. I'll try to keep friends and family updated on my whereabouts and write about the whole trip when I return to Vienna on the 28th. Until then, auf wiedersehen!