Yesterday morning I woke up around 10 and decided to go out and explore more of the city with one of my hostel roommates, Tim.  He is an Austrian from Vienna and is currently doing 9 months of civil service as a paramedic.  We walked into the old town and decided to go up to the fortress and we got some really great views of Salzburg and the surrounding area.

We then got lunch at a local deli and he recommended a meat sandwich that is very common amongst Austrian people.  We sat on a bench by the river and ate our sandwiches and talked about life growing up in the US and Austria and his experiences doing civil service.  Afterwards we decided to get half liters of Stiegl at a small pub.  It was pretty tasty.

We then walked to the palace gardens and stumbled upon a gay pride parade which was maybe about 150-200 people large but they were very proud and had many different signs about accepting queer people.  At the front of the parade there was a large van blasting American pop music, and at the back of the parade there was a van selling beers and other beverages.

Tim and I then went to the supermarket to get ingredients for dinner.  We decided to make spaghetti with Viennese sausage and zucchini, and between the two of us we only spent about €8.  I also bought some bread, peanut butter, and jelly for the next day’s breakfast and lunch.

We then went back to the hostel and I cooked dinner and met an Australian guy named Ryan (who also happened to be one of our roommates who had just arrived a few hours prior) who is traveling for six weeks throughout Europe after having worked for four years as an electrical engineer.  While we were eating dinner together we were approached by a group of American guys who wanted to go to a famous brewery across the river around 10PM, and it sounded cool but the other guys seemed pretty drunk already so we offered to meet them there instead of waiting around for them to get ready.

We walked for about 40 minutes before getting to the brewery right around when they were doing last rounds.  I got a half liter of Stiegl and we sat outside and talked about movies.  The American guys were nowhere to be seen, and i was kind of glad because they seemed a little bit too loud and frat boy-esque.  Around 11PM we walked back to the hostel and we got more beers with some more of our roommates.  I went to bed around midnight.

In the morning, I met Laura, a girl from Boston studying graphic design in St Louis, Missouri who just finished a semester abroad in Florence, Italy.  Laura, Ryan, and I decided to go to Berchtesgaden, Germany to see Königsee Lake which two of our Canadian roommates had highly recommended.  Tim needed to head back to Vienna so we all walked to the train station together and headed our separate ways around noon.

Laura, Ryan, and I arrived in Berchtesgaden around 1PM and hiked about 6 kilometers to the lake.  It was a very nice walk and the river was so clear and gorgeous.

When we got to the lake, we assembled our various lunch items and watched people in row boats go across the lake.  The weather got much better and we decided that we would also like to do this.

We got to the boat house just 45 minutes before they were closing and got to row around for a discount.  The water was absolutely beautiful and I had a lot of fun rowing around once I got the hang of it.

After rowing, we decided to get beers at a biergarten overlooking the lake.  Ryan and I got liters of Hofbrauhaus original and it was just as good as I remember it being in Munich—and 2,50€ cheaper!

We then hiked back to the train station and caught a train around 7:30, eventually getting us back to Salzburg around 9.  I remembered that I still had leftovers from the first night I was in Salzburg, so I heated that up and added some of the leftover sauce I’d made from last night and it was pretty tasty.

Tomorrow, I think Ryan, Laura, and I will go to Hallstatt before I go to Vienna in the evening.