War

As I lay down my quill to this scroll, many images from the previous fortnight rush into my head...memories too vivid and overwhelming to be contained by this small piece of parchment, but I will try nonetheless to relate these experiences (faithfully and accurately, as always) to you. 

The date was 22 September in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eight. The air was cool and crisp, a hint of autumn in the breeze that grazed my face as I trekked through the Alpine wilderness. On the surface it appeared to be just another beautiful day in the Austrian countryside -- birds twittering around, woodland creatures frolicking nearby -- but there was something not right...even unnatural...about this particular day. Maybe it was the way the air seemed to contain a hint of blood and death. Maybe it was the massive fortress of war I approached known as Festung Hohenwerfen on the hill overlooking the valley. It was like nature knew what was about to take place, and it was saturated with what was inevitable on this fateful day. 

The sun glinted off our spears as we trudged wearily to what felt sure to be our doom. My intestines felt like they were tying themselves in knots I was so nervous, but my grip on my weapon was firm. The soldier next to me, literally quaking with fear, exclaimed “Why are we even doing this?? We’re only college students on a study abroad trip! I didn’t sign up to die!” I back-handed him in the face with my iron-clad hand and felt no emotion at the blood trickling down his face. I had no interest in his cowardice and useless excuses. After all, this was war. 

Shortly thereafter, we halted our march. The whole world seemed to pause for a blissful moment as we gazed up the rocky, wooded ridge which seemed to thrust the mighty fortress toward the sun, shining brightly as if unaware of the violence that was about to take place. That moment was the last peace we would ever know. I never knew how much I enjoyed breathing until confronted with the thought of it ceasing. A speck materialized at the top of the hill, growing and elongating until it embedded itself into the throat of the soldier who had been so afraid to die. Time slowed as I watched him fall to his knees with the arrow protruding from his neck, this first messenger of death followed by a cloud of them, blotting out the sun. 

Then the world sped up with all its sound and fury as a cry of sheer passion and rage filled my throat and left my lips as I raised my spear in defiance to the shower of arrows and charged Hohenwerfen with all the spirit and strength I possessed. We dodged trees and arrows as we sprinted up the hillside, every second another companion hitting the ground and breathing his last. As I neared the walls, I took a flying leap off a rocky ledge and hurled my spear with such intensity that I thought for sure my arm would separate from my shoulder. The weapon found its resting place in between the ribs of one of the fortress’s guardians. He toppled off the battlement and struck the rock below with a sickening thud. 

I only had time to draw my sword from its sheath when the gates of the fortress burst open and armored soldiers flooded out and rushed at us with pure ferocity in their eyes. I ran the first one through his torso with my sword and spun and cut the legs out from under the next one. The soldiers behind me unleashed their spears into the mass of enemies, breaking their advance and allowing us to storm the gates. Another comrade screamed as burning oil was poured on him from the wall above, his face contorted with pain and anguish. I hurtled over the dead in front of me—whether friend or foe, I did not know—and dashed up the stairs straight to the throne room of the arrogant duke of this cursed citadel. I had to end this now. 

I stabbed, kicked, and pushed my way along the parapet, but there were just so many of them. I looked at the courtyard below in dismay as I saw that only a few of my comrades still stood. All of a sudden, white hot pain erupted in my back. An enemy had brought his axe down on me from behind, sending me to my knees. My sword fell from my weak grasp, my adversary smirking as he circled me. All conflict had ceased now, my comrades bleeding on the ground…we had failed. I met the stare of my foe with veracity as he brought his weapon up to send me to peaceful death. Hohenwerfen had been just too powerful to overcome, but it had been a worthy adversary. All I felt was a respect for its majesty and gratitude that I had been given the opportunity to storm its gates. And then all went black.

Woche Eins Part 2

Ok...after taking the wrong bus and exploring every part of Salzburg except where I wanted to go, I'm finally back in my dorm room and ready to do some serious blogging. I feel like blogging is such a nerdy thing, and not even nerdy in a good way like knowing the difference between a stormtrooper and an Imperial royal guard, but just dumb...let's call it a journal from now on. Ignore the website name.

By the way, if you're interested in seeing Salzburgian pictures, you should definitely go to the recent photos tagged of me on Facebook, because they're way better at showing you how awesome Austria is than I am. I'm the worst tourist ever, and therefore don't own a camera and basically live as a picture parasite...I let other people do the hard work of taking pictures and then pass them off as mine.

Here's a cool one though from over Salzburg (the other guy is named Seth, and I suppose you could say he is a pretty cool guy):

Hill top overlooking the city

Ok I believe I left off in the last post with arriving in Munich on Sunday, Sept 14. I amazed the customs people in the airport with my fluent German (I said "Hallo", "Ja", and "Danke"). Wait, no we made it to Salzburg in my last post. So my roommate and I get to the dorms we're going to be living in for the semester, and we find a cluster of brightly colored cubes awaiting us trying to pass themselves off as "modern" buildings. Not exactly the centuries-old, breath-takingly beautiful architecture I'd been waiting for, but I'll keep an open mind. The dorms are like a cross between a kindergarten and an insane asylum. Twelve of our group is living in the Internationales Kolleg dorms in all, half in the orange building (me) and half in the blue...war eagle. We basically just got settled in and then walked to the near by Rauschofer Brauhaus, where I got some excellent Weisswurstl (white sausage) and we listened to two Austrians sing Simon and Garfunkel (can't escape America).

The next day we started our orientation. AIFS's resident Austrian expert, Andreas, gave us an awesome walking tour of Salzburg. He is like the quintessential Austrian: very nice, animated, occasionally sings Edel Weiss (that's actually not very Austrian haha), wears a wide-brimmed Bavarian mountain hat. Salzburg is pretty neat because there are these "mountains", really like large hills with sheer cliff faces, spread throughout it, but around them it is just about completely flat. Andreas informed us that glaciers used to flow through the hills here so many thousand years ago, which basically carved the land out of the mountains which Salzburg now occupies. Definitely the most noticeable aspect of Salzburg is the Festung (fortress) Hohensalzburg, which was built in 1079 to guard the Salzach Valley (the river that flows through the middle of the city). It's pretty sweet to go to school every day and see a medieval castle glaring down at you from the hillside. You can see it right above Seth's head. It's usually pretty cloudy, but on a sunny day you can see the Alps too. It's probably like in the low 50s in that picture (and is right now, for that matter), which is probably incomprehensible to ye people of the South.

Today is the last day of St. Rupert's festival in Salzburg, which is a celebration of their patron saint (Austria is very Catholic...there's only one Protestant church in Salzburg). We were checking out the goods in the tents all along the river in this picture, and there were a bunch of rides, a beer tent, and wurst and pretzal stands all in the Altstadt (old town). Austrians and Germans basically use any excuse they can to have a party, complete with traditional dancers in lederhosen and dirndls and some good old-fashioned brass quartets.

At some point during the week we went to the Augustiners Brau, a pretty awesome beer hall founded by Austrian monks. Apparently fasting all the time got pretty difficult for them, so they found a loophole and decided to brew their own "liquid bread", also known as beer, to hold them over at St. Augustine's Church, right next door. The beer hall still serves that beer, which is a pretty cool tradition, and we had a pretty good time hanging out there, eating good schnitzel and pastries.

PROST!! (auf Englisch: Cheers!)

So German classes started last Tuesday, and meine Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut, so I'm in a perpetual state of confusion. I'm surrounded everywhere by stuff I don't understand, from my cell phone (which is all auf Deutsch), to the grocery store (reading the ingredients for dairy products just became a lot harder), to every person in the city besides us. How dare an entire country speak a language I can't? I guess when people of your language have invaded every country in Europe multiple times you get that right, so I suppose I understand.

Somehow I'm in Intermediate German I for the orientation, but next week when the real semester starts I'm going to strongly request to be in Beginning German II. The class is taught almost entirely in German, which means I am at somewhat of a severe disadvantage. I can't tell whether my teacher, Eva, detests me or likes me... she for some reason thinks that I am zoned out all of the time, so whenever I'm just a little behind the rest of the class in turning a page or something, she says "Schcottie....". She's a slavedriver. I think I only got that once today though, so there's improvement. I'm not used to a teacher demanding rapt attention from me for an entire two hours. I'm doing okay with written stuff though...Frau Witt-ler von Greenbrier must have helped me after all.

But I made it through the week and after class on Friday we hiked Monchsberg, which is the mountain right next to Altstadt that the fortress is on. Look, we even decided to pick it up:

We hung out and watched Top Secret that night...good ole 80s humor...and the next day we hiked Kapuzinerberg, which is on the opposite side of the river from Monchsberg, which is where the first picture of this post was taken. Seth and I had a delightfully manly time running through the woods, preferably off the trail and close to the cliff, with our shirts off and imaginary spears in our hands. There was an incredible view from up there...pictures just don't do anything here justice.

Five of us went to the Salzburg International Church on Sunday, which meets at the Lutheran church, and that was really interesting and cool. There was a strange mix of Americans, such as the pastor, Austrians, and Africans (the first black people I've seen in Austria haha). It was really refreshing to sing some hymns that I knew and take communion with this very diverse group...it felt like a very real picture of the body of Christ. We went back later that night for Tanzabend (dance evening), where two Scottish musicians sang some awesome Scottish folk songs and...Johnny Cash. Awesome. In between these two multicultural events, we wandered through Mirabell Gardens, which is very beautiful, but of course had the most fun in the strange Gnome Garden. Behold, my little friend:


That's all for now. Come back next time to hear about how I slayed a dragon at the Hohenwerfen fortress and proceeded to pillage and burn the beautiful Alpine countryside, retreating then to my base of operations, an ice cave.

And if you feel so inclined, I would love to be kept in your prayers, especially concerning several matters:

1) That I would really embrace my time here in this beautiful place that God has made (whether the Europeans acknowledge it or not), and not be mad about not having what I'm used to having as an American-i.e. the Office, Auburn football, speaking English, living relatively cheaply, and friendships with those back home.

2) That I would really make some good friends while I'm here, and not do what I tend to do sometimes and dwell on how amazing my friends are back home. I feel like I am prone to thinking that I have made all of the strong friendships I will ever have and therefore am stubborn about investing time in new people, even if those new people are great (which most everybody here is).

K Thanks Bye!

Woche Eins

So I'm in Europe! It's still hasn't really set in; everything's been moving so fast I think it's going to take a while to really realize it. It is ridiculously beautiful here and also hasn't gotten above the 60s since I've been in Austria, which is slightly different than what I'm used to in the South. But I'll start from the beginning. This is going to be a long blog so bear with me. It's the first week and a lot has happened, and I'll try to post more regularly from now on.

So Thursday, September 11 (lucky day for flying), my journey to leave the Shire and conquer Middle Earth, or something like that, would begin. Sarah and I flew out of Atlanta at 5:30 pm and we met two other people that were also going with our AIFS group. Let me just tell you that it sucks trying to sleep on an airplane overnight, especially when it is an airline that is about to go bankrupt like Delta that has really uncomfortable seats and has your knees jammed into the person in front of you. And also the screen in front of me with a free movie was a little distracting, so I enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall instead of sleeping for very long and arrived in London Gatwick airport at 7:00 am their time, 2 in the morning my time. Sir (for RH peeps)!

It took us an HOUR AND A HALF to get from the airport to our hotel in downtown London (which is a MASSIVE city) and by that time I basically felt like a zombie, except not as awesome. I couldn't take a nap though, because the only way to kill jet lag is to make yourself stay up until London nighttime and then, after being up for like 2 straight days, go to sleep. Apparently you can't stab it in the heart with a wooden stake, which surprised me. We were staying right across the street from Hyde Park, which is a huge green space right in the middle of the city, maybe bigger than Central Park. We quickly found out that we were going to have to choose carefully what we spent our money on, because the dollar is terrible everywhere else in the world ($2=1 pound). We met some of the other people in our 46ish-person group from all over the US at the hotel and got some breakfast, wandered around Hyde Park, and walked around some cool London streets. There's not skyscrapers everywhere like New York so it feels a lot smaller, even though, as previoiusly said, it's not. Top that off with a lunch of fish and chips and dinner at a pub with some English cider and we'll call it a day.

Brace yourself for my next day; I'll try to paint the picture as simply as possible so as not to overwhelm you:

1) Bus tour of London. Buckingham Palace. Awesome. Tower Bridge. Sweet. Streets where Madonna is seen driving her kids to school. Who cares. Drury Lane. Holy crap, but no muffin man. Parliament while not being blown up on November 5 by a masked avenger. Pretty cool. I literally cannot remember everything I saw because London is packed with too many amazing things to even begin naming.

2) Went inside Westminster Abbey. This was truly amazing, just to see hundreds of years of famous people I've read about in school (Bloody Mary, Isaac Newton, William and Mary, etc.), but even more so because I saw some of the most elaborate, beautiful architecture ever, and I'll never be able to show you because cameras weren't allowed. Oh well.

3) Went to a festival, sat on a field by the Thames and the London eye, listened to a swing band, and ate authentic Jamiacan food. Slightly strange, but really cool.

4) Toured the Tower of London. This is a 1000-year old castle that has guarded the village/town/city/metropolis of London for an entire millenium. Part of it was even originally built by the Romans. It had some pretty sweet swords, spears, maces, suits of armor, and other stuff like that. Not to mention the crown jewels, which I'm sure are worth so much they're basically priceless. There's too many stories to tell from there, but one I thought was particularly awesome: one king back in the day thought he'd dig a moat around the castle and connect it to the Thames river. He thought it was a genius idea because they could dump their human waste products over the walls into the moat, and when the tide went out the river would carry all of their feces out to sea. Too bad the moat was deeper than the river and the castle just ended up being permanently surrounded by crap.

5) Avenue Q at West End. Yes, we saw a play starring puppets that is set in New York while we were in England. London is a hoppin' place at night.

So we got up at 5:00 the next day and flew out of the huge, new terminal at Heathrow airport to Munich. British Airways was so much better than Delta. Nice leather seats, a mushroom, bacon, and egg sandwich (what the crap??), and an awkward British pilot who would just stay on the intercom for far longer than he actually had anything left to say ("Well...I believe we will be having fortuitous weather upon arrival...a light rain...maybe some clouds..........we plan on landing on the runway, after lowering the wheels, and not, as you might think, nose diving into the ground, creating an explosion rivaling those of the Battle of Britain...") you get the idea. He didn't really say that last part, although he would have gained my respect.

We got on a bus to Salzburg there and met the directors of the study abroad program. And it was actually freezing, cloudy, and rainy, unlike what our knowlegeable pilot had told us. Welcome to Europe. Even with all that, the Bavarian countryside is beautiful: rolling, green hills with little villages every once in a while. It's amazing how lush everything is here, and how every piece of ground without trees has the greenest grass I have ever seen. Our group split up in Salzburg to dorms and homestays all over the city. My roommate is the same guy that I met in Atlanta and stayed with in London: his name is Andrew, he's from Tennessee (one of the few Southerners woot) and goes to Rice.

This blog is getting long and I'm getting tired. I'm getting up in the morning to hike Untersberg with some friends (the tallest mountain in the area...it's even got snow on top!!), so ich gehe zu schlafen. I'll tell about Salzburg later...it deserves it's own post. Just think fortress on a hill, Mozart, Alps, and a language I don't understand until then.

And as for the people, they all seem really nice, although I haven't gotten to meet all of them since we're split up everywhere. It's hard to be away from Auburn during football season and being away from friends I love, but I'm trusting that this will be an amazing experience. More later.