hello everyone,
well, i had an exciting, adventurous, and interesting first weekend!
here we go....

it started thurs. night when my 2 traveling companions (crystal williams
and paul kennedy) and i suddenly changed our plans and decided to leave
that night for salzburg, austria.  we left at 1:18 in the morning friday
and ended up taking 3 trains to salzburg with a 2 hour layover in
stuttgart at like 3 in the morning!  we ended up sleeping on the train
station floor.  we finally made it to salzburg around 9AM and hopped on
a different train and went to werfen where they have the biggest ice
cave in the world!  to get to the top of the mountain where the cave
was, we took 2 different buses, walked 15 min., took a cable car (very
scary and exciting, then walked another 15 min.  the walk was rough but
amazing!  i had to keeep telling myself that i was climing a mountain in
the Austrian Alps!  wow! we took a ton of great scenery pics including
one of the 3 of us literally inside a cloud!  yeah, that's how high we
were!  finally, we made it to the cave where it is freezing temperature
inside year-round thus providing ice waterfalls, natural scultpures and
more.  we walked up 700 stairs...(and i thought pepperdine was bad!) but
it was amazing!
we made it back to salzburg around 5 and found an awesome hostel that
actually wasn't full.  the 3 of us shared a room with 3 guys from
australia!  we were totally exhausted at this point from very little
sleep and too much uphill walking, but we did walk around old town for a
couple hours, saw mozarts birthplace among other things.  after getting
back we had a drink in the bar inside the hostel then crashed by 11PM. 
saturday, we did this sound of music bus tour where we saw a lot of
spots where the movie was filmed and also some amazing austrian scenery!
plus, we got to sit down!
then it was time to head for oktoberfest!  we got there around 5, walked
a few blocks to the fairgrounds and there it was.  it's funny, cuz we
all knew it was going to be huge and crazy with tons of people, but we
were still in shock by it.  first, there's carnival stuff everywhere
including full-on rollercoasters, not the wussy ones they usually have
at carnivals.  then you get to the beer tents.  there were probably
around 20 of them, one after another down this dirt road.  each one held
a couple thousand people probably.  it took us over an hour to find one
that wasn't totally full, but we finally made it into the hofbrauhouse
tent!  then it took us forever to find a table and trying to walk in
there was hilarious and very interesting for a girl.  i don't know how
many times my hand was grabbed and kissed.  after finally finding a
table, it took awhile to flag a waitress down and get something to drink
(those poor ladies!)  needless to say, it came evantually and within a
half-hour we were dancing on the tables. :)  and that's all i'm gonna
say about that right now, but if you want the gory details, write me. :)
the tent closed at 11PM, but our train wasn't until 6AM, so we slept in
the train station again with literally hundreds of other people,
including some navy seal guys we'd met in the tent!
we finally made it back to heidelberg around 10 in the morning and i
just slept for 3 hours. :)
hope everyone's doing well,
love,
Christina