Two Countries in Three Days

First of all, I’m in my Theology of the Church class right now. Don’t judge. I’m taking good notes. I’m just multi-tasking.
Did I mention that Professor Cassidy has a Scottish accent? He does. Put that together with his insanely passionate love for Christ, and he’s one epic man. He just repeats himself a lot. I’m taking advantage of the repeats so that I can blog. Right now we’re talking about Christ as Head and Savior of the Church, and about how all the power of the Church comes from Christ.
(: He’s talking about Romans and Colossians. Two of my faves. (:
Anyways. I still have to tell you about Salzburg (Salts-burg), Munich (Myoo-nik), and Mondsee (Mon-say). That was two weeks ago now. Craziness.
Salzburg is in Austria. Munich is in Germany. Hence the title of this post.
Salzburg.
I woke up at 3am to do the laundry that I should have done three days before. It was great. I made it on the bus with about 33 seconds to spare. We took off, and it was grand.
We got to Salzburg and checked into the hostel, which was pretty darn schwanky, and then we had Mass.
Hostel:

Mass is my favorite thing in the whole world. This Mass was a special treat, because it was celebrated by the Archbishop of Salzburg. He was wonderful. Fr. Brad said the homily, but when he finished, the Archbishop got up and was like “Now I know what I want to say!!!” and then gave a kickin homily about the beauty of faith and reason, and how neither is complete without the other. He told a story about a woman about the truth of what family is called to be, and she said something about how “That’s fine for you, but for me family means something different. It’s anyone that I have any kind of relationship with.”. The Archbishop was like “So STUPID!” It was hilarious. He went off on an awesome “TRUTH IS OBJECTIVE.” rant. He’s a good man (:

After Mass, we had lunch and then a guided tour. Salzburg is a cute place. It is a combination of being tourist-y and quaint. There were some awesome Churches, I’ll give it that much.

Pic from Lunch:

Pics from the tour:

Before we went on the trip, we were told that Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest was somewhere in the area. When we saw this on the mountain, we all took tons of pictures because we thought it was the Eagle’s Nest. Turns out it was just a fancy restaurant.

If you look close, you’ll see a tiny door on the side of the mountain there. It leads into a bunch of catacombs. We didn’t go in, but I thought it was cool enough to note.

NOTE: Class ended right about here, so from this point on I wasn’t being a bad student ;-)

Moving on…

While we were on the tour, we stopped in one particular church that really made an impression. It wasn’t that the building itself was exceptional, though it was very pretty. As we walked into the church, there was a man kneeling in the front entrance. Since basically our first pre-Austria meeting, we’ve been prepped to see this. We’ve also been told that, hard as it may be, it is usually best to ignore beggars.
I spent every second in that church with my heart being torn in two. Now, I’m not stupid, and I realize that there are going to be a lot of people that I shouldn’t give money to. There were other people on the streets that we had to walk by while we were in Salzburg, and there will be more still to come. However, there was something different about this guy. My heart told me that he needed the money. The problem was that the smallest bill I had was a 20 (euros). The only thing going through my brain was all those times that they told us not to give the money. My logic was “If I had something smaller, I would give it.” because I couldn’t justify doing what they told us not to, especially to such a big extent.

I regret it.

Like I said, I’m not stupid, and I know I can’t give every time someone asks. However, I looked that man in the eyes, and I knew his need was real. If I could go back I’d give him every euro-cent I’d had on me. I didn’t learn a lesson, I remembered one. Trust your heart. Maybe I was wrong about the guy and he actually would have taken my money to the nearest dealer. I don’t care. That would be on him. I’d rather look back with a clear conscience and say I loved my brother. Don’t worry though. I’m not beating myself up about it, and I’m planning on being smart. I’m just more willing to put my instincts over the school’s warnings every now and then. With this at least.

After the tour, I went with a few of my amigos for a further look around. We decided to climb up the side of a mountain (We were all dying by the time we got up there. It was insane.) to the castle. Oh, did I mention there was a castle in Salzburg? Yeah. There was a castle. It was awesome. We didn’t take the tour, but we got to go inside the outer wall, and see the view. It made me smile a lot. Here:

Storm really is a happy person. Promise. He just wasn’t feeling photogenic. I guess. ;)

After we hiked back down the mountain, we walked around a bit until we found a random “Italian” restaurant. Emily and I split spaghetti. It was yummy. Storm ate an entire, massive plate of spaghetti by himself. Mary ate some kind of pancake-wonder-thing. It was pretty. The waiter was nice.
Storm would like to say that he doesn’t think that the spaghetti was massive. I would like to point out that Emily and I were full after eating exactly half of what he ate. Boys are weird.
After food, we walked around for awhile. It was dark at that point. I took a picture of the castle. It was pretty.


Emily took these:

We got lost on the way back to the hostel. It wasn’t my fault though! We were walking, and realized we weren’t on the right street, so we turned around. It wasn’t until we walked around for half an hour that we realized we were only one street over from where we were supposed to be, and if we’d kept going for one minute, we would have been exactly where we were supposed to be.
When we got back to the hostel, we flipped through the channels. Lord of the Rings was on in German!!! We took a picture of Emily watching it. I figured Timmy would appreciate all the LOTR references from the day. Here they are:

This tree was in the middle of the castle courtyard. White Tree of Gondor!!!


LOTR in German!!!

Ring Wraith Statue in town.

It was a good day for Lord of the Rings fans. Evening came and morning followed. The second day. (in the Salzburg/Munich/Mondsee weekend)

We got up early and had breakfast in the hostel. Then we got on the buses and headed to Munich. Munich is in Germany!

In Munich, we went to Mass, took a tour, and then walked around. A lot. We saw some awesome churches. We walked around some Imperial Gardens. We went in a candy shop. We walked some more. We went to the Hofbrauhaus. Apparently it’s famous for it’s beer. I tried some. I was willing to drink it, but I really just can’t stand the taste of beer. Oh well. I don’t consider it to be a big deal. (Sorry Armando…)

(Armando will probably never read my blog anyways…)

Pics from Munich:

 

This is where we had Mass (:

Ok, so on the bus from Salzburg to Munich, I was thinking a lot about random stuff. Somehow I ended up thinking about St. Joan of Arc, which made me think of women with swords. Then I started thinking about how, in Catholic art, you rarely (if ever?) see pictures/statues of Mama Mary holding a sword. It’s interesting, considering that, when it comes to spiritual warfare, there is little that Satan fears more than Jesus’ Mama. I thought about it for a bit. Then, when we got to this Church, I saw this statue and had the beautiful realization that it was through her acceptance of God’s plan, despite the sword that she knew would pierce her heart, that the ultimate spiritual battle was won. The sword that pierced her heart is the sword that Satan fears.

This was in St. Michael’s Church. Win!

Reliquary holding relics of Sts. Cosmas and Damien

Awesome statue in St. Mike’s. Mama at the foot of the Cross.

Close up of the altar. Check out St. Michael kickin Satan out of heaven. That’s what I call a Buttered Angel. ;)

So epic.

Door handle to St. Michael’s

Body of St. Munditia

Random government building that we tried to go into.

Emily and I have matching Water Buffalo Hoods. (:

I love socks. (this is for you Jess Haning)

Ok, funny story. So, we were walking through Munich after the Hofbrauhaus. A couple of us (no names ;) were a tiny bit tipsy. Definitely not drunk, just at the point of hilarity. Anyways, so we were killing time before we had to meet the buses, and we were looking for somewhere warm to go. We tried to go back to the candy store, but they were closed. Then, as we were walking down the street, we saw a place with a ton of chocolate in the window. We got excited and went inside. It turned out that the chocolate display was a LIE. Inside, it was half lingerie, half socks. I took a picture of the better half.

We caught the buses and went back to Salzburg and our schwanky hostel.

Evening came and morning followed. The third day.

Ok. Day three. We woke up and packed our bags, and took them to the buses. At breakfast (in the hostel) I overheard some people talking about going to a world-famous café before Mass. Apparently Mozart used to chill there. Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you that Mozart lived in Salzburg. We saw his apartment and stuff. No biggie. Anyway, so I heard about this café and decided I wanted to go. I ran to put my Bible on the bus and we left. We walked for a bit, and then when we got to the café, it was closed. Duh. It was Sunday. Everything in Austria is closed on Sundays. Bad call everybody.
After the café misadventure, we went to Mass in a super beautiful church. It was a “Mozart Mass” which means that the music was done by a choir/orchestra playing Mass parts written by Mozart himself. The songs were super long, so long that we sat down during the parts we would normally be standing and responding in. It was a good experience, but I definitely prefer the normal Mass. After Mass we went back to the hostel to get in the buses. Somewhere in there I realized that I’d lost my hat. Massive. Fail. I’m still bitter about it. Trying not to be, but it was a really good hat! :/ I just keep telling myself that a homeless person who really needed it probably picked up. That makes it better.
We got on the buses and drove to Mondsee for lunch. Here are some pics from lunch. I sat with Ari, my boss’ son. He’s a cutie!

Apfel Strudel

He didn’t want to try the strudel. Then when he did, he got really pumped about it!

After lunch we looked around for a bit, and then went to the church where the wedding scene from The Sound of Music was filmed. Pretty nifty deal.

And THEN…
We got on the buses and came back to Gaming. (:
All in all, it was a good trip. Not my favorite (I really loved Vienna, and Innsbruck, which I have to post about soon, even more than that) but still lovely. I learned some important lessons, including that I shouldn’t get so emotionally attached to a stupid hat. I got a new one by the way. The quality isn’t quite as good, but it’ll do. It looks less American anyways, which is always a good thing over here.
I love you all and miss you all! I’ll post about Innsbruck soon. I’m off to Prague in the morning, so hopefully there will be adventures to talk about from that too. I’m sure there will be.
To all who read this whole thing… you are champions. (: