Zentralfriedhof

Today during my four hour break between travel writing and German I visited the cemetery. There are 2.5 million people buried in the cemetery in Vienna. It is the second largest cemetery by area in Europe and the largest concerning the number of people buried there.

Walking around, I could see there was room for plenty more. It was huge!

Both Beethoven and Johann Strauss are buried here. These show just part of their tombstones.

Rose on the wet grave with the Mozart memorial in the background.

All of the graves had really neat statues on them.

These last two were part of Strauss' grave.

Hiking in Gimmelwald

This is the hostel we stayed in. You can only get there by tram. Our first night was really fun, we made some friends from all over the world, and ate some chocolate fondue.

The next morning we started off hiking at 9:30. This was the first sign we saw when starting our hike. We all had a good laugh about it...until we found out a short time later how true it really was.

This was the trail. No it's not mud, it was....

...cows. 'Nuff said.

See the snow at the top? Thats what we hiked up to.

More cows.

Cow eating my sweater.

I fell in the snow during our 'snowball fight' and was clearly not very happy about it.

I look disgusting, but this picture is too funny not to post. This is when Kristin and I became the laughing stalk of Switzerland! We were so desperate that we went to some random cabin at the top of the Alps and said "We're cold, can we come in?" The five boys just turned towards us and laughed until one led us into the house. Unfortunately nobody in the house spoke English and I don't think I have ever been in a more awkward situation. Ever. Eventually we left the house but just stood there on the porch, realizing there was no way we could make it down at that point because it had started snowing even harder...and i was still in sandals. We turned around to see the whole crowd of people inside the house laughing and staring at us out the window. We finally got the guts to walk back in the house... so humiliating! Eventually (through lots of struggling to communicate) we worked out a deal. They gave me some awesome shoes to hike down in and gave us both matching jackets. We had to leave Kristin's camera at the top of the mountain to make sure they would get their stuff back later that night. Needless to say, we were ecstatic to finally get back to the hostel at 5 pm!

Hiking in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

Milan

Our train from Venice to Switzerland had a two hour lay over in Milan. The Milan cathedral is my favorite one so I was determined to find it! Kristin and I asked some guy where the cathedral was and he told us it was just three or four stops down on the yellow metro line. Our train didn't leave for a while so we decided to go find it.

Here it is, right at the top of the stairs of the subway.

Amazing!!

The policemen here were obviously very busy.

I was a little scared when Kristin and I returned to the station with fifteen minutes before the train left and Chip and Breanna weren't at the platform! With only five minutes to go before the train left we finally found them and jumped on the train with a whole minute to spare. Glad we didn't miss our train.

Venice

I flew into Venice on a Wednesday afternoon. I took the bus that was supposed to get me close to my hotel....but it turns out it took me to the completely wrong area! A nice old lady looked at the address i showed her, looked at my map that a hotel manager almost wouldn't give me, and pointed to an area off the map and said uh..over here. So to make a long story short I got on a random bus, got off at a stop that looked good, wandered the streets of an area called Mestre for three hours in the rain, and found my hotel!

First picture as I got off the bus and realized I was totally lost.

After I found my hotel and showered, Breanna, Chip, and Kristin found the hotel! We set off to explore Venice. Luckily the weather had cleared up to blue skies and sun.

We walked around a ton looking for a good place to eat....

...saw lots of hanging laundry out the windows...

...and found a great restaurant with fabulous pesto lasagna.

Gondola men!

Glass blowing.

Pretty much, I LOVE Italy and am counting down the days until I can come back.