For the records, I'd like to be able to remember and cherish a little bit of my totally normal, totally tame, wholesome spring break so I'm going to go back a little and describe some of the main events that took place on my trip to Austria. Plus, I feel that the information I am about to divulge to you may come in super handy the next time you find yourself in need of ways to kill 30 hours. So y'all better listen up closely (credit Dr. Dre):
You know when you have to wake up really early one morning to get ready for something extremely important, let’s say an interview, vacation, wedding, etc. so you shower the night before, set your alarm, pack your bags or gather all of your gear, lay out your clothes, (insert other preparation activities here) the night before, so at the crack of dawn you can jump out of bed and get a head start on your super important day with no snags to slow you down? Well, yes, tomorrow was going to be one of those days, and no, I had not prepared myself in the aforementioned way; which I did not know at the time, would become a theme for the rest of the trip I was about to take. Nonetheless, it was the night before my Austrian spring break vacation and the 6 a.m. departure was looming ominously ahead of my “anti-morning person” disposition. So, what was my grand idea to make the following days’ 30 hour journey to Tyrol a little easier? Go out the night before, tire myself out, and sleep my way to the Alps.
You may be snickering, thinking about what I’m going to say, “That silly girl probably overslept her alarm, missed her bus, forgot her skis or her passport, threw up on the plane,” or some other unfortunate consequence of my college-student thought processes. However, you’re wrong. It was a brilliant plan! I woke up at the crack dawn, rather miserable, but managed to stuff all of the necessary paraphernalia in a suitcase, pack my skis in the car, get on the bus on time, and
pass out for basically the next 30 hours of my life. Four hour bus ride to JFK airport: slept. Six hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany: slept. Seven hour layover in the Frankfurt airport: slept (in my ski jacket on the terminal floor). Take a look at this photo: as everyone is rejoicing and getting on the airplane to Innsbruck, Becky and I are still sleeping in the corner of Terminal 24 in what we affectionately called the German Jungle (aka a few shrubbery pots put there by the Germans to lighten up the scene because I think Germany just makes people nervous, I dunno but I think they get a bad rap with all that Hitler stuff, but hey, Hitler was Austrian so moving on!)
I managed to wake up for the scenic puddle jumper ride into Innsbruck wrought with guilt that I could have possibly missed one of the most beautiful sites on earth, the Alps from above, but also in response to the fact that during the last seventeen hours while Becky and I had slept, everyone else on the trip had been bonding and making friends and no one knew us when we got to Austria (besides as “those sleeping girls”). Actually, here is a photo
of Becky caught in the act. I think I was cut off of this picture probably for a good reason, I'm sure my sleeping position was not cute, most likley in the O-zone (mouth wide open?)
They would come to appreciate our abilities to sleep at any time and place later in the trip when they were ready to quiet us down. Therefore, all-in-all my plan worked, I slept my way to the Alps and woke up completely adjusted to the central European time zone.
Luckily, my “tripmates” gave Becky and I an extension on relationship development, and they decided to befriend us despite our narcoleptic habits (or perhaps now looking back on it, they just wanted to use us bait for meeting Austrian locals to refer them to the hippest discotheques in town- see photo below of Tom and the friendly Italian man/teen/kid?)
either way, friendship ensued and our first night in Austria started off with a bang. A little Catchphrase© in the penthouse apartment (yes, oh so classy Hotel Tautermann) loosened up the newfound group of friends and allowed us to learn who in the future to avoid sitting across from so they did not end up on your team. Once it had reached Austrian dining time – around ten o’clock at night – we stampeded in our large group of Cornell tshirt-clad students some carrying bottles of beer we bought at the local Impreis, exercising the freedom of no open container laws, and talking boisterously of how Jeff Foote totally owned that Temple player just hours before in the NCAA tournament – not looking like Americans at all – to the downtown area where we dined on wiener schnitzel and sauerkraut.
After dinner, we loitered like Americans (meaning we stood outside McDonalds for a while contemplating the purchase of "McBeers," Mickey D's sad excuse for a German beer) before deciding to part ways for the night because 30 people was too large of a group to really take anywhere (kind of like Freshmen hall style where your whole floor goes out together but you never really end up going anywhere because 30 people is always just too many to get into a party, get it?) So a few valiant souls and myself decided to stroll the streets of Innsbruck in search of the discotheque of our wildest Austrian dreams. This was when we met aforementioned Michael who led us through this restaurant to a sketchy bar filled with a bunch of 16 year old looking girls with braces and some creepy but endearing Austrian boys who were to become our friends for the night. As the bar became more petafile-ish by the second, our Austrian comrades suggested we follow them to a discotheque. So with the protection of some strong American men, Tom, Bill, and Rob, we got in the Mercedes Benz cabs with the lads and went the "Tree House Bar."
Legit, it looked like Tarzan's house sans naked man plus cookoo clocks
When the night was over, I received a rose from my Austrian boy toy Luca <3333>
I will leave you with the Austrian version of Tik Tok. Austrians went crazy anytime this song was played and we quickly caught on to its catchy Euro beat and descriptive lyrics
