NOTE: This was written May 13th (after the other post from May 13th). Blogger was still being silly though so it wouldn't let me insert any pictures... hence why I'm only posting it now. Everything is really out of order, heh.

Dang it, Blogger is still dead! Granted, it has only been about 45 minutes, haha. Anyway, since I have this random motivation to blog at the moment, I will write ANOTHER ONE. Wow!

So this is going to be about what I did on Sunday (that's May 8th for anyone who cares/is too lazy to look at a calendar). On Sunday, I woke up at 5AM and took the U-Bahn. The end.

Haha, nej. So I took the U-Bahn to Wien Meidling and from there, I went to explore some mountains with a friend. We took a train to Schladming and from there, we took a bus to Ramsau am Dachstein. Well, technically past Ramsau (over?), actually, but let's not get too technical. Basically, the Dachstein is a freaking huge mountain in the Alps. We went to the section in Steiermark (Styria), where there is an observation platform about 2700 meters up. There is also a huge glacier where year-round skiing/snowboarding is possible (I think).

Ridiculously green... and blue.

Getting there was freaking expensive, but I think it was well worth the trip because the mountains were gorgeous and the weather was perfect (mostly...). We basically hiked up a section and just napped for an hour in the grass. This was basically my dream. Napping on a mountain in Austria (no, I am not being sarcastic). Seriously, it's combining sleep (awesome) + mountains (awesome) + sick views (awesome). That's just a triple-whammy of awesomeness right there. Oh right, and there was hot cocoa too. Yeah, you really can't beat that... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Right. So anyway, I basically listened to awesome Icelandic music and napped for an hour under the sun on a mountain, and it was lovely. After the refreshing nap, we kind of hiked/wandered a bit more and then headed down to the main lift that would take us up to the observation platform. When you are 2700 meters up a mountain, it gets pretty cold. When we reached the platform/glacier area, it was like winter all over again (snow and everything, of course). Eventually, big storm clouds/fog started rolling in, which made way for some pretty surreal and kind of creepy scenery. I couldn't really capture the feeling with pictures, so you'll just have to use your imagination. It started snowing so we decided to pop in to the restaurant thing and grab some hot cocoa. The hot cocoa was definitely necessary because it was REALLY COLD. I think the hot cocoa at that restaurant was some of the best I've ever had. It was really rich, creamy, and not ridiculously hot so you could actually sip it comfortably. I also got a delicious donut that was filled with Nutella (hazelnut + chocolate = winning combination. Good thing people in Europe also feel this way because everything is chocolate + hazelnut, haha). After we were satiated and warm, we headed back down. Unfortunately, since it was snowing, it was obviously raining at the bottom, which was too bad because we wanted to bum around/explore a bit more. After a while though, it stopped and the scenery was actually quite beautiful but eerie. There was a lot of fog as well as random patches of light due to the breaks in the clouds.

I think this one is my favourite.

Skiing/snowboarding on the left.

The fog rolling in.

 

After the rain

Later on, we caught the last bus back down to Schladming, and explored the town a bit. By then, the weather was perfect again and the sky was absolutely gorgeous! I wish I could have stayed long enough to capture the sunset because it was probably amazing.

Schladming

Awesome neon-yellow house?!

Sick clouds

Schladming quite a nice little town and the feeling is different from the other towns I've been in. It doesn't feel as... "fake" (not that the other towns were fake at all, but yeah... I don't know how to describe it). OH. And for some reason, tons of people were wearing Lederhosen (just as normal clothing, not for a festival or something). I admit, that was a first. I had never seen people just wearing them normally, haha. Also, there were a ton of random teenagers on our train. Maybe it was like "Visit-Vienna-Weekend" or something? I have no idea. That's another thing... trains are starting to get REALLY CROWDED, which makes me a bit sad. There have been multiple instances where I thought I would have to stand for the whole trip. Eurgh.

You can't really tell in the pic, but they're definitely Lederhosen.

This is totally unrelated to anything -- hardly anyone takes credit cards here, and there is definitely no such thing as cash-back. Just a random thought.

Yep, so that basically concludes everything what I've been doing these past days (for real). Tomorrow, I'm going to go a Vienna Boys Choir concert. I think this weekend will be filled with doing a lot of museum-visiting and such in Vienna.

Sorry about the blur.