Austria's Ballin'

Julie Andrews was crazy... the hills for sure are not alive. They are more completely frozen. And one of my favorite things is a reliable map.

Megs and I went on our own this weekend to Austria. We took a 12 hour train ride through the night which would have been fine if we didn't have to change trains every hour... meaning no sleep. Turns out we had a 2 hour layover somewhere in Germany from 2:00-4:30 A.M. It's 18 degrees outside and for some reason everything was closed. Don't worry, we were able to entertain ourselves.

We spent two hours in the bathroom of the train station because it was the warmest location we could find. We played various forms of running around the sink island games... there were several.

We hid our stuff in different stalls...

We decided how we were going to fix our hair for the ball. Did I mention we were going to a ball in Austria?

Played eeny meeny mini mo with the stalls (closing each door as it was eliminated)... that game got intense!

Honestly... who else could entertain themselves in the bathroom of a German train station at 4 AM? Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Our train finally came and we zoomed right on over to Salzburg... the home of the Von Trapp family. We didn't see any of the childrens... But I swear I heard Liesl singing when were hiking towards Maria's convent.

Salzburg was so frigid and none of their maps made any sense... We kept trying to find the 16 going on 17 pavilion, but I think we ended up in Slovakia. It made me miss Texas and normal streets that are easy to follow... So I decided to show Salzburg what's up...

Despite my navigational frustrations, Salzburg was a beautiful place. Even if the hills weren't actually alive...

I mentioned the Austrian ball earlier... well since we purchased tickets to this ball we didn't have anymore money to spend on this trip. We bought some fruit and bread before we left and every meal consisted of a powdered peanut butter sandwich and either a kiwi or orange. We forgot to bring knives though so we had to find cafes to order drinks and use their silverware. Meghan was very nervous that we would get caught, so we made our contraband sandwiches under the table and would pretend to be reading when waitresses walked by.

We did stumble across one more Sound of Music location... Meghan was convinced the waitresses had discovered what we did and were after us. They let us perform in the concert since it was for the good of Austria, but then they were going to take us in. Please... I can't believe they fell for that one! Of course after our performance we snuck out the back and hid in the Abby!

We decided to hide out in Vienna for a couple nights. After being lost in Salzburg for an entire day we decided not to navigate Vienna on our own. There were some Australian guys in the lobby of our hostel going to the zoo, so we decided to follow them. Apparently Australia does not have pandas because these guys were OBSESSED! Seriously I think we spent over an hour looking at the three panda bears. They took like a million pictures of them too.

After the zoo we made ourselves a powdered peanut butter sandwich of course and grabbed an orange. delicious. Then it was time to get ready for the ball! Probably the single most random thing I have ever done. We saw the Johann Strauss ball advertised online and just bought tickets.

Apparently that's what Vienna is famous for... it's like ball season right now. So how could we go to Vienna and not go to a ball? Unfortunately, I left all my formal dresses back in Texas. I don't know what I was thinking... traveling to Europe without a ball gown? Seriously... So Megs and I had to make our dresses out of the curtains Sound of Music style... or we might have stumbled across some extremely cheap retail store... but the curtains thing seems more appropriate so let's go with that. Not bad for curtains right?

On our way to the ball we went to a cafe and ate something that wasn't powdered peanut butter or fruit (that's why I'm so excited). Vienna is famous for these torts and we didn't want to go to a ball on powdered peanut butter... don't worry we shared it!

The ball was sooo fun though. They started out with this singer and ballet people... then they had like little debutant people dance around. That was hilarious. You could not pay me to do that.

Apparently this Johann Strauss character is like the father, king or president of the waltz... So these Austrian's loved them some waltzing... especially at this particular ball. They also had an upstairs "disco" where they played grease, tutti fruti, time warp, and other classics? They were loving the American pop songs though. It was at the "disco" that we met some friends. They were actually apart of the opening little debutant presentation thing. Still not sure how to pronounce their names so we will just call them our Austrian friends.

We talked with them for a while and then went back downstairs to watch some performance. It turned out to be some weird interpretive dance between a locust and a tulip. It was the oddest thing I have ever seen... but the Austrians loved it! They were all clapping and laughing the whole time.

After the weird insect love story, it was time for the quadrille! What is a quadrille you ask? Yeah we had no idea... but our Austrian friends told us they would teach us. Turns out the quadrille is some historic dance where everyone gets in two lines facing each other... it's like the precursor to square dancing. (I'm in the silver dress right in front of the piano and Megs is across from me)

It was the craziest dance ever... there were like 7 different versions. The guy on the mic would teach them as we went... but he was of course speaking German. We picked the quadrille up pretty fast though... I was impressed. There was a lot of switching partners and grabbing different hands... it was all really fast.

After the quadrille is the gallop... which for all my gilmore girl fans was almost exactly like the run-around... hilarious! Everyone grabs their partner and you literally gallop around the ballroom until he yells something in German and everyone turns and starts running the other way... and then you switch directions again... and then he says something where everyone makes a tunnel, but if you don't get on the tunnel you're running underneath it... no wait now start galloping around the room again! It was madness... and this is not a ball of young people. Most of the people there were pretty old. It was hysterical!

Here we are doing the gallop/ run-around. I love it.

These pictures do not do it justice. I don't think you can feel the sense of urgency out there on the dance floor. It was chaos! I love the Quadrille... and Johann Strauss! Oh speaking of the captain of the waltz... Our friends also taught us how to waltz. I just think there is something so poetic about learning how to waltz in Austria at the Johann Strauss ball on Valentine's Day.

I love Austria.