the end is near...

12.3 & 12.4
Throughout the semester, our program director has invited us to join him at his favorite cafe a few times each month. Subsequently, this cafe -- Cafe Sezession -- has become a favorite for many of us! This week, as the semester is nearly over, he invited us to come on both Wednesday and Thursday; naturally I along went both nights. As per tradition, I was there until the end, along with 4 other friends who stuck around. On Wednesday, we didn't leave until 12:30am, and even then, our program director offered to have us stay longer. Thursday was a little earlier, only staying until 11:30. The cafe is staffed by a husband-wife couple, and Wille takes care of the evening shifts; both nights he gave us complementary drinks, the first night a warm spiced rum, the second night warm apple cider. I can say for a fact that I am going to miss Cafe Sezession when I leave. A couple of us already decided that we'll be going there next Sunday night, as our farewell to Salzburg.

Cafe Sezession

Eric and I

12.5
Friday was our last official day of Senior Seminar. After a talk with our liaison, our program director literally kicked us out of the room, making us leave our shoes behind. Of course we all knew what was to come: goodies (or maybe coal) from St. Nicholas! Once we were let back in, we found Milka, and orange and peanuts in our shoes!



After snacking on our sweets and filling out some paperwork, we ended the day by taking another shot together! It was a great way to end out last class together!

After class, we walked over to Mirabell to take one last group shot. We finally have one of us in Salzburg!



12.6
I got up bright and early, as I was catching the 7:30 train to Hallstatt with my friend Teresa. Nearly half of the group had already visited Hallstaat, and highly recommended it, so we were excited to see it for ourselves! After about 3 hours on the train, we made it to Hallstatt. As the train station is on the opposite side of the lake, we had to take a ferry to get into town. Even through the fog and rain/snow it was a very cute town! However, there wasn't a whole lot to do there, so we found a cafe to sit in, warm up and enjoy some coffee and dessert.

Teresa and I in Hallstatt

Our original plan had been to catch the 3:30 train back to Salzburg, however, due to the lack of things to do, we intended to catch the 1:30 instead. This early time only allotted 5 minutes to transfer trains at our "layover" station, which is cutting it pretty close to begin with; then to top it off, an announcement came on that said our train from Hallstatt would be 10 minutes late, completely foiling our plans. As we had to pay to take the ferry back to the train station, it wasn't exactly possible to just go back to Hallstatt for another two hours (versus simply sitting at the random train station for two hours) so we made the spontaneous decision to go and visit Bad Ischl for those two hours. BEST DECISION EVER!

We had no idea what Bad Ischl had to offer, but we had heard that it was supposed to be a very pretty place. And that it was! Upon walking into town, there were a variety of souvenir stores and postcard stands; we browsed through them, and realized that Franz Josef and Sisi had had a summer villa in Bad Ischl, so we set out to find it! Not unlike all of the other Hapsburg residences we've seen, the Kaiservilla in Bad Ishcl was yellow/gold and green. We wandered around the town for a while, enjoying the Christmas markets and inviting atmosphere of the town.

Walk to the Kaiservilla

Kaiservilla

Teresa and I

Streets of Bad Ischl

As nice as Hallstatt was, Bad Ischl was definitely the highlight of our day, especially because we were the only two out of the group to visit the town, so, we can now say it's 'ours'!