Tag: hiking

Still in Austria?

It’s been a hot minute since I last sent out any updates, so here’s a small part of what I’ve been up to the last while!

My last few months have been eventful to say the least. With a busy bible school schedule and adapting to new Covid rules, it’s been a pretty unpredictable the whole time. The first 6 weeks after having my appendix out had to be pretty lowkey because I couldn’t do anything too strenuous, but since then I have been able to do more normal things again which has been really nice.

Our schedule had to change a bit when Covid regulations got tighter here, for example we couldn’t have any guest speakers coming into the school anymore, and a community curfew affected certain activities that we could do in the evenings. But overall it was super cool that we could continue with our programs for the most part unchanged, because most of the other hotel/retreat center facilities in our part of Austria had to close. We also had to be a lot more careful about wearing masks during work and when we came in contact with anyone outside the “bubble” of our school.

So for the most part I just want to tell about a few different activities and hikes that we’ve done in the last few weeks with some photos included. I could also tell more about work and stuff, but none of that has changed too much except with a few new rules, so I decided to stick to the few things that are likely to be a bit more interesting.

Me, Johann and Emma on our hike

The first really active thing that I did after getting my appendix out was a walk/ hike up to a waterfall with my friends Johann and Emma. It was about three hours up to the top, more of a long walk then a hike, and really fun because we were just chatting the whole time and it was really great to finally do something active! When we started walking it was super sunny, but once we got a bit higher up we were in the shade behind the mountains so at some point it was pretty cold and frosty, but it definitely made for some cool pictures!

There are some parts of the valley that never get any sun during this part of the year so there was really thick frost in a lot of places

Once we got up to the top we stayed up there for awhile and had some lunch and admired the waterfalls, it was freezing up there but luckily we could get a ride back down to the school from one of the staff. It was overall a super fun day!

You can’t see the whole waterfall but it was really beautiful!

A few weekends later we went on a different hike, one that I’ve been on before with another friend of mine. It was definitely a bit more difficult than the last one, but still super enjoyable so I’ll put some pictures in here, it was such a beautiful day!

Beautiful views from the top!
Have to be a little bit Canadian and build inukshuks when I find flat rocks!!
Me, Emma and Johann
We spent a lot of time at the top trying to walk up this creek without cracking the ice, it was slippery but very fun!

Next adventure type thing that we did was take a day trip to Salzburg. We went as a group of five people and just walked around the city for most of the day, walking to see a bunch of the different tourist spots in the city and just admiring the old architecture and seeing a few different things. Mostly everything was closed because of Covid but we could still go into a few churches and old buildings which was really cool. It’s hard to believe I’ve been in Austria for so long and living so close to Salzburg and I’d never really spent much time there until now, but at least I got there eventually and could enjoy spending the day there with my friends! I could try to write some more details about our day, but since pretty much everything was closed, I think our day in Salzburg would be best told in pictures. So here’s a bunch of pictures from our day , most of them were taken by my friend Emma with her Camera so they are actually nice!

These are the Bastions Gardens outside the Mirabell Palace. It’s really beautiful, they still have flowers even though these were taken in December!
A super cool view of the Castle taken from one of the many bridges in the city that crosses the Salzach River.
Outside the Salzburg cathedral
This is the group I was in Salzburg with: Ruth, Emma, Mikayla, Johann and I
The Hohensalzburg (upper Salzburg) Fortress. Unfortunately it’s closed right now because of Covid but it’s still beautiful and you can see it from a lot of different places in the downtown of the city!
Random old church
The courtyard outside the Cathedral
Pictures definitely do not do it justice but this is inside the cathedral, there were so many beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings. One of my favourite things to do in older cities is visit old churches so this was super cool for me!
In the summer this is a pretty cool fountain, but it was pretty frozen while we were there. The paintings are still cool though!
Even though there aren’t Christmas markets this year because of Covid, I thought it was pretty cool that they still put up the Christmas decorations throughout the city!

So those were the more exciting events of my last few months here. Despite all the previous and new Covid restrictions it’s amazing that we could still run our Bible school and that I could be here! It’s really crazy to me that this fall season here is already at an end, I feel like it flew by, but I’m also looking forward to what will come next even though I have pretty much no idea what that will be for me.

Trying to figure that out is slightly more complicated. When I first came to Austria my plan was to stay here one year, and since I started here last December that usually would have meant that I was home by now. But mid November I was asked to stay on staff here, and since I didn’t have plans as to what to do when I came home, I decided to say yes and stay here until this April. Things since then have gotten more and more complicated. At first I had planned to still go home for Christmas, but due to cancelled flights and difficulty rebooking I figured it would just be easier for me to stay here or stay in Germany with a friend of mine.

After those plans fell through the Austrian government decided to keep borders closed to winter tourism until January 10th which would meant that I would have to stay in Austria because of the closed borders. Then last week they extended the closure again until January 24th, so I was planning to figure out a way to go to Germany to be with friends. But my visa expired on the 17th of December (which I didn’t really take into account), and so I can’t travel out of the country until I get my visa renewal, which is still in the process.

So long story short, I’m stuck in Austria for at least the next few weeks until I get my visa. Kinda unfortunate to be here over Christmas but there is a few people here that I can spend a bit of time with so I’m thankful for that! It’s also kinda cool to have so much time to myself during this season. This time alone has already given me a lot of opportunity to process these last months and this year in general, and the quietness of this Christmas season has also been a reminder to me of what this season is really about. I think taking the busyness and stress out of this season will definitely be a change for a lot of people – myself included – but it’s a good way to force us to focus on simplifying things for ourselves this year, and I really do think that is a good thing!

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this little update about my last few months. If you have any suggestions of how I should occupy my next five weeks of what will essentially be a lot of me time, please let me know! I’ll obviously have a lot of free time so if you want to call me or send me an email, feel free! I’d love to hear from you.

Merry Christmas!

Hiking Photos

These last weeks have been pretty busy for me so much like with my previous post I’m just going to load some pictures from a couple of hikes that I’ve done with friends to give you an idea of what it looks like a bit more here in Austria!

#1 : To Duisitzkarsee

This was a small hike that I took with a friend of mine from my Bible school in Sweden, Rahel. This hike was about a 20 minute drive outside of Schladming where we both live right now. It was pretty chill and the view at the top was so beautiful!

The path up to the lake often went back and forth zigzagging through this waterfall which was really beautiful and so cool!
Rahel and I at the top
Our final destination with a beautiful view of the lake and surrounding mountains

#2 Scheichenspitze

This was a longer and more challenging hike that I did with four coworkers of mine. In total it took us about 6 hours from start to finish and the peak is at a height of 2667 m. You better believe it’s pretty hard to breathe at the top. We left for the hike around 6:30 in the morning, below the cloud line it was still a bit dark but as soon as we passed above the clouds it was so light!

You can’t see in this photo the place that we started our hike because it’s below the cloud line but this was taken after about a half hour of walking
About an hour in, Me, Amelie and Johann
Taken sometime between hour 2 and 3
Finally made it to the peak in somewhere around the 3 1/2 hour mark I think. Crystal, me and Amelie.
At the peak of most of these big hikes there is a cross. You can actually see this cross from Schladming down in the valley on a really clear day. But like, that view though!
Paul, Johann, me and Amelie representing that we are indeed all working at Tauernhof while admiring the view of the surrounding mountains. We actually were super fortunate with the weather on this hike. Though it was cold at the top I actually got a bit sunburnt throughout the day. We ended up being really glad that we went on that particular weekend because it snowed the weekend after and that would have made it impossible for us to do it without more equipment.
Starting back down again
Starting the harder part of the decent. We basically spent 2 hours sliding down rock fields which is actually really really fun. The only downside is that my feet were so so sore by this point because I was wearing hiking shoes that didn’t fit me very well. (My good hikers are still in Canada because I’m dumb) You can kind of see the chain near the bottom of the picture that you can hold to help stabilize you on this first really steep part of the route, though it’s actually there more to help people climbing up than people going down.
We hiked down to the bottom of this ravine and then a bit further. The clearing that you can see in the middleish right side of the picture is kinda near where we ended our hike. The actual place would be a bit more to the right side, a bit further down from the clearing, behind the peak on the right. It took us about 2.5 hours to get down.

By the end of this hike we were all just wiped. We ended at the Gondola station for the Dachstein mountain where we ate traditional Austrian Kaiserschmarn for lunch around 1:30 and were picked up by friends!

If you look up to the 3 mountains in the top of this picture, the left most peak is Scheichenspitze which is where we hiked to. Because of the bad photo quality you can’t see the cross but I could see it very faintly when I took this photo. We started from a bit higher up so not right in the bottom of the valley but it was still quite a long ways .
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