European Diaries Part 3
POEE 9-A
August 7, 2015
8:00 AM
Getting out of a country you have been so attached to for the past few days is hard. Especially if they have the greatest and most delicious pasta in the world. But that’s what I had to do with Italy, and that saddened me to no end.
So when we passed the border to the next country, I was quite sad. But then again, I simply realized that I am finally in my next destination: Austria.
The tour brochure told me that we wouldn’t be staying in Austria for too long, but I decided on trying my best to do things that will make me remember this beautiful country.
Sure enough, I was able to.
We arrived in Austria in the afternoon, and I was welcomed by a silver statue of a girl with her dog.
But when I went closer, the statue jumped at me and I ran away screaming.
I realized that it was those human statue things, and I have always been fascinated about them.
So I went ahead and looked at her, until my mom dragged me to the Swarovski Store beside the statue.
Inside the Swarovski Store, everything was extremely sparkly.
The sparkle. MY EYES. IT BURRRRNNSSSSS.
I went around and marveled at the things they were selling. From Swarovski Pens to a mini statue of Cinderella, everything seems to glow with a soft but elegant hue.
I settled on buying a simple cross-shaped necklace with a tiny Swarovski Crystal on top. Nothing too elegant, I would like to say.
Once we went out of the store, we went straight to the Golden Roof. Apparently, it wasn’t golden, just bronze or something like that.
Anyways, after all that, we went to our hotel.
My dinner, if I remember distinctly, had potatoes in it. My favorite food in the entire world. So obviously I enjoyed that meal.
Apparently, that night was also the semi-finals for the Champion’s League in European Football.
It was FC Barcelona vs. Bayern Munich.
My brother was a die-hard Munich fan while my family friend is full-out Barcelona.
There was a tv in the bar beside the dining room, and we saw two men with beers in their hands watching the game. My brother and family friend went ahead and watched it, but the men shouted at them for blocking the screen.
The worst part of that? They were shouting in German.
Everyone knows how scary German accents are, at least, for an English-speaking girl like me.
So they both ran back to the dining room, hearts in their hands, and rapidly talking in Tagalog on how two Austrians were THIS CLOSE to killing them.
I thought they wouldn’t go back to watch, for fear of the two men, but apparently, they still did (I really thought that was a bad decision).
In my corner, in the dining room, there was a waitress crying. I thought it was because of a family problem, but when her fellow waitress asked her, the waitress started talking in rapid German and I caught the words FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and losing.
The waitress was crying about the game.
She started banging on the wooden table so hard that you can actually see cracks on the wood. She also started breaking down in front of her fellow waitresses.
Lesson for that: European Football is a really intense thing.
As a teenage girl in this era, however, it is necessary to me to go to the Internet (and probably talk about that past experience)
Problem is, my hotel denounces the idea of free internet.
So my tour leader guided us outside the hotel and into the open Austrian streets to find something called a “wifi pole”
At first, I really thought my tour leader was joking.
But apparently, she wasn’t.
There was a legit POLE with the words “free wifi” etched on the top.
In the other side of the street, you can see a line filled wit tourists in their phones and using the Internet.
While me and my friend were talking online, we suddenly heard a group of men shouting…
How my first encounter with extremely drunk people went:
First, it was them successfully drinking from that dam beside where I was (no matter how impossible I think that is),
After that, they suddenly started saying “AY AY AY AY AY AY AY AY” While going to that ATM in front of me.
Then they suddenly started fighting over something I completely did not understand.
In a few minutes, I think they became BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF’s once more and started jumping while saying “I’m a pretty butterfly”.
And I never saw them ever again.
Lesson for that: It’s not good to be extremely drunk. You do some crazy things.
Pretty much said, most of the crazy things that happened to me happened in Austria.