As Bettina had to leave the flat at 8.30 in the morning, Georg and I were sent out into the city, too. We had known before, so I posted on the Salzburg group if anybody wanted to join us for breakfast. No one came, so it was only the two of us. Before breakfast, we even found time to do some really necessary shopping: a belt for him, a new pair of short trousers for me.
At 10, we met with a group of couchsurfers for the announced city hike. It took us ages (1.5 hrs) to do a walk that could easily be done within half an hour. A pity, but next time we’ll just do the sight seeing on our own 🙂
After the city walk, we made for the train station. We were meeting there to leave for Hallein/Bad Dürrnstein to go tobogganing on Salzburg’s longest summer toboggan. I’m not sure if the label “toboggan” is right, because you’re going down in a toboggan, but on rails … well, never mind. It is a 30-45 minutes drive by car to go there, and we had more than enough rides to share. Georg and I went with Jacquie, who lives in Bavaria, and her couchsurfer Akis from Greece.
Some people decided to go up by foot – according to the signs and information panel, this should be a 2 hrs walk, but they made it in little more than 1. The bigger part of the group went up in the chair lift. It took us some time to get the tickets, because we wanted to get the group discount, but had to collect the money and pay in one go in order to do so. The ride up was fun: we could watch some people riding down already, and at one point we spotted the other group, hiking their way up.
After arriving on top, we made for the mountain’s peak, which is on the other side of the austrian-german border. This border-crossing caused some laughter and funny pictures; more than the peak itself, which did not even provide a nice sight of the surrounding, as there was trees all around.
After the hikers’ group arrived at the restaurant at the top station, we enjoyed a good meal and then made for the descent. At first I had not been sure if I really wanted to do that, but sometimes, one must do something in spite of oneself. And I’m happy I did, because it was great fun!
After me (and the two following on my heels), there was a huge gap, caused by Jacqui who had already announced that, being a scaredy-pants, she would be descenting really slowly. After her, Akis came down, trying to film his ride with his camcorder. Everybody who was down already cheered at everybody coming down, even if they were no couchsurfers – it was great 🙂
Unfortunately, Akis’ camcorder did not record the whole ride. In fact, it did not record any of it. After some minutes of considering, he shyly asked, if it would be a trouble to anyone if he would do the whole thing again. It wasn’t – and Georg even joined him for a second ride.
In the evening, we were meeting at Augustiner Bräu; as Bettina was visiting her parents, we could not get into the flat, so we went there directly with Jacqui and Akis (who was very happy having his second ride recorded 100%). The day had been very exhausting, so we were the first ones to leave again, after only 2 beers and some Schweinsbraten.