Hotel Rohrmooser Schloessl Schladming

After 2 days of biking mayhem, hiking down the Planai mountain watching practice and qualifying, it was finals day. Unfortunately we broke our camera trying to take a timed picture on top of the mountain. We rested it on a rail, i pressed the button and ran to where Clare was standing only to find when turning round the camera was not there anymore.... It had fell off and broke ...

... room.... but it got the thumbs up as it was clean, tidy and modern. The view from the room was amazing, perfect view of the Planai mountain slope, so good we could have sat there and watched the biking from our room!! Dropped our bags and went for our first meal out since leaving home, chilli fahitas and chicken burgers went down a treat, god bless Papa Joes!!!!

... soon as we arrived that this is no backpacker town and nothing is cheap. She must have called 10 places for us. Most were full or too expensive. So again, we ended up at a little old woman's house - but it was really nice. It was a big, traditional Austrian mountain home. We had quite a hike there but once there we could finally relax on our balcony overlooking the mountains. Very stressful day. It was another case of not being able to communicate with our hosts. The ...

... trains, the countryside got pretty boring again. So I actually wrote some blogs.

I arrived in Salzburg about 5 pm and caught a bus into the city center. I didn’t feel like doing anything, and besides, I figured I should rest up before Derek arrives tomorrow. He’s going to be very excited to be here and will probably want to see as much as possible in his one week in Europe. So I went straight to the hostel. It was a ...

... of myself.

The train ride down to Hallstatt became much more scenic. Prior to that, the countryside had been fairly flat and uninteresting. But as soon as we headed south, we crossed a couple of rivers and headed into some real mountains! We went along the side of a lake with some massive mountains jutting out of the other side and I was quite excited. This was the first time I’d seen real mountains since leaving home.

When we finally got to ...

... black striped socks up to my knees
to protect me...oh and my handbag! Yes, I know I'm so cool..... It was
a nice walk tho and we even got to build some cairns (rock
formations)... with 100s ofothers in the river. We spent the afternoon
sunbaking - again. And ate Pasta for dinner, again.... at this rate im
going to get fat.

... were all in the water in a matter of seconds, jumping off the stone wall’s diving board (literally, a board, no spring at all) into the lake. First experience with others dressing and undressing in the middle of the park (going "full Euro," as we call it). The water is glorious. Walked to town for dinner, then did the after dinner tour. Saw an oompah band in the square, had the mandatory eis, and called it a day with the stroll back to the camping.

It rained heavily all night (quite unusual for Hallstatt, I'm told.) Our plan for today: visit the Ice Caves at Dachstein and head for Hungary for our visit with Attila's family.

To reach the Ice Caves, we took a gondola (our third in as many days) to the top of the mountain. For there we hiked 20 minutes up the mountain to the caves. On our way up the gondola, Attila made friends with a ...

... we promised ourselves was that before we left Austria we'd try some traditional apple strudel. So we did - with vanilla sauce! Naturally, I didn't like the fruit mince - type flavour, but I loved the sauce! And Ian, well he didn't mind the fact that I didn't like it, cause he got to eat the second half of mine! Next stop ... Switzerland!!! (ps. sorry there are no photos from this section - we took heaps with the big camera, but still can't get the photos onto the laptop)

... resources drive - mentored Jabu and PDFs during field trips - four copies of municipal/Mvula contracts obtained, summarised and handed over - desk study and first draft selection /of materials produced for the research and documenting five case studies on Good Practice in Community Involvement in Water Service Delivery for Masimbabane 2, and handed over to Kerry - feedback report to Martin done verbally - final debriefing meeting and hand over of ...