I’ve been waiting days to be able to type that title.

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Hi friends! It’s been about a week since I’ve last blogged, and what a week it has been!

As a side note for people who have subscribed to my blog, you’ll notice that I will post 2 or more posts in a row, and so you get email updates all in a row – that’s because I want to break up my posts into days/events, Like I would a diary. Plus, it’s easier to read in smaller chunks than in 1 huge post. I like to keep thoughts on one day/event separate from other days/events. Hopefully that makes sense…

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On thursday I went traveling alone. And I mean, actually alone. In all my travels, I have always been with someone, or been meeting someone at the end. So I’ve never traveled where I was completely in charge of entertaining myself and planning everything. And frankly, it can be hard – at least for me. First of all, having the motivation toget yourself up on time and to catch the early train was my first sort of struggle. Since it was just me, I wasn’t tied to a schedule or anything, so if I was feeling lazy, I could have taken a later train, or frankly not gone at all.

BUT! Go I did! And on the early train too! I’m a champ.

So I woke up early and got on the 9:15 train to Wels, a city outside of Linz, and the 2nd biggest city in Upper Austria. But that doesn’t mean its that big of a place.

This was a day trip for me – the train cost 7,20euro one-way, so it wasn’t too expensive, and took me about an hour and a half to get there from Steyr. In Linz, I got on an express-type train on its way to Frankfurt, which stopped in Wels (obviously). And I’ll say that this train was intense!! It was actually pretty similar to an airplane in that the seats all had tray tables, each compartment was very separate from the other, and they had people walking up and down the aisles taking food and drink orders. I got really nervous that I was on the wrong train, or in the wrong compartment – there were designated compartments for 1st class and 2nd class tickets, and I was 3rd class because I’m not fancy I guess.

When I got to Wels, I admit that I was a little intimidated. The night before I had done some research about places I wanted to visit, and marked them on a map in my phone and tablet. But Wels looks different in real life vs. on a map. So I ended up just kind of wandering/following a crowd of people for a few blocks while I tried to read street signs and find my way around. Eventually though, I found a sign that said “Stadtplatz”, which pointed towards the center of the city, and I knew that most of the places I wanted to stop at were there, so that was really helpful. As I walked, I kind of just happened upon a big, pretty church that I hadn’t marked or frankly knew about. So obviously I stopped and looked!

The church was nestled in between shops and major roads, which was similar to one of the churches in Linz, so there may be a similar story associated with this church.

The inside was also pretty nice! I always like to take pictures of the organs, because I know I have at least 1 reader who really likes them 🙂

This church was a Protestant Church called the “Evangelische Pfarrgemeinde Wels”. Just in case you were curious.

After that I headed back along the road to the Stadtplatz, in search of some more of the sites I was looking for. While walking around, I noticed this:

On most of the corners in the streets around the Stadtplatz were these signs with maps an pictures of the sites of Wels for tourists. They were so handy! And they had things on them I hadn’t found before, like the museums and such. So this made me pretty excited!

They also had some of these signs, but not all of them had english on them, and that amount of text is kind of annoying to type into google translate.

So, while I wandered, I went into a bunch of churches, so let’ just get right into it!

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This church was called “Marienkirche”. It was gated off, so I couldn’t walk through, so I had to use the zoom on my phone a little bit, which would explain the slight blur of some of the pictures. I brought my camera, and took some better ones, but I am at school and don’t have my camera card with me, and don’t feel like waiting to upload this post haha.

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This is the “Stadtpfarrkirche”, and it was HUGE! I tried to take some pictures to show how big it was. This was the first church I had gone into thus far that was not empty. There was 1 lady already in there when I walked in, and she was praying, so i tried to be quiet and not bother her. But after a few minutes her phone started ringing, and she answered and talked pretty loudly, so I didn’t try so hard after that haha.

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This is Alte Sparkasse, which was an old palace of sorts, that is now turned into a museum. However, I was pretty hesitant to go inside. It looked like some sort of art gallery-type place, and I wasn’t super confident going in. Frankly, the place seemed a little weird, or more off color – it didn’t look like a museum of history, which was what I was more interested in.

But I thought, “Well, I’m here, I might as well go in! Plus, if it”s something weird, I can play the foreigner card and run”. That’s a really good attitude to have, right?

So I walked in, and I immediately was face with having to choose between 3 different directions/hallways. I chose the middle/main one, mainly because I heard more noise coming from that direction, and so that seemed like the safest option. I ended up in a big foyer – type place with a big staircase and noise coming from the top. There was a sign that I had to use google translate to translate, and I’m assuming it was the title of the show. It was something odd about a trout and a big lake, or something (google translate can’t always be trusted). So I decided it wasn’t worth it, and if I had time after seeing other stuff, I might come back. And then I ran. Well, walked quickly.

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This is the only picture I really have of Schloss Pollheim.

Fun fact about ancient civilizations: they build their castles so they can one day turn into apartment/business complexes. The playground is really authentic though – ancient romans built them to distract their enemies so they could attack them first.

Part of Wels history is it was a walled city center, and this Schloss was one of the castles that made up this wall. Other pictures along this wall are here:

The tall tower with the red top and hole to pass through is called the “Ledererturm” I think.

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I went to the Stadtmuseum, which was COMPLETELY empty, except for me. The lady working the front desk was really surprised when I walked in. She didn’t speak much english, but gave me a tour book and showed me where to go.

It was actually a little frustrating to go to the museums in Wels. The lady handed me a tour book that had the information in the museum written in sections in english in this book. But the exhibits and pages weren’t numbers and in a weird order, so it was frustrating to try to match up the various information sections. In addition, the plaques next to the artifacts were only written in German with no translation in the book or plaque, so I got to stare at a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know what it was.

This museum’s exhibit was on ancient Roman civilization and how Wels was founded. It was actually pretty interesting, and I learned quite a bit. The museum is also located in part inside on of the oldest chapels in Wels, built back during the Roman empire. In some of the pictures you can see exposed bricks or stones or paintings that they recovered.

That’s one thing that I absolutely love about european history is that it is so much more impressive and rich than North America. We don’t have anything as old or as interesting here. Our culture is very young and new, whereas here it is old and timeless, full of rich history and stories that you just don’t find in the western world. So I really enjoyed the museum. Here’s some pictures from it:

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I went to the Berg Castle next. This is the main castle in Wels, and was the focus for the “Royal Family” I guess. This museum was similar in that the ladies working were shocked that I came in and wanted a tour. They handed me an english book again, and sent me on my way. Thankfully, this one was numbered and in order by room, so that was super helpful. This museum was pretty interesting too, and talked more about Wels history, including parts from ancient times, WW2 involvement, the industrial revolution that took place, etc. etc. It was also super fun to look at too. It was pretty long though, and took me about 2.5 hours.

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Wels tourism is essentially non-existent right now. On thursday when I was there, it was drizzling rain, and the streets were pretty empty. The Stradtplatz was also undergoing some heavy cleanup from some kind of Winter festival that had just finished up. So it wasn’t super pretty to look at. But, it was kind of nice because I had everything to myself, even though I got some funny looks as I took pictures.

But it was kind of nice to just GO places. Traveling like that was really relaxing and kind of freeing. I made my own schedule, and did my own thing. I didn’t feel bad about wandering around because I didn’t have to be somewhere or have a schedule to keep. So I took my time and looked at everything in the museums. I walked slowly down the streets and stopped to look at things or read things. And I felt very content with myself. It was a really nice day.

When I got home in the evening I was super tired, and my feet were sore. But I felt pretty good. And I think that’s good too.

To finish, here are some pictures that I took throughout the day of stuff I liked or thought looked cool. One of the pictures is of the FH oö Wels campus, which is the Engineering/Sciences campus (I’m at the management/business campus). The Wels campus has 12 exchange students I think. I dunno, I was curious as to what the other campus looked like – it wasn’t super exciting.

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For those of you (mom) who are wanting a post about my trip to Vienna, I\ll write it tomorrow. This post took longer than expected due to annoying internet connection issues, and it’s currently 20:43, and I haven’t eaten dinner, so I’m going to go home now. Maybe I’ll get started on it tonight, but for sure tomorrow.

I also have homework now! I mean, this sounds silly, but YAYYYYY now I have things to keep me busy and my brain thinking. I’ll write about my classes soon as well.

Toodles!

emma.k