In the midst of many weekend trips planned for the future, sometimes its nice just to relax and spend the day wandering. There are plenty of small towns close to Steyr that offer a day worth of interest at the very least.

And so, in an attempt to utilize the time available to me in Austria by going to as many places as possible! And so since I had class until late on friday, Saturday (yesterday) was a good day for a day trip!

It will come as no surprise that me and my Irish ladies set out Saturday morning for Enns, but this time we had a new travel companion! Her name is Paulina, and she comes from Poland/Ireland. She’s Polish in nationality, but has been studying at an Irish university (I think). The 4 of us toured together in Linz, and so it was fun to have her along with us!

We started out to Enns around 9, and got there around 9:30. Our first stop was at the Basilika Sankt Laurenz, or the Church of St. Laurenz. It was very close to the train station, so we stopped there first on our way into the main square.

This Basilika has a pretty cool past. It is built upon ancient Roman ruins, which you can see exposed in the middle of the church.

The Basilika itself is also very nice on the inside as well as the outside. While inside, I paid some coins and lit a candle. Some churches will have this sort of set up inside for people – light a candle, say a prayer. And while it is not my religion, and not my church, and not my tradition, if I can, I will light a candle. I do it in part because I am grateful that these people will allow me to come into their church and take pictures and whatnot. And giving away some spare change isn’t much in the way of sacrifice. I light a candle, and say a thank-you. It feels good to do 🙂

 

One cool thing you can see is that on the outside of the church at the back, they have displayed old stone tablets  taken from the original building. There’s almost a dozen of them, of various shapes and sizes.

 

The church is also surrounded by a graveyard, some headstones extremely old.

 

It was very pleasant to just stroll through the church and courtyard.

After the Basilika, we headed into the main square, where we immediately saw the main Town Tower.

This tower is MASSIVE. And you can go to the top of it to see the view for 2 euro. Drawback: its all stairs! And not good stairs either…. rough rickety stairs of various woods, various heights and widths, and sometimes you have to really duck to get through parts of the stairs.

 

 

The view is pretty impressive. You can see for miles!

 

 

We also decided to go to the city’s museum, which again focuses on the ancient Roman empire and archaeological finds in and around Enns.

It was pretty funny because when we got there, the man working had to unlock and turn on the lights in the museum – that seems to happen to me a lot. Its obviously not tourist season yet.

It became funnier when the lights in the first room didn’t turn on. The poor guy who was working seemed very flustered because no matter what he tried, he couldn’t get the lights to turn on. So after he left we walked around with our phone flashlights to see the exhibits.

The rest of the museum was properly light though, so it ended up alright! Unfortunately, it was all entirely in German, so all the facts and descriptions were lost on us. Some words I could read, but most was over my head. It was still interesting to see some of the finds though. The museum is in the Rathaus, or town hall, so there was a courtyard that you could also walk in. That was really nice and peaceful too.

 

After the museum it was getting close to noon, and we wanted to be in Linz by 1:30, so we had to start heading back to the train station. We weren’t able to visit the castle or the other main church in Enns, but it only takes half an hour and 3euro to get there, so we decided we would come back to Enns another day to finish off.

We wanted to go to Linz because there was a bus we wanted to take to Sankt Florian or St. Florian Abbey. The bus we ended up taking was more of a van shuttle, like the ones you may take to the airport or something. So that was a new experience, to be sure. When we got to the Abbey, it was also pretty big!

We went into the main office and asked about doing a tour. And the lady shut us down pretty quickly. The only way you can see the inside of the Abbey is with a guided tour, and the tours don’t start until May. OOPS! None of us looked up that information before we went. So we were pretty bummed about it.

But then, the front desk lady offered a suggestion. There was a tour guide in training, who was going to be doing a tour for some family/friends in the afternoon, and the desk lady told us to come back later and she would ask the tour guide if it would be alright if we joined their group. We spent some time wandering the grounds and main courtyards while we waited.

 

 

We went back to the front office, and the tour guide had agreed to let us come on their tour! And, since it was training and a special group of friends/family, they were doing an extended version of the tour, so we got extra! The tour is in German though, but they gave us English Audio tours so we followed along behind listening to the audio tour as the guide talked.

 

After going through the Abbey, we went into the church.

The organ in this church is actually quite famous. It’s one of the biggest Baroque-Style organs in the world, with almost 7.400 pipes. It took almost 4 years to construct and is known for its unique tone and sound. It also contains four manuals and 103 stops. Its famous for being played by composer and organist Anton Bruckner, previously a choir boy at the monastery, when he was the organist, between 1848 and 1855. He is buried beneath the organ inside the church now, as was requested in his Will when he died. There are also 2 additional organs at the front of the Basilika which are used for the choirs.

 

 

The rest of the church is beautiful as well. The entire ceiling is covered in Frescos.

 

After the Basilika we went down into the crypt. (I DID IT DAD!)

In the crypt they had coffins of important priests and monks from ages past. They also had a room with a collection of over 6.000 corpses found when they dug underneath the church. Some of the bones date back to the 4th century into Roman times, and were buried for thousands of years. In the same room as the skeletons is the tomb of Anton Bruckner, as I mentioned previously – he was buried under the organ of the church.

 

Tthis is where our tour ended, and we headed to the bus stop and then back into Linz. From Linz we took the train back to Steyr, and got back home around 20:00. It was a really nice day! And it was nice that we weren’t rushing to see things. When you go to a city, you want to maximize the time you spend in the city because its hard to get back to the city, especially if its farther away. But Enns and Linz are less than 1 hour away, and cost less than 4,50euro.

It was really nice weather and pleasant company.

But we didn’t buy any ice cream?!?! We really messed up that one.

I also did not think through my CANADA t-shirt. As if I needed to be more obvious that I was a tourist… rookie mistake for sure.

 

It was a good Saturday. And next week – Prague!

---

 

On an unrelated note, Chocolate in Europe tastes different, and tastes better.

I’m going to miss that!!

 

---

 

Have a good week, and wish me luck on my German test tomorrow!

 

emma.k

 

---

---

ALSO UNRELATED:

This picture, pose, and pants are for my mom.

I just want her to know that I am definitely making her proud over here. I mean, who wouldn’t be proud of a kid that looks this good at a monastery. You’re welcome world. 🙂