The Length Mankind Can Go..

Mankind is ridiculous. Today we went to Mauthausen, a concentration camp in sorta northern Austria. Every room you walked into you just had the thought 'I wonder how much pain and sadness happened in this room.' run through your head. You walked through the back gate that opens up to a courtyard where all the prisoners got sorted and had their clothes and personal posessions taken away. You go up some stairs and through the side door of the main entrance to the area where they had 'Role Call'. And we just slowly wandered through the camp listening to our audio guides. I am pretty sure that there wasn't a single person who didn't get effected. The worst was the execution chambers; including a gallows, gas chamber rooms, cremation chambers, a disection table and a giant fridge type room where they kept the dead bodies for burning. There was three stone walls and an electric wire fence where lots of people 'commited suicide' or were just executed. There was also a memorial park with statues dedicated to different countries and a quarry you could also go down to. First you had to walk down the 'Stairs of Death' and the 'Parachuting' place where people jumped or got pushed off.
Overall it was a pretty gloomy day.
But you could also look at it like this, I am so blessed that I never had to live in a time like that.

There Once Was 14 People In Venice..

Okay, okay. Here I am sitting down and writing this blog. I have to admit that I am getting worse at blogging and more and more unmotivated to blog. But I will still do it anyway! Just don't expect them often anymore.. With only 5 weeks left there won't be many more blogs anways!
So I know all of you are itching to know what Venice is like. Well it is a gorgeous city, the architecture is so amazing and old and so unique. The whole concept that the city is built on water is just so crazy. You would be walking around and suddenly you remember, oh hey! There are no cars anywhere. Because there are no streets! However I would say that the people in Venice are what make knock it down on the level of awesomeness. It was pretty dirty and smelt like poo a lot. Probably because you could see poo on the ground. They just don't take care of and respect the incredible city that it is and it holds so much potential!
It all started at 10.10am when we got on the train and started to make our way to Venezia, all 14 of us! A rather great group of people though. We rode a train, then changed our train, then got a bus that was to take 3 hours (hooray..) But I was sitting next to Bre so it wasn't so bad. :D The mountians on the way were ridiculous. So cool and different to Schladming mountains. We listened to music, chilled and found super interesting ways to sit on a bus.. Then we arrived in Venezia! But just the corner of the island and, after a long adventure trying to find a bathroom only to have to pay 1.50 Euros to go pee, we caught a train back to the mainland to find our hostel. After getting lost and almost knocking on a random persons house thinking it was the hostel we finally found it; Villa Dori. We walked into the lovely foyer to sign in and we found out that the booked us wrong, instead of them booking us for Friday and Sunday night (which the website said was all that they had available and so then we were just gonna wing it Saturday night) the booked us for Friday and Saturday night. So we were like oh really!? Awesome! So then can we just have Sunday as well? And BAM. God provided us with a hostel without us even having to look for one on Saturday night. Go God. :D
It was so gorgeous in the front area and had a super nice restaurant attached. We judged the book by its cover. We got to our rooms and after thinking the door was a window then a door again and not being able to find the key hole but eventually finding it we got inside. Liz, Emma, Sian, Larissa and I were staying in one room and just over yonder in the room next to us was Ben, Cullen, Jake, Ryan and Michael. Bre, Kaitlynn, Joelle and Hanna were staying at a different hostel about a 10 minute bus ride away. Our room smelt like old people. But it was generally nice, it was one big room that had a table and 3 beds then a hallway with a side room with 2 beds and a great big bathroom. That included a normal toilet and a bum cleaning toilet (I never tried it..) Oh yes and this spiral staircase going down in the corner of the room with a locked door at the bottom.. We had dinner at the restaurant (Emma, Larry and I had a nutritous dinner of Hasole (cheap Nutella) and bread yum! While others had pizza..) and went back to our room and chilled then it was bed time! So the boys go to their room and we are getting ready for sleeping when a knock comes to the door "We have bed bugs! Check your beds!" Long story short the girls room didn't have bed bugs and the boys went to the front desk and got their sheets changed. Oh but we did have a decent amount of hair and dirt.. We were also a little freaked out by the spiral staircase going to nowhere so we all pushed our beds together and Emma and I shared a single bed. It was cozy..
Saturday started with a bang! Catching the bus to the island. Oh yes. So we make a 'plan' "Okay guys if we get split up the last bus leaves at 12am" that was it. No one except for Captian Cullen knew which bus stop it was and little did we know that Venice - not so nice at night time. So we walk for literally 5 mintues after arriving at 11am and I decided to look in a store (see my mom passed on the gene for the love of tourist stores..) and Liz says she'll go with me. And that is how the Incredible Adventure With Liz and MacKenzie started. We looked around left the store couldn't see anyone but wasn't worried. Saw 4 out of the 14 said hi, asked them where they got their coffee and got some (amazing) coffee. We proceeded to walk around looking in almost every store. Then I realized that Larissa was holding the majority of my money in her fanny pack and I only had about 15 Euros on me. No worries we will meet up with them soon (?). We got gelato which is amazing! Wandered around looking at stores and going down random allies and taking a billion photos of just Liz, or just Mk or both of us. We have so many profile photos to choose from. At about 3pm we thought it would be nice to find the others so we could have dinner with them so we retrace our steps go over a bridge only to find neighbourhoods and empty streets so we retraced our steps again went over the same bridge walked down the same street but went further down; we had this street memorized. We started to think that maybe we should have planned a place to meet up for dinner.. at this point it was about 6pm. What I love is that we had no idea what the famous places were in Venice and ended up passing a couple not even knowing where we were. For instance the Rialto Bridge, yup we thought that it was just a bridge so we took a photo on the bridge.. but not of the bridge. So at this point we were getting pretty tired and hungry and Liz only had 20 Euros the the both of our dinner and bus ride home. We got some food and went to sit down in this courtyard that we had passed 50 times. We were sitting there talking and eating and we had just accepted that we weren't going to find them and that we should make our way to the bus stop so we don't have to bus late at night with the creepers. We just prayed and I was saying "Oh I wish we could find them.." When we hear a "HALLELUJAH!" it was Emma! I ran into her arms and there was a lot of hugging and happiness on everyone's part. Turns out that they had spent the whole day together as a group of 8 going to all the main tourist spots in Venice. But I still am glad that Liz and I had our day, it was fun. :D We head to McDonalds (which was actually so expensive) and hang out there until we were supposed to meet up with Hanna, Jake, Kaitlynn and Joelle who had left as well. Liz and I were so happy to have Captian Cullen back to guide our path.
Interesting Saturday in Venice story time! So Liz and I are both blonde and blue eyed.. not a common gene in Italy. So we had our fair share of 'looks', "Bella, Bella!" and strange noises on our awesome adventure. Also we were chilling at McDonalds and this old man comes over to us and starts speaking Italian to me and starts doing dancing actions so I grasped that he wanted to take me dancing? Meanwhile I am telling him "I don't speak Italian. I don't speak Italian." He didn't care. And an Italian couple next to us was laughing so we asked them what he was saying and they said that he was crazy and that we shouldn't listen to him. So Drunk Old Italian goes over to them for a while, then comes back to us and is leaning over Cullen talking angrily at him; generally awkward situation for all of us. Nevertheless he walked away and we asked the couple what he had said and they said that he said "F*** off" to us in Italian. How lovely. Then we were on the bus ride back home and yet another drunk old man started playing with Bre's hair. Just sorta touching it. But Ben stood up and got sorta inbetween Bre and the man. Ben, our hero. And that is pretty much it for Saturday. Liz showed us her 'Terry Fox Run' while we were walking back to the hostel.. Then we slept!
Sunday we left for the city at 11.15am (the hostel had a bus that took us straight there, yay for no public bus!), yet all the girls couldn't sleep in so we woke up at about 8 and had a great morning entertaining ourselves while the boys slept. We got in and met up with the other 4 girls from the different hostel and caught a boat to Murano where they make all the gorgeous Italian glass stuff. We watched a free glass blowing demonstration which was so cool but like in this tiny warehouse. I was picturing like this huge factory that you got a tour through. Nope. But it was still awesome. Then there wasn't a whole lot more to do there so we took pictures and caught the bus back to Saint Marco's Square which is like the big famous thing in Venice. After a super long boat bus ride, but a very pretty one where we got to see the sunset and this super cute little 5 year old boy sat next to me we got there and it was BEAUTIFUL! The buildings are so huge and just amazing. Words cannot describe how beautiful this place is. We walked around there for a bit then found a Hard Rock Cafe and went to eat there but descovered it was an hour long wait. No way. Hunger. Nom nom. So we found this random little restaurant that majorly ripped us off. We were the only ones in there (that is never a good sign) I ordered the Spaghetti because I promised Paige that I would and it was pretty good... but Lothar makes it better. :D Ben thought that the food we got was actually just microwaved food because it came out almost instantly after we ordered it and his lasanga was boiling hot on the outside and cold in the middle.. We also got charged a fee for just plain old ordering pizza. How kind of them. Oh well, its a city. 
So we left still hungry and started making our way back to the bus stop by food. Stopping here or there to look at the stores and buying some more gelato (NOM) and there were no creepy stories this time! We passed a guy that I am pretty sure was a pimp.. He was old and had the gold jacket on and the long hair and the 8 rings. We were all at the bus stop except for Jake and Hanna and the bus was there so we got on and Joelle, Bre and Kaitlynn waited for their hostel mate Hanna and we figured Jake could find his own way cause he had mentioned it before. We got back to the hostel, we saw a locust kicking back on the wall and just went and hung out in our rooms. Liz and I washed our feet in the shower. (We had bonded on Saturday.) Then it was bed time and getting later and Jake still wasn't back. We got a text from Hanna saying that they were safely at their hostel at about 10pm and at about 10.45pm we noticed Jake still wasn't back. Just at we noticed he walked past our door. Turns out he got off at the wrong stop and had to walk a really long time.
Monday was the day of our return to Tauernhof! We got into Venice early so we of course went to McDonalds again where we got our Wi-Fi fix and looked at the shops and then headed to the bus stop. A 3 hour bus ride of watching Glee, and a 2 train ride later we were back in Schaldming. It felt like coming home. Oh dear sweet Schladming with hardly any creepy men and streets that you don't need a map to follow. All the travellers reunited and it was so awesome.
Since Monday the week has gone by so fast. Our lecturer this week was Ridge Burns from California and he was talking on the Ten Commandments. He has some good things to say and some things that I didn't entirely agree with.. But as he repeated, it is a touchy and complicated subject. Last night we had an incredible 80's Dance Party where everyone went all out and dressed and there were games and 80's music. And today a small but awesome group of us hiked up a mountain! The Kufstein, to an 8 metre high cross. It was soo beautiful. I even had the guts to climb up the cross, freaked out a bit at the top then climbed down. Emma and I made a Lord of the Rings 'Get off the road!' video and Danish sang us his national anthem and tried to teach us Danish words. And if you don't know what Danish sounds like, it sounds like gibberish. 
Thus concludes this super long blog. My eyes are sore from staring at this stupid screen.