Riedel Glass & Swarovski Crystal

Today was going to be another day filled with business visits. This morning the green group left at 9:10am to drive about an hour to Riedel: The Wine Glass Company. I didn’t know what to expect from Riedel because I knew nothing about it. It turned out to be very cool and interesting! We were given a small explanation of how they go about making their glasses with molds and shaping them based upon which wine you plan on drinking with them.

We then were able to walk through their factory where they actually produce the blown glasses. It was mesmerizing to watch! The workers would get a molten glass mix from the furnace, bring it to another guy who would begin shaping it while it cooled off slightly. Then while the glass was still rubbery, they would place it into the mold and blow through a long tube that would blow the glass to fill the mold. After the glass had cooled more, they would cut off the top of the glass and then slow burn it with a flame to make it just as smooth as the rest of the glass. Then the master on the floor would add the stem and base to each glass. Every time the glasses turned out perfectly! It’s amazing the level of efficiency that they have created there, especially when all of the glasses are individually hand-made.


After seeing the process in action, we walked through a really trippy exhibit in which we learned about how the different glass shapes and sizes drink wine differently. Apparently white wines are best drunk though a slimmer glass. More bold wines (reds) require a more bulbous glass that allows the nose to smell all of the flavors of the wine before you drink it. We then went into the Riedel store. Seeing as I do love wine, I was tempted to buy at least something there, but I refrained simply because I wasn’t sure how I would successfully get wine glasses back to the United States unharmed. Lots of people did buy things however, and best of luck to them! The boxes are huge so we shall see how they manage it.

We were supposed to drive back to the hotel, have time to change into business formal, eat lunch, and then leave for Swarovski at 2pm. Riedel went longer than expected however, so we ate on the road… again. Another AutoGrill rest stop. Woohoo! (sarcasm). We then got to Swarovski and had our marketing presentation first. It was interesting and afterwards we got free cokes (that’s a big deal over here!). Then we were taken on a small tour of Swarovski’s private museum that is not open to the general public. They had a lot of unique, cool stuff there, such as a chandelier from a James Bond movie, dresses made especially for celebrities, and huge crystals.

After that, we were bused over to Swarovski World, where they have a massive underground exhibit showing off everything that their crystals can do. There was a crystalline wall that runs like a backbone through the building that was something that 42 meters long by 11 meters tall! It was so pretty. By far my favorite part of the exhibit though was the crystal dome room. It was amazing! It was like you were inside the crystals of a kaleidoscope. If you stood directly in the center, your voice was magnified, almost like you were using a microphone. I will never forget that room.


After we walked through the exhibit and took pictures, we made our way to the gift shop. I didn’t buy anything however since I bought a lot yesterday at the Swarovski in Innsbruck. We waited around for a bit while some people made purchases, and then we loaded up the coaches and drove back to Innsbruck.
I just ate my dinner in my hotel room because I had packed an entire lunch that I had let at the hotel in hopes of eating it when we were supposed to come back between company visits. It’s getting to the point in the trip where any money saved might be useful at the end. I ended up just staying in, completely repacking my bag, showering, and going to bed early. I don’t sleep well on the buses, so I figured it best to get as much sleep as possible during the night. Tomorrow morning, we wake up early, load the coaches, and head off for our visit at the Audi manufacturing plant. Then we keep driving and end up in Munich for 3 nights!

Discovering Austrian Culture

Because of the weather forecast was better for outdoor activities on Sunday rather than on Monday, Dr. Mac decided it be best if we pushed our orientation meeting and group presentations for Innsbruck back until today (Monday morning) at 9am. This insured the most time possible to get our extreme sports in on Sunday. After breakfast, we walked over to the conference room and heard the presentations from Riedel Glass, Swarovski Crystal, and Audi Manufacturing. Each of the groups did a good job at being creative while also staying informative at the same time.

After our meeting was over, a group of us walked towards the Swarovski store in old town Innsbruck. On the way there, we passed by this little gelato place that looked amazing. Even though it was about 10:30am, we just had to have some! It was so cheap as well! One scoop was only 1,10 Euro!! That’s even cheaper than some places in the States! The flavor that I ordered was called ‘Manner.’ Apparently, it’s a mixture of hazelnut and chocolate with pieces of a cookie that is authentically Austrian. IT WAS DELICIOUS! I don’t even know if I can express just how much I loved this ice cream. If it were back in the States, Manner would be all that I would ever by. Laura and I loved it so much we ended up going back there and getting another scoop later in the day!

After our amazing ice cream, we happened to run into a store which sold .55 Euro cokes! This day was just getting better and better! We finally found the Swarovski store that we were searching for. We had heard that there were better prices here than at the Swarovski World store that we will visit tomorrow during our company presentation. Also, Mrs. Mac gave us all a gift certificate for a free gift with any purchase there. It’s a little pin for a lapel. It’s not much, but its free and I definitely love anything free on this trip! Everything in the store was cheaper than I was expecting for the most part! This turned out to be a good and bad thing. It was good because I was able to buy more things than I was expecting, but bad as well because I spent way more money on multiple cheaper items, haha. I bought a few things for myself and a few gifts as well. I definitely made a significant dent in my amount spent on European purchases! But at least some good news is that I get 19 Euros back from the Customs agents because of taxes. Woo!

After we dropped off our purchases back in our hotel room (I put mine in the safe!) and ate my Ziploc baggy lunch I had made at breakfast, we walked (and then HIKED) up to the top of the ski jump that was used in the 1964 and 1976 Olympics. We had the observation deck to ourselves for the most part, and it gave us a great view of the city. Granted the weather wasn’t superb, just rainy and cloudy like it has been every other day that we’ve been in Innsbruck, but we still managed to see the mountains in the distance. I had been up to the top of another Olympic ski jump before in Calgary, but it was still nice to see this city from a whole different perspective.



Laura and I then broke off on our own and walked around town for a bit. We were just casually shopping for souvenirs. I managed to find a t-shirt for myself that says Austria that I really like! Laura and I seem to have the same taste in stuff like that because that is about the 3rd or 4th thing that we have bought exactly identical on this trip so far! It was starting to rain more and our feet were tired of walking, so we decided to come back to the hotel at about 4:30 to rest up until dinner at 7. I ended up taking an hour nap, and it couldn’t have been more amazing! That was the first nap I’ve had during the day (besides on the bus) so far on this trip. I know my body is getting worn down and people are starting to get sick, so I’m trying to get as much sleep as possible on this last leg of the trip. Getting sick is the absolute last thing I want right now being so far away from home (knock on wood).
Our whole study abroad group left at 7pm from the hotel lobby and drove about 20 minutes to a nearby Austrian village for our traditional festive Austrian dinner. It was SO MUCH FUN! The food was amazing! We had a garlic cream soup for our appetizer, and I loved it! It tasted just like garlic bread in my mouth! For my entrée I chose the schnitzel and spritzed a little lemon juice on top to pull out the flavor of the pork. It was delectable! I would have it again in a heartbeat. The dessert was apple strudel with vanilla ice cream. YUMMY!
The best part of the night however was our entertainment that came and played traditional Austrian music that we learned dances to! I got chosen to dance in the Grand March which is performed at most all Austrian weddings. It was fun but so exhausting! I was out of breath by the end of the song. We danced, yodeled, sang, clapped, laughed, and had a great time.

After dinner and dancing were over, we went out for a short lantern hike through the countryside. It was lightly raining, but that didn’t dampen our spirits. We had such a great night so far that nothing was going to spoil it. As we were driving back to the hotel, I began to realize how much fun I had tonight. I think it’s safe to say that tonight was my favorite night of the trip thus far. That’s saying a lot because of the cities that we have already visited such as London, Paris, and Nice. I was already loving Innsbruck so much because of the scenery and the laid back small town atmosphere, but now I was in love with the Austrian culture as well. It’s too bad we have don’t have much free time left here in Innsbruck, because tomorrow we have business visits all day. Night!

Canyoning In The Austrian Alps!

I think I really am going to love this last leg of the trip. It’s going to have so much more of a slower pace in the countries of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The mountains and the scenery really make just simply staring our your window enjoyable. This morning we woke up whenever we pleased. Since I had become so accustomed to waking up early however, I was awake by about 8:30am. Still though, I got a solid 8 hours of sleep or so which is wonderful for this trip! We went downstairs to the breakfast at 9am, and I was surprised that a bunch of people from our group were already down there as well. The breakfast was probably the best one of the trip so far. They even had Cocoa Pops!

After breakfast a group of about 6 of us set off to explore Innsbruck. We walked fairly fair, just observing the town on a quiet Sunday morning. In Innsbruck, most shops are closed on Sunday so not a lot was open. We did walk to the Olympic Park where the Winter Olympic Games were held in 1964 and 1976. It was raining for the first half of our walk, but the sun began to appear through the clouds by the time we had walked to the Olympic area. We also saw the tall ski jump, but didn’t go to the top because we weren’t sure if we had time. We walked back into the heart of town and ate at about the only restaurant that we saw open, a little pizzeria right around the corner from our hotel. It was good, but nothing to overly brag about.


One thing that I’m really loving about Austria however, is that everything is SO MUCH CHEAPER than in London or France. Water is not more than 2 Euros normally here, when compared to 3-3,50 Euro for water in London or anywhere in France. Food here is also cheap, only around 5-6 Euros for an average meal when it seems like we were paying 10-12 Euros a meal in France. I have also discovered a new candy that I’m addicted to. It’s called Kinder Buenos and it’s amazing! It’s a wafer covered with chocolate filled with a nutella type substance in the middle!

Anyways, after lunch we came back and got ready to go canyoning! Canyoning is where you dress in a wetsuit and have a harness attached to you. You repel, slide down, and jump off waterfalls and rock faces in canyons located up in the mountains. I was a little nervous because apparently canyoning is illegal in the United States, but I was more excited than anything! We met downstairs in the lobby at 2pm and left about 30 minutes later. Turns out that there were 50 of us going on this excursion! That’s 2/3 of the entire study abroad group! It was about a 45 minute bus ride to the Wiggi Rafting business site, and once we got there it probably took us another 30 to get fully suited up and back on the bus. Then we traveled another 30 minutes up very windy (and SMALL!) mountain roads up to the canyon. We passed a sign that said 1,500 meters, but I bet the canyon started at about 2,000 meters up. That’s around 6,000 feet high in the mountains.

When we pulled up to the site, the instructors pointed to a bridge with a river running below it and said, “that’s how we’re going to enter the canyon.” I was like, “excuse me?!?!” The bridge was probably a good 50 feet above the river below it! We were lowered off the bridge and repelled down to the FRIGID water below. The guides also said that today the water was around 45 degrees Fahrenheit! We were in thermal wetsuits, but that still doesn’t help too much when your feet are constantly being submerged in nearly freezing water. I was a little terrified of being lowered down into the canyon by rope, but quickly decided I wanted to go near the front our subgroup, because I didn’t want to stand there just freaking myself out about it for longer than was necessary. It wasn’t that bad. Actually, it was pretty fun!

We then carefully stepped through the rushing water onto rocks and the riverbed until we reached our first obstacle; a jump off a waterfall that was about 4 meters high (or around 12 ft). We were supposed to cannonball into the freezing water below and then swim to the shore. UHHHH WHAT?! Once again, I made myself go near the front of my group because I figure I’m here, and I’m doing this so it’s now or never! The water was so cold it literally took all the air out of my lungs when I hit it. Being submerged under the rushing water was a little terrifying though. Your body starts panicking and going into the survival mindset… which is basically summed up as “get me the heck above the water!” I wasn’t too terribly cold up until this point, but after that jump, it was all over. My hands started going numb with my feet shortly to follow.

As it turns out the first of our 3 jumps we had to make was the highest, so they were a little easier from there on out. However, we had some other very high rock faces that we had to repel off of into the water below. For some reason, I wasn’t very good at repelling down, and normally lost my balance and swung into the rock face. That REALLY hurts when your fingers are cold because everything hurts worse in the cold for some reason.

Towards the end of the canyoning session, one of our last obstacles was a slide. I was slightly nervous about the slide because we hadn’t encountered one yet. I was getting fairly comfortable with the jumps, but there is always a fear of the unknown. The guide said that the slide was “long, but nice,” whatever that meant. He was wrong. The slide was neither long nor nice in my opinion. They didn’t tell us that at the end of the waterfall slide (which the ride lasted all of about 4 seconds) that there was a 10 foot drop into the churning water below. I didn’t see this until about half a second before my body flew off the ledge into the icy water. I don’t even remember if I took a breath. All I do remember is panicking underwater, opening my eyes and only seeing the greenish tint of the water all around me, and trying to find my way to the surface. I felt like I was under that water for ages, although I know it couldn’t have been more than 5 seconds. What I would give to see my face when I popped up from underwater. I must have had a look of shear fear and panic on my face. The slide was definitely the one part of the whole experience that I would not like to repeat again.

By this point of the nearly 2.5 hours that we were in the canyon, my feet had gone completely numb. I could even tell when I was walking on the ground or when my feet were submerged in the water anymore. They simply had no feeling! Laura said, “Now I know how the people on the Titanic felt!”

The experience was a great one and one that I’m so glad I had the opportunity to participate in. I took away so much from today’s adventure in the canyon. I was able to sort of conquer some fears of my own regarding doing risky things. I just have to trust in my body and trust in the instructors that they will keep us safe. By entering the canyon with the mindset of, “I’m here, and I’m doing this, so I might as well do it right,” I was able to be a little more at ease with some of the scary things that we did. But even more than that, canyoning was a great study abroad bonding experience for our whole group. When someone seemed hesitant to go off a jump or repel off a rock face, people were always at the bottom shouting encouraging things. It really made it feel like we were all one unit and all supportive of one another; something that I have to admit I haven’t really felt thus far on this trip. Everyone was able to put aside personality and clique differences to just immerse themselves in this amazing experience and take it for all that it was worth.

Once we finally made it out of the canyon and got back to the base camp, it was nearly 7:30. We didn’t get back to the city of Innsbruck until around 8:30pm and without showering we headed straight to Theresien Brau (the restaurant we ate at the night before) and ordered food. We were absolutely starving combined with exhaustion which meant a cranky Amanda. But no worries, I ordered the Rump Steak (a study abroad favorite for this restaurant), and it didn’t disappoint! It was downright amazing! Probably the best thing I have eaten on the trip thus far! I don’t even like green beans, but I thought these tasted amazing and completely cleared my entire plate.

Now, sitting back in my room reflecting on the events from earlier today, I realize that today has quite possibly been the best and most rewarding day of my study abroad trip thus far. I couldn’t be more proud of myself and how I handled today!

Oh, and one little side note: today my little sister graduated from high school and I had to miss it ☹. I did get to skype with her and the entire extended family afterwards and was able to tell her how excited and proud of her I was! Congratulations, Courtney!

Longest Travel Day of the Entire Trip! :(

6:00am came very early. I made sure to pack everything ready to go last night before I went to bed, so I wouldn’t be stressed or rushed this morning. Caitlin and I went downstairs at 6:30, loaded our bags onto the bus, and went to eat our last set of breakfast leftovers! Haha. At around 7:30, we left Nice and set a course for Innsbruck, Austria. I took a Dramamine with breakfast in hopes of crashing once I got on the coach, but for some reason I wasn’t able to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. I even had a whole two seats on the coach to myself. That’s a big deal to everyone on the coach! I will only get it once on this trip. Fortunately for me, I got the two seats on the longest coach ride of the trip.

Our course took us directly though northern Italy, and we stopped there a few times for rest breaks. So I can now add Italy to my country checklist, although it doesn’t totally count, and I really want to go back to Italy someday in the future.
Once we entered into Austria a few minutes before arriving in Innsbruck, the countryside somehow became dramatically more grand and beautiful. We were driving in between giant mountains complete with steep cliffs, giant rock faces, and greenery everywhere you turned. The weather wasn’t ideal exactly, seeing as there was low hanging clouds and a rain/mist mix, but it still didn’t make the scenery any less lovely.
We arrived at our hotel in Innsbruck. We’re staying at the Hilton, and it is SO NICE! For the first time on this trip, we have FULL SIZE beds! We also have a shower… WITH a shower curtain! Our hotel in Nice had nothing, no glass, door, or curtain. We headed up to our room, changed and went down to the conference room for our presentation from the Innsbruck Tourism Board. We also had the chance to sign up for our extreme sports activities we plan to do tomorrow. I’m going to go canyoning! AHHH!! I’m super excited!... But also SUPER nervous! I didn’t know this until after I signed up, but apparently canyoning is illegal in the United States. Don’t worry though, Mom and Dad, the company here is great, and kids on our trip have been doing this for years! Other people are paragliding, bungee jumping (from the second highest bungee in the WORLD!), white-water rafting, etc. It should definitely be a good time, so tomorrow’s journal entry should be good!
After our meeting, we headed over to a local restaurant and bar for some authentic German/Austrian food. I even had a sip of the beer (which I normally HATE) but it was actually not that bad. I don’t know if I could have drank an entire glass, but everyone else did because we all got a coupon for a free beer from there! I had some German sausage, sauerkraut, and grilled potatoes! It was DELICIOUS! Quite possibly the best meal that I have had thus far on the trip. It’s on par with the pasta dish I got at ASK in London.

After dinner, Laura and I came back to the hotel (it was already past 11pm) and journaled and went to bed. Tomorrow is going be a fun and exciting day!