Day 9 European Discovery

Day 9

Castle Project

Home Stay, Austria

Sunday, 19.6.2011

Today we go to to rise and shine at 8:15, a bit later. We were to be ready to go around 8:45. Once again we walked through town to the same place we had dinner last night. Breakfast consisted of strudel, coffee (which was actually drinkable), cereal, meat, cheese, bread – quite good actually. Very much a traditional breakfast.

It is still a bit wet after all the rain last night, and literally it did rain all night is seemed. Good thing we weren't in a tent outside....:) It really would have been a rough night.

After breakfast we will move to the area where they are building a castle, or castle project, as they call it. We have a guide that is taking us, Sue, or so I call her. The names here are a bit troublesome, so I pegged her Sue, sort of as a joke. She is really nice and a great sense of humor.

Of course we walked to this area. Actually everything is pretty close here so the walk wasn't terrible. The castle project is a 30 year project, they are attempting to recreate how a castle was built, from ground up. Apparently no one ever wrote down how it was done. They will use craftsman, using tools of the day. Using original tools is important; of course cutting down trees by hand, horses pulling big rock, etc. No modern-day equipment will be used. Huts are all logs, etc.

Workers are being paid, I believe many of them may be retired individuals. There may be others but not sure how that works out with their other jobs, pay, etc. Some may just be volunteers. Examples of tools of the day might be chisels, wood plains, of course horses and rigging used to pull logs, rocks, etc. Wedges would be used to split trees into logs. Fascinating! This would be a fun project to work on for a summer for example.

As we walked around the area our guide told us about the project. The castle would be up on the top of this hill. It was a little ways up to the top. They are starting with the fireplace, which would be in the kitchen and then castle is built around it. At the top some of the delegates planed some logs, some chipped rock (attempting to make rounder rocks more square), some wove wet vines into baskets (I think), then some of us carried some rock up the hill. We didn't work to hard on our service project. :)

After we finished this we headed back down towards the same place we had dinner last night and breakfast. Since we had a bit of time some of us walked up to a church that was way up on a hill, quite an aggressive walk up. Quite a sight once we reached it. We were in a hurry so not late for lunch. We had to hurry so as not late for lunch, always on a time schedule.

Participate in a true People to People moment as you work with local residents on the “Castle Project”. For over 30 years, volunteers have united in building an authentic medieval castle without the use of modern technology.

12:00 PM

You'll be treated to a taste of the Middle Ages with a traditional medieval lunch.

Lunch was great, can't really remember but I think it may have been some sort of Mac & Cheese mixture.

After this we said our good-byes and headed for Vienna. The bus ride to Vienna was quite long, and of course we had some tire Ambassadors so many slept along the way, as well as the leaders. Always a good time to journal as well or read journals. Finding time to read journals was always challenging. I think it is important but sometimes difficult to get done, 3 times, like I think it should be done.

Tonight we will meet and go with our home stay families. It was fairly late by the time we got to both schools. The first school we stopped at took probably 2/3 of our delegates. Of course all luggage for delegates needed to be unloaded. The streets were fairly narrow so a bit problematic. The school looked beautiful. Would have been fun to get a tour. But it is great that our Ambassadors get a home-stay where they will actually get to go to school. This doesn't always happen. Very lucky. I am sure the stories will be great and we will look forward to hearing some of them when we pick them up. The first school we stopped at was sort of a sports focus school. They have academics n the morning and not sure maybe a bit in the PM but then focus on sports the rest of the time.

Continue your journey on your way to meet your home stay families.

The second school was a music focus. We had a short drive to where we met the families for the rest of our Ambassadors. Once we had everyone settled into their homes, etc. we were off to where we would be staying for these three days. I was disappointed that we did not have a home-stay but as it turns out it was nice to have a little R& R at this point in our journey. It may be something I recommend for other journeys. If it can be somewhere in the middle it gives the leaders a little time to regroup before continuing on.

The bus driver, Roberto, Bernhard, and all the leaders will be in the same hotel, something called the “Pyramid”. It was a very nice hotel and this is where our delegates will stay when we pick them up. When we pick them up we will come back and check in at the hotel and get sort of settled. Then we will be off to start our day or we will do it a bit later, not sure. As it turned out, the day was so long our Ambassadors didn't really get to enjoy some of the amenities of the hotel but that is the way it has been. This journey is jam-packed with activities and the days are quite long. By the time we get back it is fairly late, as maybe it should be. They are not paying this kind of money to sit around a hotel for 4 -5 hours a night. :)