My Last Five Weeks in Kärnten

I've just finished the last five weeks of my assistantship and it feels strange that it's over. There were a lot of things to do after the Christmas holidays, so I didn't have time to take any trips outside of Kärnten, the region of Austria where I was working. However, I did do some more travelling around locally and saw some really nice places. Photos below!

The Amthof and tourist information centre in the town where I was living, Feldkirchen in Kärnten

The lake and castle at Velden am Wörthersee

Villach

Burg Hochosterwitz (This was so impressive to look at, but unfortunately my pictures did not come out well!)

Burg Landskron (my photos didn't really do it justice either)

So now my time in Austria is over and I'm about halfway through my Year Abroad! Doing the teaching assistantship has been a really interesting and useful experience. I'd never had a "proper job" before and I was very nervous before starting work, but I've grown in confidence over the course of the last few months. My German has also improved a lot - I'm not fluent, but I feel much more comfortable speaking now than I did when I first arrived in Austria in September barely able to string two words together!

In a few days time I am off to Chile, where I will be studying at a university. It will be my first time in South America and I'm really really excited! I hope to do a lot of travelling around the country while I'm there, which I will document here on this blog. :)

Back to Italy Again (Venice)

For the final trip away I took during my time as an English Language Assistant, I went back to Italy again, this time to Venice. Even though it was so easy to get to (there is a direct train from Villach), I had put off going there for a while as I was worried it would be really expensive. However, I found out it that if you stay on the mainland, near Venezia Mestre train station, it's actually quite affordable. Not the nicest area, but fine as long as you don't go out at night!

Venice, like Florence, was a place I'd wanted to see for a long time. And it really was as beautiful as people say it is. The downside was that it was extremely busy, especially around the most touristic places. It was only mid December when I went, so I definitely would not want to go there in the summer or the carnival season!

Even with Google Maps, I got very lost a couple of times, but I eventually managed to see all the main sites and take some pictures. Here they are:

The views you see when you first come out of Venezia Santa Lucia train station. Amazing!

I Frari

Ponte Rialto

Hard to see here, but it's a cool sculpture of a pair of hands on a building.

Basilica di San Marco

Piazza San Marco

Palazzo Ducale

Ponte dei Sospiri

A couple of islands you can see across the canal from outside Palazzo Ducale. Unfortunately I didn't have time to visit them in December, but maybe I will go back to Venice in the future and look round them then.


It is funny how I have ended up spending so much time in Italy during the German-speaking part of my Year Abroad. I had only been there once before, having spent a few hours in San Remo when I was fifteen and on holiday in the south of France. So it was great to explore the country more and see a couple of famous cities. There are lots of other places there that I want to go to in the future, Rome most of all.

I also started learning the Italian language in October before going to Udine, and I am finding it really interesting. Maybe it wasn't a great idea to start learning a new language when I'm already studying three, but I feel I have to finish the Duolingo Italian course now that I've started it!

I went home for Christmas a couple of weeks after my Venice trip and then came back to Austria in the new year for the last five weeks of my assistantship. I was too busy to take any trips away during that time, but I did do quite a lot of sightseeing around Kärnten. So that's what my next post will be about!

A Memorable Few Days (Innsbruck, Sargans and Vaduz)

This post is about a trip I took one long weekend in November, which I think was probably the trip I enjoyed the most during my time as a British Council Teaching Assistant in Austria. As I mentioned in my post about my trip to Vienna and Bratislava, I have a "bucket list" plan to visit all the countries in Europe as well as all the continents in the world. I visited Slovakia for the first time that weekend, and in November I was able to also tick off Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Three new countries in two months is not bad, in my opinion!

Because Switzerland and Liechtenstein are actually quite a distance away from Kärnten, I broke up the journey with a stop in Innsbruck on the way there and the way back. It was a really charming city, and it started snowing while I was there which was exciting! (Although it basically didn't stop snowing in Austria ever since, so I got used to it eventually. :D)

Here are my best pictures:

A couple of views from my hotel room in Innsbruck. I loved how mountainous it was.

A church that caught my eye on my way into the city centre

The most famous sight in Innsbruck: Goldenes Dachl

The Christmas market!

Stadtturm

Heibling House

Das Neue Rathaus

Triumphpforte



Landestheater

A couple of pictures from the Hofgarten. I had never seen a red squirrel in real life before, so it was amazing to get so close to one!

Hofkirche

Dom St. Jakob, the main cathedral in Innsbruck.

A view of the colourful houses by the river


After my first stop in Innsbruck, I took the train to a small Swiss town called Sargans near the border with Liechtenstein. It seemed very different from Austria - the accent was unusual and some of the vocabulary on signs, etc. was new to me. And maybe this is weird, but I was also excited at getting to use a new currency!

Sargans is not big but it does have some beautiful mountains and a castle, which I went to see on the evening I arrived.

This is a nice church on the way up the mountain towards the castle...

The castle. There were some incredible views from up there...

The following morning I took the bus into Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. I expected it to be a big busy city with lots of offices and things going on, but it was actually very small and really really quiet. Which I liked, as it was nice to be able to explore the city without having to fight through crowds of people! While I was there I visited the art gallery, which had paintings by many famous artists, and the museum, where I learned a lot about the history of Liechtenstein and what life is like there.

Here are my pictures:

Vaduz Castle

Rathaus

The Parliament Buildings

The Cathedral


I really enjoyed these few days of travelling and sightseeing, and it felt like a real adventure to travel such long distances by train. In the future, I would definitely like to go to Switzerland again in particular, perhaps to a big city like Geneva or Zürich. We'll see, maybe during the final part of my Year Abroad!