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. :)

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!

Vienna and Bratislava

Back in October, all the British Council English language assistants in Austria were invited to Vienna for a tea party at the British Embassy. I took advantage of this great opportunity to spend a few days in the city and also to take a day trip to Bratislava.

Vienna was really grand and magnificent with beautiful architecture and so many things to see. The highlight of my trip was the Belvedere Palace, where you can find numerous great works of art including "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt.

I also went to the Schönbrunn Palace, another grand palace in Vienna where the Austrian royal family used to live. Inside you can look around some of the rooms and listen to information about the members of the family.

Other amazing sights included Stephansdom...

...the Hofburg Palace...

...plus many other interesting places around the city.

Bratislava was also a great capital city to visit. It is worth mentioning that I have a bucket list goal to visit every single country in Europe as well as every continent in the world. As of today, I have been to 18 of the 47 European sovereign states (19 if you count going to Portugal inside my mum's tummy a few months before I was born!) and 2 of the 6 inhabitable continents (Europe obviously and North America). I hadn't been to Slovakia before so I was excited to find out that it was just an hour away from Vienna on the train. Bratislava was a very pretty city and it was cool to tick another country off my list!

In the centre of the old town, you can find Hlavné Námestie, a very picturesque square.

The other famous square in the city is Hviezdoslavovo Námestie, which contains the Slovak National Theatre.

My favourite part of Bratislava was definitely the castle, which is like something out of a fairytale. It is also up quite a steep hill, so you have great views over the city from up there.

I had an amazing time exploring both of these capital cities which happen to be so close. If you ever visit one of them, it's very much worth the while taking a trip to the other one!