Sports Law and a trip to Salzburg!

Today was fantastic.  We left this morning at 8:30am to head to Salzburg, Austria for the day.  Its not a long bus ride, really only about an hour and a half and I slept basically the whole way there, which was wonderful.  When we got to Salzburg we started the day with a lecture at the University of Salzburg with Professor Michael Geistlinger.  Today's lecture was about international arbitration as it relates to Sports Law and the Court of Arbitration for Sports, located in Switzerland.  We focused mostly on the Olympics and Olympic sports, along with the Anti-Doping Laws.  I really enjoyed the lecture.  This was definitely one that I could've kept listening to for a lot longer if I hadn't been so anxious to get out and explore Salzburg.

Before we could go exploring, we took a tour of the University's law library which has some beautiful historic rooms in it.  The two main interesting rooms were the map room and then a second room that isn't actually used for anything right now, but occasionally houses exhibits.  After the library tour, the real fun started.

maps

Paintings on the wall in the currently unused exhibit room

First a group of us headed to Steigl Brewery for lunch.  It's part way up the hill to the Fortress and is the largest privately owned brewery in Austria.  I had the goulash, which was delicious and a Stiegl Grapefruit flavored beer that was surprisingly good.  From the Brewery groups sort of went their separate ways, but a large group of us started to head up the mountain to the fortress. 

Part way up, I realized that a museum exhibit I wanted to see was going to close before we finished at the fortress, so I went back down (we'd really only gone a little bit of the way) and off to find the museum.  I wanted to see the museum of historical musical instruments, but they currently have a Von Trapp exhibit in it that I wasn't interested in enough to pay the admission fee.  I ended up wandering around the city by myself for a little while, which was actually fantastic.  Traveling in huge groups is hard because we very rarely get to see everything.  I loved wandering around on my own today.  Salzburg is a wonderful city.

I went through the cemetery at Stiftskirche St. Peter, and wandered into the church to look around.  The cemetery and church were beautiful.  Cemeteries can be so creepy when they aren't kept up, but this one looked more like a garden than a cemetery. 

From there I went up to the fortress on the funicular.  The views of the city from the top were amazing, as were the views off the other side of the fortress, where you can see the mountains in the background and the snow still on the peaks. 

I also got to see exhibits in the staterooms.  There were historical exhibits about how the archbishops lived in the fortress and what the rooms might have looked like, along with information about different aspects of life at that time. 

From the fortress, I went down to the Cathedral (Salzburg Dom) to check it out and take more pictures.  Like everything else in Salzburg, it was beautiful.  I ran into Professor Lanier and Dr. McMurtrey while I was in there, just looking around.

From the Cathedral, I decided to walk down the main shopping street and around the area that makes up the center of town.  I went past the house Mozart was born in, and then ran into Yashica, who had also been exploring the city on her own for the day. 

The two of us headed over to Scholss Hellbrun and the Mirabell Gardens.  We easily spent over an hour in the gardens taking pictures and enjoying the flowers and views of the fortress and the mountains. 

It started to rain again so we found a little cafe where a large part of the group had ended up and grabbed some dinner and hung out there until it was time to leave.  While we were eating, we met a woman from New York who has traveled extensively in Europe and got some recommendations about Venice from her.

Once we got back on the bus everyone was still pretty wound up from the day and having fun, so the bus ride home turned into a dance party for the first 45 minutes or so before people calmed down a little. 

 Only one 3 hour class stands between me and the free weekend!  I can't wait to spend my bday in Munich with Sarah and Kaley! 

Budapest...

...is an absolutely beautiful city.  I really do think I need another 3-4 days there to even begin to see everything I wanted to see.  We need longer in these cities for the weekends.  What really amounts to not quite a day and a half just isn't long enough to see everything!  Anyway... Budapest was somewhat not my weekend, but I'll get to that later.

After our lecture on Friday, me, Amanda, Rob, Rhylan, TJ, Terrel, Famah, Yashica, and Brian all headed off to find the apartment we were renting for the weekend.  I found the place on Housetrip.com which I had used before, but run into a couple of problems with.  Having never been to Budapest, I didn't really know anything about the area where I booked the apartment, just that the place looked pretty nice and would sleep 8 (or 9 in our case), and it was cheap.  Our Apartment was awesome.  It was in this old building in a sorta residential area about a block and a half off of Andrassy Utca, the main shopping street in the city.  It was described to us as Budapest's answer to 5th Avenue or Rodeo Drive. It was a gorgeous tree-lined street with shops and restaurants and cafes on it.

Then we got to the apartment and had to wait about an hour before the woman we were renting from got there to let us in and give us the keys.  Once we got inside it was great!  The building opened into an open air courtyard with the apartments all around the outside of the courtyard.  We were on the 1st floor (2nd floor to Americans).  We had a full kitchen, crazy nice bathroom, and two living room type areas with sofas that turned into double beds.  The living room type rooms each had a loft in them with a double bed as well.

Friday night we just hung out at a little Italian restaurant on a square near our apartment and then at the bar right next to our apartment.  My camera broke, so Saturday morning it was off to find me a new camera.

Saturday morning we headed to the West End Mall (yea, I know, we hung out at an American style mall while we were in Budapest) so I could get a new camera and so Amanda and TJ could get tattoos.  They each got a version of the Czech Lion that is on a lot of the Czech coins.

After we left the mall it was off to sight-see.  I played tour guide, navigating the city and the metro system and getting us to the main places we wanted to see.  We definitely ran out of time and didn't see everything (so I guess I'll just have to go back...darn...).  We started at St. Stephens Basilica, which was absolutely beautiful.  We got there right after a wedding had ended and the wedding party was still taking pictures on the steps, while surrounded by tons of tourists.  There really aren't words for how pretty this place is.

Next we headed up to the Parliament Building, staying on the "Pest" (or Pesht as they say in Hungary) side of the city.  This was an awesome looking building.  The building itself was huge!  We couldn't go in, just look around the outside, but that was ok.

From Parliament we hopped back on the metro to go over to the Buda side and see the Castle.  Its on top of a huge hill with great views of the city and the river.  We made it there right in time for the changing of the guard, which was pretty cool to watch, and a total coincidence that we saw it.

From the castle, we headed back to the apartment to drop stuff off, grab jackets, and figure out how to get to Szimpla, a huge bar in the city.  We wandered around until we found it after having taken a couple wrong turns due to lack of road signs.  This place was huge.  I don't think I really got any pictures of it, but wow.  We hung out there for a couple hours before heading back to the apartment to sleep.  6 people in a cab made to fit 4 was a crowded/ less than great choice...but, let's face it, one we will probably make again at some point. 

Sunday morning was pretty uneventful, just waking up and cleaning up the apartment before leaving to head back to the bus and back to Linz.  I can't wait to go back to Budapest at some point, whenever that might be.  Great city.  If you get the chance, you should definitely go! 

Well, today was a long day of lectures at the Raabheim and we head off to Salzburg for the day tomorrow for a lecture about arbitration as it relates to sports.  I think we will be talking mostly about the olympics.  I can't even begin to describe the epically nerdy levels of excitement right now.  So, I'm off to bed!  Love y'all!