Discovering the Austrian natural beauties: Hallstatt!

Are you a foreigner in Austria, looking forward to discovering the country’s wonders? Then I would like to recommend you with all my heart Hallstatt!

It is a mountain-lake destination, perfect for a day trip or a maximum 2-3 days stay, either as a couple, family or just friends. I loved this place, so let me tell you why.

We planned the trip quite in a short notice, about two weeks ahead. The possibilities offered by Austria were many, so picking this one has been a matter of internet information and recommendations from friends who have been impressed it. Hallstatt is actually a village situated by the lake with the same name and next to mountains of heights of about 2000 meters. Apart from this spectacular location, the village is famous for being part of the UNESCO patrimony and the salt mine that you find here is the oldest one in the world. In this area, Salzkammergut, there is a series of small mountain villages, each of them offering different attractions, like glaciers or trekking trails. This website gives you more information about a few of the notable locations. However, Hallstatt is the most famous and, from my point of view, the one that is worth visiting the most.

We went there from Vienna by train, which cost 52 Euro/person/both ways, each time having to change two trains. It took us about 4 hours to arrive to Hallstatt and we have been lucky to enjoy a sunny and wind-less week-end. From the train station in Hallstatt, one has to take a boat to arrive in the village, but it takes only 5 minutes, costs only 2-3 Euros and is a very good opportunity to have another perspective of the scenery. As soon as we arrived, we have been impressed by an enchanting atmosphere with colorful houses built basically on the steep mountain, cafes and restaurants by the lake, elegant swans, clear water and autumn-like forest. However, despite its long history, I have to admit that nowadays it seems to be mostly a touristic village so this is not the place to go to if you are looking for an authentic place where only the locals go. But it has its own authenticity and unforgettable landscape. By the way, it was quite funny to find out that the Chinese people built an identical replica of this village in their country. This helped in building its fame, reason for which you will encounter numerous Asian tourists.

Concerning the accommodation, you should know that it is very difficult to find something and the best thing would be to look for it at least two weeks in advance. We did not have this time so we searched just in the week before going and we have been extremely lucky to find something. If you are curious about the prices, I think an average would be 50 Euro/pers./night, but there are also cheaper ones provided you look for them early. If you are in a deadlock, my advice is not to take as an alternative accommodation in another village if you don't go by car. They are not too far one from another, but the distance is still too large to be walked and the buses are crazy – there is a schedule but, as we experienced ourselves, it is not respected and even the bus drivers might give you wrong information.

So, what can you do in Hallstatt? I will tell you my own experience, but the website can give you more options.

• Visit the Salt Mine. The price is around 22 Euro/ pers., if you are a student. It is worth the money because you get to go with the cable car, you have a nice view from up there, including a panorama point, you also get to walk a bit, the cave is very interacting and also funny (the highlight for me was the means by which you went down – something similar to a roller-coaster).
• Have a walk in the village and take lots of pictures
• Go trekking. There are also marked trails which you do not have to pay for. My favorite was the stairs-one. You see some stairs going up and then you think “Let’s see where they lead” and at some point you expect them to stop. But they go and go and go… Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to discover the path until the end, but it was quite exciting.
• Take the bus to the villages around (they have as well some sights that might interest you)
• Have a coffee or a meal by the lake

Don’t expect any nightlife, not even evening-life to a certain extent, especially if you are going there during the week-end. If you are familiar with Austrian customs, you should also know that very few things are open on Saturday or Sunday evenings. At 9 p.m., you can already count by the fingers of your hands the number of the restaurants or cafes still open.

Of course, adventures did not miss from the trip! It started just from the beginning! Who could have guessed that one of the subway lines was under repair?? So, I had to wait extra time for a tram to get me there which, as you might suppose, takes anyway more time than the subway. Everything seemed fine when I met my friend in the second subway, but we soon realized that we our papers were actually not the tickets. Luckily, after a careful reading of the confirmation e-mail, we found out that we can print the tickets in the train station, at one of the QBB machines. We rushed there and, to our relief, we eventually settled everything. In 15 minutes the train arrived and we comfortably sat in our chairs, eating a free croissant and drinking coffee, excited and diverted like small children on a trip to Disneyland.  

There are many more places left to discover in Austria and this is just the beginning. But, in the end, Hallstatt was a good choice that could be described as relaxing, inspiring and simply beautiful.

P.S. This is a useful website for more travel suggestions in Austria: http://www.austria.info/au  

Life assumptions?! Time to refresh them!

Have you ever challenged your life assumptions? Have you ever thought about your inner perceptions about the world? If not, then you should give it a thought.

One of the effects that journeys have on me is to bring out my philosophical side and make me more aware of myself. You may wonder why life assumptions are particularly important. I see them as a set of unwritten rules, embedded in you, that govern your individual life and perhaps your social life. There is a theory that I like very much and can be applied here –constructivism -, saying that our identities are socially constructed.  Moreover, it also states that the structure and the agent construct each other.  Applied, these things can mean that the way you see the world shapes your identity and personal structure but, in the same time, you have the power of remodeling your ideas and assumptions. To add on, as long as you have the wrong or just inappropriate perceptions about the world, your social relations are also different and this in turn it affects your identity.

Maybe it seems twisted, but it is actually quite simple. To bring your life assumptions to surface, practically, you just have to think about your own decision-making process, about what makes you happy and sad, and especially about the situations that make you feel uncomfortable. Particularly these last ones have the potential to reveal hidden assumptions. And then, talk! Just find someone that you rely on, that is really close to you and that does not judge you, and talk things out!

It happened to me as well, though it is not to be shared here. However, it was an automatically generated inner idea that I happened to carry with me for years without even realizing.

In the end, it is a journey of self-discovery. Due to the fact that we are increasingly more dynamic every day, we tend to ignore our foundation, our history and the way we have been built. Perhaps it is the right time to give it a closer look and create a better self. 

Accommodation hunting in Vienna

If you find yourself in the situation of having to move to Vienna in the next period and you are concerned about finding accommodation, or if you are just curious about how my experience was in this matter, than you should read this article.

As a very organized person that I am, I started researching the topic a few months before I had to move to Austria… from May if I remember well, so 3 months before. I can say this helped me in order to get to know the market and discover what my needs and wants are. However, I find it 99% impossible to rent something without being personally in Vienna because the chances to have a mismatch between the internet and even the phone perspective and the one of the reality are extremely high (basically, to be cheated). My experience stands as a proof that you can find a very good place to rent, according to your criteria (assuming they are realistic), without using a real estate agency, but rather your own work, knowledge and perseverance. Indeed, it is a competitive market, where the good places “go” almost instantly and you have to keep your eyes and ears constantly open to any opportunity and your mind aware of the wide range of possibilities. From my point of view, it is not worth paying the high commissions of the real estate agencies, which usually amounts to the rent for one to few months and/or a percentage of the contract value, when you can just invest some time and effort and find it yourself.

Whatever the solution you choose, to find a flat by your own or to use the help of a real estate agency, it is highly important that you visit the flats before renting. In my case, I came with two weeks earlier in Vienna and I stayed for some days in the flat of a friend of mine who was in Romania during that period. If you don’t have friends in Vienna, you might choose to stay in a hotel, aparthotel or hostel.

Going back in time and space, I tried to speak to as many people from Vienna as possible, to join Facebook groups for accommodation, FB groups of Romanians in Vienna (such as the one of the organization LSRS Austria for young Romanians abroad), I posted on my personal FB page, told my parents to ask their friends and acquaintances, talked to the university representatives and so on. The key point here is: get information from as many channels as possible! Someone might help you with a useful website, someone else might have a friend that rents his flat or a friend that might rent you the house while you visit flats… you never know where the opportunity pops out!

Therefore, I would like to give you some useful websites:

Ø  http://www.jobwohnen.at/  - this is the website where I found my place to rent. Really useful, offers are posted daily. It is only in German, but you can deal with it if you learn some key words and afterwards use Google Translate. It has offers only from private persons.

Ø  http://www.wg-gesucht.de/ - also an useful website. It has both a German and an English version, though some descriptions of offers might be only in German. It has offers only from private persons.

Ø  http://www.willhaben.at/iad - It is only in German.

Ø  http://www.bazar.at/ - It has offers from both private persons and real estate agencies.

Ø  http://www.provisionsfrei.at/ - It has offers only from private persons and it is in German. The drawback is that you have to pay in order to be able to contact the owner of the flat, otherwise you don’t see any contact information. Someone told me that he found his flat through this platform, so I decided to give it a try, but I found the offers quite little in number and new ones are posted rarely.

Other websites of real estate agencies indicated by some people are:

Ø  http://www.findmyhome.at/

Ø  http://www.immobilien.net/

Useful Facebook groups where people post about the flats or rooms they rent are:

- Wohnungen und Zimmer in Wien/ Rooms and Appartements in Vienna

- Wohnungen in Wien privat zur Vermietung

- Ich brauche bzw. habe eine Wohnung Wien

You have two big options if you are planning to move to Vienna: renting a room in a larger flat, known commonly here as WG, OR renting a flat, be it a studio or a larger apartment. For me, the best alternative was finding a studio. In the preparation phase, at home, you should also discover through your own research what are your required and preferred aspects about the accommodation you plan to find, such as the districts, the type of accommodation, the budget for rent and guarantee (known in German as “Kaution”), proximity to the transportation links or to university etc.

You should know that in 99% of the cases, when renting a room/studio/flat or anything else, you are required to give a guarantee (“Kaution” in German), which will be given back at the end of the contracting period, if the place is in the same good state. For larger flats, a transfer fee (“Ablȍse” in German) is also required for the furniture and everything contained inside. The guarantee is most of the times above 1000 Euros or equal to the value of the rent for 3 months, in the case of studios.

If you plan to live in Vienna at least for a year, I advise you to take into account both a short-term rent and a long-term rent for the beginning. Of course, the long-term is preferred, but in case you don’t find what you want in the required amount of time, than renting something for a month or two can give you extra time to find something convenient for the long term. You should also know that during the summer period, including September, a lot of people are still on holiday or abroad for other reasons, so your chances to find something on the short-term are higher.

In my case, I succeeded to find exactly what I wanted and the reason is probably a mix of various ingredients such as hard work, divine help, perseverance and luck.  About one week before coming here, I started giving many phone calls in order to establish appointments. Overall, I had 4 appointments before finding the flat that I wanted. You have also to be prepared for owners to call you and cancel the appointment because the flat has already been rented meantime, as it happened in two cases for me. The appointments themselves are the biggest adventure! One of the places had a horrible entrance of the building, another one was terrifying placed next to a night club with spices and the flat itself was very dirty, another one had the bathtub, believe it or not, in the kitchen, and another one was very dark, required a high guarantee and was available only starting September. As you may see, there is a great deal of things that you can’t foresee, so take your time and explore!

After all the work and the uncertainty, when I finally found this amazing studio, it was unbelievable. Now, it was all over! I can focus on other things! What I learned from this experience is that hard work pays off! You just have to research, research, research and never give up!

Good luck with your quest!