As great as it was to see everyone in Bad Kleinkirchheim, it also was not the most fun thing we have ever done. We arrived in Villach, a small town with a train station that we were picked up at, around 14:00 and the people in charge were not going to be there until 16:00 or later. Then we went to the hotel, which was a beautiful hotel with a pool, balconies, and wonderful eating hall, and we were assigned rooms, right? But then Ernst, the most chill person ever, decided that we could pick our rooms. And it was chaos. We tried to make a system but then, one girl decided that she would not tell anyone that she was going to go to a room, that two of us were going to take, and then another was in two rooms. So it was a stressful situation for the two of us who didn’t have rooms. I got stuck in the room of a girl who thought she was the Queen Bee of the Inbounds- an angelic rulebreaker with money to spare. When I sighed after finding a room, she had the nerve to ask why I sounded stressed. And she got so defensive when I said, “well, that whole situation was stressful,” that I had to take a few moments to calm myself down so I didn’t yell at her for being the bitch who made it so stressful since she decided to take a room and not tell anyone. After that joyous experience, was a dinner that lasted 4 hours and left you still hungry. They served you appetizers for part of the night, but mostly you just filled up on pink lemonade or mint tea. They had these delicious little sliders that most people ate as soon as they came out of the kitchen. It was there that they announced why we were really there. Bad Kleinkirchheim Club was hosting since it was their 25th anniversary. Then we went back to the hotel at 23:00. We were so tired from school plus all the drama of the rooms that I went back to my room- where I had to sleep on a floating bunk while being afraid of going down ladders- and practically passed out. Breakfast was at 7 the next morning and boy, were we exhausted. Then we got on the bus at 8 and had an hour and a half drive on a windy road that made me motion sick. In addition to that, there is a plant in Carinthia called Canadian goldenrod that I am allergic too. Then, I had an asthma attack from hiking in high altitude after going up and down about a thousand meters. To make it all the better, I had gotten my period on Thursday, so I was bleeding in the mountains. There was a lady that walked with me back to the starting point where we were picked up by bus and taken to the town by the mountain lake where we waited for the others to finish the hike. She had had knee surgery in 2018 so her knee was hurting. Turns out she went on the Eurotour in 2019 and was there when the two people were sent home for drinking and voted for them to be sent home. Then she started talking about how two more boys were being sent home that Saturday before the Gala dinner, for drinking schnapps and whiskey. When we got back to the hotel we had 3 hours to get ready for what would be a long night to come. I took the first shower for around 25 minutes since it took me a while to figure out how the shower worked since the shower handles were weird. The gala started at 7 and dinner happened at 9… 30. At around 8:30, the waiter asked for our drinks and two girls ordered coffee and I ordered water. The waiter came back to tell the girls that coffee was an additional cost and had a bottle of still water in his hands, the bottle I had ordered because my throat hurt, and then walked to the table after ours and gave the bottle to them. I got kinda pissy and when he returned, I said “Can I get my still water?” and while I am not proud of the tone I held, I was struggling to breathe since my throat hurt a lot, but I did feel bad. The waiter ignored our table for the rest of the night because of it, I think. I did want to apologize but, he never returned to our table. The first course was raw salmon and tuna salad on a plate with some onions. The tuna was spicy but good and the raw fish was super slimy and chewy. Then pumpkin soup came and it had seeds in it that were burned and it didn’t taste nearly as good as my host mom’s pumpkin soup. Next, we had steak and potatoes with green beans, and it was okay, but nothing special. Dessert was the best thing they gave us. It was chocolate mousse and vanilla mousse with a hazel nut-filled pastry thingy on top and whipped cream.
After that gala finished at 10, we had to sit down with the ROTEX and the leaders since I might have said something about people telling us different versions of the story about Eurotour. So, they wanted to be “transparrant” with us as a way of making sure we got the warning. Three boys had been caught in a room with alcohol and got sent home. One boy they think was only drinking due to peer pressure and the others were the instigators. Later, we found out that one got sent back to Australia. And the other two probably won’t be allowed to go Vienna with us in October. After that, we took off our masks and beautiful clothes and went to sleep as fast as possible because we were exhausted. Breakfast was at 8 Sunday morning, and we had 30 minutes to eat before we had to go back to our rooms to pack. I had packed the night before because I couldn’t fall asleep since the other girls were taking showers and playing loud music until almost midnight. Then, the lady from the hike checked our rooms to see if we were really packed and to see if we hadn’t forgotten anything. My room was the first one done, out of all the girls and most of the boys. The train ride back to Innsbruck was very interesting since I might have done something not allowed. I went on a different train than I was supposed to, so I could stay with Samantha since we were being picked up by my host parents together. The ticket man came by and didn’t check our tickets, so I didn’t get caught, but I was super scared. But everything worked out, and I was able to write this so everything is fine.
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AuthorErin, youth exchange student Archives |