Unique traditions.

Austria is full of surprises for us first time visitors. One of these being the discovery of Santa's (St. Nicholas in Austria) little 'helper.' His name is Lucifer and he comes in the form of the Devil. It is known to us all that Santa has a book that has the names of all the good and naughty children. Lucifer is here to scare all those naughty kids into being good.

This has been a tradition for many years, Austrian children tend to dress up on the 6th of December to scare the people around Austria. Running around dressed as Lucifer, making people jump and screaming through the night.

It's a very strange tradition!

Walking into Innsbruck

After the museum we had a walk down Into the beautiful city centre of Innsbruck.  We walked down to Leo's (who organised the trip) office to have dinner and took some pictures of the whole first time Europe team. 

Leo's organisation is called AK and the staff were friendly and welcoming. This is us having a full team photo at AK

Museum Trip - Part 1

Today's main attraction was a visit to the museum in the beautiful town centre of Innsbruck. We had a wonderful tour guide called Tina who used both English and German to make sure that both groups understand what was being said. 

She told us an amazing story about an Emperor called Maximilian. He  was a man that was terrified of being forgotten, a man who wanted to be centre of attention. To make sure this was the case he created 28 solid statues that weighed 2 tons each in order to guard his grave. He based his statue designs on his own friends and family, sometimes using a mask of their faces once they died themselves. The most important of these being King Arthur who was a major inspiration to him. Eventually he was kicked out of Innsbruck for borrowing all of their money and not paying them back. He died on his way to Vienna in Wels, after being rejected from re-entering Innsbruck.

He was never buried in his tomb, he was instead buried in Wiener Neustadt. 

Maximilian:

One of the statues:

Maximilian's empty tomb:

More statues:

Additions to our team!

Last night we presented the use of the blog to the team of Austrians and English groups. Thanks to bringing this to attention, me and Chloe have discovered three more eager young people to help report our journey! These youths are part of the Austrian team, which luckily for us will add a bit of culture to our stories! 

Their names are:

Lisa, Nadia and Paulina.

We thank them in advance for their input!

Making new friends..again.

We made a range of different friends. Combining Austrian and English young people, but did anyone ever think that the animals can be so friendly? 

We met a group of cows, terrified that they may find a way to run us off the mountain, but instead they followed us around determined to cover us in as much spit at possible.

Also along our walk we came across a charming young goat. I have officially named him Billy.  Billy the Goat. He was our little stalker. Crying when we tried to walk away. Heart breaking to have to leave him.

We expect to be introduced to many other young creatures in the coming week, viewing animals in the woodland zoo!

Thank you!

If there is one thing that Austria knows best, it's cable cars. Thousands of skiers travel up and down these mountain sides each year making Austria one of the top tourist destinations when you require snow and excitement. It was an amazing opportunity for us to be able to go up on this ride as it would be too expensive to pay for any ordinary day. But this trip is destined to be the best. We send our thanks to the people who have made that possible and we enjoyed it very much!

About this project

This project is funded by the Youth In Action European Union programme

It is also co-funded and hosted by the amazing AK organisation

The project works in close partnership with the UK based Momentum World who are long term UK friends and partners of AK and the British Council (The UK Youth in Action national agency)

Non of this project would have been possible without these three organisations working in close cooperation.

First Time Europe Team Photo

This is the team in full 

Champagne for breakfast?

After a 8 minute journey 6000ft up above Innsbruck town the cable car got us up to the restaurant where we were about to eat breakfast.Starving we settled into our seats just to find waiting for us something you wouldn't see back in England. I mean where would you find champagne for breakfast in your typical English city? In the room next door to where the adults were quite happily drinking champagne with their breakfast was an Austrian jazz band. I have to say it was one of the most luxurious breakfasts I've ever had. 

Something new..

Today we tried something very new. Leo managed to put us off instantly with his charming description of this wonderful liquid.

'This is the liquid that comes off the cheese. The cheese is made and then this liquid is run off.'

This is then mixed with the flavour of fruit to create a strange tasting juice. The drink created mixed reactions, most lived it but some where not so keen, maybe one day we can bring this over to England? Would you fancy trying our cheesy fruit juice?