Week 121: Adventures around Upper Austria

Feb 19

A lot happened in week 121…Eric went to England for a 4-day work trip. I coached my first Austrian softball practice. My Dad turned 70. Eric surprised me with a flower delivery on Valentine’s Day. I frolicked around Upper Austria with a fellow American living in Austria on Wednesday and Thursday.

Making friends as an adult can be difficult. Throw in moving to a place where you don’t speak the language and that makes it even more difficult. I recently read there are close to 10,000 Americans living in Austria, and with Austria being slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maine, chances are you will meet a few on a trail, at a restaurant in a bigger city, or somewhere within your social media feed.

This has certainly been true for us. I have met several other Americans by sharing our adventures on Instagram and in week 121 I finally met up with one of them!

On Wednesday, we kicked off our adventures at Schiederweiher, a lake in Hinterstoder.

*Views from Polsterstüberl by Schiederweiher*

Eric and I came to Schiederweiher almost 100 weeks ago with the pups in week 25. It is only an hour from Gmunden, but the further we drove, the bluer the skies became and the snowier the ground got.

Thursday morning, we got up early and drove to the Gmundnerberg for sunrise. It is one of the best places to watch the sunrise all year long. The cloud lake rolled along the mountains as the sunlight began to spill over the Traunstein at 7:36 AM.

*Waiting for sunrise from the Gmundnerberg*

As the clouds began to break, I spotted our house in the valley below.

For our final adventure on Thursday, we went to Offensee. Another lake Eric and I visited upon our arrival in 2020 on week 5.

As we were walking towards the lake, we saw a group of people and a dog shuffling their feet on the lake. That was the moment it became clear the lake was frozen and thick enough to hold the weight of several adults. So, we cautiously took a few steps away from shore and after a few minutes we started to hear faint cracking sounds. Since we had no plans to fall through a frozen lake, we quickly got off the ice and back onto the main walking trail.