After several days in Scotland it was time to leave for Austria. Now, for those of you who may be fuzzy on geography, Austria is no where near Scotland, but in my case it actually made sense to fly to Scotland first. You see, if you are flying from Gothenburg your choices of airlines is limited. One of those airlines is called Ryanair (also known as the cheapest airline) and they fly to only three locations from Gothenburg, one of them being Prestwick, Scotland. And so I flew to Scotland, and from Scotland to London and from London to Graz, Austria. Not the fastest trip, but amazingly cheap and relatively painless.

Austria was (as always) beautiful and we had arrived a few days ahead of the event which meant that I had time to explore the area. We were staying in a lovely "Schloss" (usually translated as palace, but this was something in between a palace and a castle) which had been converted into a youth hostel. They're very common in southern Germany, but this was the first that I had visited in Austria. The Schloss is located near the village of Schwanberg, south of Graz.

For two days, I hiked around the surrounding countryside and visited the village (see photo) which had a lovely monastery. I had such a great time exploring that I almost forgot why we were there! We spent the weekend playing lots of music for a very appreciative crowd and I met lots of great people. I am particularly indebted to our host, Markus, who made sure that we were taken care of, and I do hope to see them all again.