It's been a while since I last wrote, mostly because I haven't been on any major trips since Budapest, but plenty of things have been going on the past few weeks.  May has been a really warm month, and it's a month filled with Austrian holidays.  Most of the month I've spent sitting on the river, on a lake, or sitting outdoors at a cafe.  We found a really nice lake near the University, it's even been warm enough to swim there a few times.  The water is cold, but not unbearable, and there are rafts in the middle of the lake to swim to. 
The weekend after Budapest, a group of 10 or so of us went to a town called Krems for the Donau Music Festival.  On the way, our train stopped in Amstetten (the town where they discovered the guy keeping his daughter and children in a basement dungeon), we couldn't help but take a few pictures of the "welcome to Amstetten" sign.  The highlight of the festival was a band called Naked Lunch.  They played in a small church with a big screen behind them, there were a few short films and the band played a sort of live-soundtrack to the films.  We didn't get any hostel in Krems, instead we decided to wait for the first train back to Linz in the morning.  The festival ended at 3 or so, and the first train was at 5, so we were stuck in the small town, tired and tipsy.  In the end I think we got back to Linz around 9 or so in the morning.
A friend of mine here has a car, and a few weeks ago we decided to take a day trip with the car.  We didn't really know where to go, but the idea of being in a car again was exciting.  An art student told us to visit a lake about a half hour away, saying it was the most beautiful lake in Upper-Austria.  It was a big disappointment; the lake seemed dirty, small, and nothing really worth seeing.  But I got to drive back to Linz, and it was fun to drive again.
Last weekend we went to Melk, the city where the name Oesterreich (German for Austria) was first mentioned, to see the town's famous monastery.  The building is very similar to the one in St. Florian, just a bit bigger, and the surrounding area is prettier.  Just yesterday, I finally took a guided tour of the St. Florian monastery, and I actually thought it was much nicer than the one in Melk (even though Melk is much more famous).  Most of the Melk tour was spent in a new museum that doesn't really look like the rest of the building.  The gardens of Melk, however, were really nice, and the library was, by far, the best part of the tour.  St. Florian was nice because we saw all parts of the monastery (including the cellar where Anton Bruckner is buried, and a collection of skulls from the Crusades), and our tour group was much smaller and more informative.  It's always strange for me to be in these massive Baroque churches because they are beautiful, but sometimes simply over-the-top, and I can't help but think that maybe the effort it took to collect all of the gold and marble to build these places probably could have been used for better causes. 
Tomorrow is my last day work, which is totally strange to think about.  I think tomorrow night Erik, Simon, Drew, and I will host a bbq/going away party.  I'm getting excited to come home (and totally excited to get out of the student home).  But, at the same time, Linz has been my home for the past 8 months, and it will be sad the last time I walk around the town.  The going-away party might get kind of emotional too.  We've made a really good group of friends here (mostly students from the Art University), and I see most of these people everyday.  It's weird to think that some of them I may never see again.  But that's how it was in Dortmund, and I'm sure as soon as I get on the plane I'll be ready to get back to Iowa. The next time I write will probably be my last entry, but I'll have a lot to talk about.  Next week I'll spend about a week and a half traveling through Germany and maybe making a stop in the Netherlands.  Stay tuned.

We also visited this small town outside of Linz, called Steyr. 

Melk Monastery.

On the deck of the Monastery, enjoying the view of the rolling hills.

I also had a moustache for the day.  Just the day.

The lake.

A typical May afternoon in Linz.

My mom just called, worried that something horrible happened in Croatia because I sent her an e-mail that just said, "it was an adventure, but we made it home safely."  Knowing her, she probably assumed that "an adventure" meant that I got pick-pocketed or that Drew and I had to fight our way out of a Croatian torture dungeon.  Fortunately, nothing that extreme happened.  In fact, it was more than I could have hoped for.  Here's how the "adventure" went:
We left Linz at around 2 or so on Sunday and 8 hours and 3 trains later, we were in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.  Our bus to Split didn't leave until about midnight, so Drew and I decided to get a few beers before catching the bus.  It seemed like a clever idea, after a few beers we'd just sleep our whole way there and wake up refreshed on the beach.  We failed to consider whether the bus had a toilet.  Sure enough, ten minutes after departure, I was searching the bus for its facilities, which of course didn't exist.  Thank god, after two hours, the bus made a pit-stop.  For the second half of the trip, I was able to get maybe an hour of sleep, but it was far from a deep-sleep. 
I knew that we were going to arrive in Split really early, but it seemed like we had a pretty good plan worked out: find our hostel right away, they would surely have a waiting area or lobby where we could rest for a bit, and then check in at our scheduled time, 8 a.m.  That's not exactly how things worked out. 
We got off the bus, and surprisingly neither of us felt tired at all.  My senses were keen; I knew we had to find our way through a strange and dark Balkan country.  I read an article a few months ago by a psychologist (whose name escapes me), who said that babies are much more mentally active than any full-grown adult.  For a baby, everything is new and exciting, and their senses are always being bombarded with unfamiliar things.  But I'm sure most of us need at least 10 seconds to even remember what we had for lunch yesterday.  Adults get in a routine that often doesn't require a great amount of mental stress (driving to work, cooking, eating, watching the new "Office" episode).  Traveling, however, is a very different experience.  Everything is new again, that's why you'll never forget your vacation from ten years ago, but very easily forget your car ride to work by the end of the day.  In any case, Drew and I weren't affected by our lack of sleep, we were wide awake and ready to get to the hostel. 
That proved to be much more difficult than we expected.  In the middle of Split is the Diocletian palace, and we knew that our hostel was somewhere inside of its walls.  The palace is an amazing place, but much larger than we would have thought.  If we weren't so worried about wandering around a strange place at 5 in the morning, it would have been a really wonderful experience.  The streets in the palace are extremely narrow and beautiful, we felt like we really were in an old castle.  Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find a specific street in an old castle.  A nice old nun approached us, we showed her the street name we were looking for, and she said she knew the way, but after a few minutes of following her, we realized she didn't really know her way around.  By about 6 we found our very poorly marked hostel, but there wasn't a sign of life to be seen.  We decided that they wouldn't open until 8, when we said we would check in.  So we spent the next two hours wandering around the city, sitting on benches and trying to find ways to kill time.  It was really strange, we had moments of total delirium; laughing at everything and having a really good time, and then feel totally exhausted.  Finally at 8 we went to the hostel, and the owner said we couldn't get to our room until 10:30 because she had to clean the place.  This was discouraging, but we found a nice beach and spent the next two hours sitting on the rocks and enjoying the warm weather.
Eventually we got our room and took a good nap, by 3 in the afternoon we were ready to explore the town with clear heads.  Split is surprisingly big, actually with more inhabitants than Linz, but beautiful in every direction.  The town is surrounded by mountains, and the shore is lined with palm trees.  It felt like a real Spring break.  We spent most of the day walking along the water and relaxing, it was also nice to explore the palace after some rest.  There's something really amazing about sitting on a rock and seeing nothing but water, perhaps that has something to do with being from Iowa.  I was so happy that it didn't rain that day, spending 5 hours without a hostel would have been totally miserable if we were soaking wet.
The next day we woke up to a storm, and even had to run through some penny-sized hail.  But, we decided to take a boat to an island not far away called Hvar, and as soon as we arrived the skies had cleared.  Everybody had told us to visit Hvar, and they certainly had good reason.  The place is really amazing.  When we got off the boat to the island, we really had no idea where to go, but people were getting onto a bus, so we decided it was a good idea to follow them.  The bus was a scary experience.  Around every corner was a cliff with the ocean below us, and the driver liked to take the corners at roller coaster speed.  We made it to the city of Hvar quite quickly (faster than necessary probably) and it was absolutely beautiful.  Hvar looks like a fairy-tale, you'll see from the pictures. 
I was determined to eat some good seafood in Croatia.  Split has some really massive fresh fish markets with every type of seafood you could ever hope for.   The day before, when we were wandering around waiting for the hostel to open, we saw the fishermen coming in with their daily catch, and a few hours later they were selling every imaginable type of seafood at the market.  Drew and I got a kick out of seeing buckets full of octopi, and what's even stranger: people were actually buying them.  For a few hours everyday, the entire palace smells like squid.  So in Hvar, I ordered the seafood pizza.  I was hoping for something like my grandparents and I got in Rome, but it wasn't quite as exotic.  I really wanted to get a pizza covered in really strange, gooey, seafood that would slide down my throat.  There's something that is fun about eating really strange foods.  I remember when I was younger and my cousin Jeff and I would pretend that everything on our plates was either brains, or intestines, or something equally disgusting.  Still it is difficult to understand why that that is so fun, but somehow it's entertaining.  When I was on vacation in Colorado with my parents years ago, my dad tricked me into eating cow testicles.  But I wasn't at all mad about it, in fact, we thought it was pretty funny.  Maybe it's a guy thing.  Anyways, my pizza just had tuna and shrimp, nothing too strange. 
After the day on the island we took the boat back to Split and went to bed pretty early.  The trip was probably a good bonding experience for Drew and I - we shared a double bed surrounded by hearts.  I guess the online hostel description of a double room wasn't quite what we expected.  The train and bus ride home went much more smoothly, and I spent most of today in my bed recovering.  It's difficult to choose which pictures to show on the blog, but here are a few:

On the beach in Split.

The view of Hvar from above.

A picture of Split with some yachts more expensive than any house in Iowa City.

Contemplating life's deepest secrets on a rock in Split.  This is how we spent most of our vacation.  This is exactly how I wanted to spend my vacation.  I'm getting really sick of visiting the tourist destinations and spending a day following a map to things that I really know nothing about.  It was great to just spend a few days sitting on the water.

It took me a minute - and a few attempts - to get the timer on my camera correct. 

The sun rising on Split.  This picture was probably taken at 6 in the morning in a complete daze.