It's okay - we're Americans!

Pictures have been added. Enjoy!

We left Vienna on Thursday around 11:00 am. We ended up purchasing our tickets to Salzburg so we could save a day on our rail passes. It was a 3 hour train ride and we basically passed out. We called this our "Harry Potter train" because we it had compartments rather than rows of seats. We grabbed one to ourselves and took off our shoes so that no one would want to be in there with our stanky feet (which, incidentally, we composed a song about shortly thereafter).

We got into Salzburg and checked into our hostel around 2:00 pm. We were all bundled and layered up from being in Vienna and once we got off the train in Salzburg, we were delighted to be greeted with some lovely Springy 60-degree weather. We were definitely sweating by the time we reached our hostel because of all of our layers. We unloaded all of our stuff and Rachael went to go take a shower so she could feel so fresh and so clean, clean. We were about to leave

the room for lunch when Rachael dropped her watch behind our bunk beds. The furniture in this hostel is pretty solid, we soon learned. That stuff is really hard to move! Luckily, after some major grunting and groaning, we got her watch back and all is well. We then headed out to find some grub. We found a cute shopping

area with tons of food and shops. We stumbled upon this great little restaurant with outdoor seating, which we just had to take advantage of. On the menu, we were both drawn to the same dishes so we ordered the same thing. The first was a creamy garlic soup. Yeah, that’s right, garlic soup. It was basically the best thing ever. We both wiped our bowls clean and then we moved on to the gnocchi with gorgonzola cream sauce dish that we shared. Our breath was awesome by the end of the meal. Afterwards, we decided to do some exploring and made our way to the Old Town. There were tons of cute shops, restaurants, and historical venues to check out. Salzburg is in a valley surrounded by mountains on either side and has a river that runs through it. You’ve probably seen this river and these mountains before. In fact, these aren’t just any mountains - these hills are alive! This is the city where “The Sound of Music” was filmed. So knowing that, we just had to do a tour! (Thanks Amanda!) We headed back to the hostel and booked our tour for the next morning (Friday). Our hostel is all decked out in “The Sound of Music.” There are pictures of the movie, the stage production, filming locations, or the actual Von Trapps themselves lining every wall of the hostel AND every day at 10:30am they show the movie.

Our hostel roomies were doing the same tour so we all woke up and had breakfast together. The tour bus picked us up right at our hostel (score!). It also picked up Jonathan and the Shorter College gang at their hotel so we were all on the same tour together. We were a little disappointed to not see Jonathan sporting his Maria dress as he had promised. The tour got going and we had a vary flamboyant tour guide who sang and yodeled for us the whole way. We learned that Hollywood took a lot of liberties when they made their movie version of the story. This did not exactly fly well with the real Maria Von Trapp, but she got quiet real fast when they wrote her a $900,000 check. The first stop on our tour was the lake where Maria and the gang flip over in their boat as well as the house they used as the back exterior of the Von Trapp house. The gazebo used in the movie lived here for some time after the film came out but was later moved to another location because the occupants of this house got tired of people hopping the fence day and night to snap pictures of their gazebo.

The next stop on our tour was the gazebo itself! It’s locked up now because an 80 going on 90 year old lady broke her hip trying to hop around on the benches a couple of years ago. We also passed the street where Maria sang her confidence song (which is now a pedestrian road, so our bus couldn’t go over there). This road runs in front of the house they filmed for the front of the Von Trapp house. After that, we left the city limits of Salzburg and headed up into the mountains to see some more lakes, mountains, and other scenery used in the film. As we left the city, our guide began playing the movie soundtrack so that we could all sing along. And we did. And it was great.

We visited the church where the wedding scene was filmed and had lunch in the town there, called Mondsee. Apple strudel is a very popular Austrian dish, so we just had to have some for dessert (oohh darn).

After lunch, we got back on the bus and headed back to Salzburg. The tour ended in front of the Mirabell Palace which you can’t visit because they actually do stuff there, but behind it are the Mirabell gardens, which you can visit (for free!). This is where they filmed several different scenes, most notably, the “Do-Re-Mi” song.

While on the tour, we met our new friend, Matt. He’s from Seattle, so we call him “Matt from Seattle.” Creative? We think so. We exchanged numbers so that we could all meet up for dinner later. After touring the gardens, we headed back to Jonathan’s hotel (which we later learned is only 2 blocks away from our hostel). After hanging there for a bit, we headed off to find the Mozart house. We walked around and toured where Mozart was born and raised. You can see some of the instruments he played, music and letters he wrote, as well as other personal belongings. At the end of the tour, you can see sketches and models from some of the first productions of his operas. There were original costume sketches from the first production of “Le Nozze de Figaro” and models from several notable productions of “The Magic Flute.” It was pretty spectacular.

After touring there, we headed up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. It was built in 1077 and is one of the best preserved fortresses in Europe. A tram took us up the very steep hill. At the top, there is a fantastic view of the entire city.

We were exploring when we ran back into our hostel roomies, Jennifer and Rodrigo. They told us that everything was closing, and that we should probably head back down. We found a path, and walked back down to the town. Once we reached the bottom, we found a cool looking cemetery and started walking around. The caged in graves looked a bit familiar. We looked in our “Sound of Music” map and found that this cemetery was the one used at the end of the movie when the Von Trapps are hiding and trying to get away from the Nazis.

We left there and began making our way to a church for dinner. However, this isn’t just any church we were headed to, it was the Augustine Beer-hall at the Mülln monastery. Yup, they brew their very own beer here and there are monks pouring pitchers. Needless to say we had a deliciously fun time:

After dinner, we decided we had to check out the roof top bar at the Hotel Stein that our guide told us about. Although it was fairly warm during the day, it was definitely getting chilly by nightfall. As we were walking toward the hotel with the roof top bar, we could see the outdoor heaters poking up, so we figured we would be okay to sit outside. We headed into the hotel and made our way to the top. We got outside, sat down, and started shivering! The heaters weren’t even on - what a tease! Luckily, they did have blankets which helped some but it was still pretty chilly. After we ordered some drinks, our new friend Matt from Seattle came to join us. We also saw the group of ladies who sat next to us on our tour (Hey Edelweiss buddies!). We decided we couldn’t take the cold any longer and headed inside, but didn’t stick around for too much longer. The drinks were 9 Euros each (that’s $12 folks). So after thawing out, we left and started to make our way back toward the hostel to take advantage of the bar there. On our way there, we found a different bar. We were debating on whether or not to go inside, when a Dustin Hoffman look-alike turned around and beckoned us to come inside. We obliged. Who can say no to Dustin Hoffman!? We made friends with “Dustin” who is actually French and owns the bar. Now a sizeable group of 7, we got pretty rowdy, but for some reason, they loved us. At one point, they turned the music down so “Dustin” and Trey, an opera singer in training at Shorter, could sing “O Sole Mio” together. A good time was had by all. The bar seemed to start closing as “Dustin” was leaving, so we left too. We headed to the hostel to hang out some more. Not long after, our group dispersed and we hit the hay.

We woke up around 9:00 this morning so we could get packed up and checked out by 10:00 am. We looked up rail times for Prague and saw that we had to go back to Vienna to catch a train to Prague. Trains for Vienna leave about every ½ hour so we were good to go. We went to get breakfast and found an outdoor market where we ate some delicious pastries. After leaving there, we realized we were right next to the Shorter College gang’s hotel and Jonathan’s window was open. So we just had to be “those Americans” and started yelling his name. Five seconds later, he walked out of the lobby where he had been talking to one of his chaperones. He told us after he heard his name being called from outside, his chaperone had said “I think your friends are outside.” We got to say our farewells again and left the Shorter gang for good (tear). We headed back to the hostel and collected our belongings before making our way to the train station.

Not too much to report after that. We got to our train and slept all the way to Vienna and are now in Prague! We’ll be here for the next 4 days and are super excited to see what everyone’s been talking about. We plan on doing the free walking tour tomorrow morning and then a castle tour on Monday.

Peace ninjas!

XOX K&R