I left my heart in Salzburg

Aaron and I were really excited to see the Russian's team bus!

we accidentally ran into the Fanzone in Salzburg

Crazy Greece fans - too bad they lost :(

Riding the weird 8 person bike through downtown Salzburg

Abby and I getting ready for the Sound of Music tour!

The back porch and lake behind the von Trapp palace - the actual palace that they used was someplace else!

I am sixteen, going on seventeen...

The ridiculous looking bus we spent all afternoon on :)

Fushl - the location of my future summer home - soo beautiful!!

The hills are alive!

Mirabell gardens - gorgeous, and the location for the Do-Re-Mi song...

Mirabell rose garden, I will be back to see you again!

Skipping through the ivy archway, just like von Trapp children

The next Julie Andrews? Probably not.

I'm not even sure if words can describe Salzburg - it was absolutely amazing! I woke up at 5:45 in order to get ready and take the U3 to the train station. It was a three hour trip to Salzburg, and I was able to sleep most of the way, but it was also really nice to see all of the rolling hills outside the window. Don't get me wrong, I love the city of Vienna, but living so close to the middle of the city, you don't see fields and trees all the time. And the countryside is absolutely beautiful. Well, once we arrived in Salzburg, we headed to the old city and walked around and looked at the shops and buildings. We turned the corner to the shopping district and saw the streets lined with intricate cast iron signs. It's a city law that any shop in the old city have one - it looked really cool. I saw the house where Mozart was born and the house he grew up in. We found a Billa and grabbed some lunch and ate down by the Danube. We started walking around again, and then somehow made it into the middle of Fanzone. Greece and Russia were playing in Salzburg that night, so both team's fans were already filling the streets with chants and foghorns and even a drum... football fans are soo funny. There were some on our train in, and they were chanting on the train at 8 in the morning - they somehow do not run out of energy, because I'm sure they were still just as crazy that night. At 2, we boarded a bus with about 40 senior citizens and 6 kids under the age ten. There were 6 Hope girls on the bus, and we were the only ones between the ages of these two groups, with very few exceptions. The tour was really interesting and our tour guide was absolutely hilarious. Again, I can't describe how beautiful the alps and Salzburg were, I recommend everyone go and find out for themselves. We finally came back, grabbed a quick bite to eat, and were able to sort of see the Russian team load on to their bus as we were headed back to our train station. We caught the train and then finally made it home and to get a really good night's sleep, and now I am supposed to be working on homework, but I really wanted to finish this first :)

Some random things I've experienced:

• If you want to get married, go to Salzburg, we saw like 6 weddings somewhere in the process over the course of the day.
• If you ever drive off the end of the dock, the first thing to do is to roll down your windows (words of advice from Aaron Knighton).
• train seats in cabins recline, and even if they do make a lot of noise, you can make a bed out of them. Do this before the last 1/2 hour of the ride.
• Going through someone's ipod can tell you a lot about a person.
• If you don't have indoor plumbing for your castle because you built it in the 700s, simply have the bathroom stick out from one of the towers on the sixth floor or higher.
• According to the Sound of Music, Maria ran down the tallest point in Salzburg to the downtown with is 10km from the base of the mountain in 3 minutes - Julie Andrews was an athlete that would put most to shame :)
• I tried Almdudler, Austrian ginger ale, and I haven't decided yet if I like it better than Ale-8... but it's really good.
• In the old days, if a boy wanted to prove his love to his girlfriend, he would pick her an Edelweiss. However, the official flower of Austria only grows high in the mountains, and many lost their lives trying to get the flower :(
• Homework is nearly impossible to do in Europe.
• I discovered the German movie that has the same plot line as Little Giants, only with soccer instead of football (obviously). It's called Die Wilden Kerle, and there are 3 of them.
• When you buy a nut pretzel the width of your forearm from a guy who calls himself Honey, it tastes just like Hungarian kefli... delicious!
• Mystery meat does not always taste bad.
• Always make sure that you have more material on your body than your boots, otherwise it does not look tasteful.

Okay, I really need to get going on homework, even though I have such a hard time when there is simply so much to see here and not enough time to see it all!

Liebe,
Andi