The Hills are Alive...

I am going to fake it out and divide this into two posts, since it's been a while.

6-19-05-
This morning we went to the train station to figure out my ticket from Berlin to Stockholm for later in the trip, and man, I'm glad now I have my Eurail, because that trip alone was over 250Euros without the pass!! haha. Anyway, I am standing in line, and I see Javier Orraca, another Tech student. This is my fourth encounter with people I know from Atlanta. It is so funny! (not sure if I ever wrote about #3, where I ran into megan and two of her friends from UGA)

Anyway, during the day we went to the Alta Pinakothek and Pinakothek des Modernes museums (since on Sundays each are only 1 Euro entrance.

Around 1:00, we left on our drive to Salzburg. We took HWY 304 rather than the Autobahn for much of the ride so we could go through small towns along the way. We stopped and ate lunch at a river in Wasserburg, and near the end of the drive, we cut over to the Autobahn for a while. We rented a 4 for 4 smart car (bigger than the regular smarts), but it is a REALLY crappy car. Dad was afraid to take it above about 90 kph, and so the only things we passed on the hwy were trees. Every car went racing by us. It was both funny and sad at the same time =)

We arrived at Salzburg around 4:00, and we went to the Pension Lenglachtner, which was really a persons house with a few rented rooms, but the people were really nice, friendly, and helpful.

We walked around the city at night, and went to Mozart square (that is where Mozart was born and grew up), saw a few old buildings, and then we ate at Wienerwald - a chicken restaurant dad remembers eating at 40 years ago when he lived in Germany. Lucky we found it because everywhere else was either closed since it was Sunday, or only served pork products!

6-20-05
We got up and went on the Sound of Music tour today. It was a bit cheesy, but surprisingly interesting! we learned a lot of history both about Austria, and about Salzburg, and of course saw all sorts of Sound of Music filming locations. The whole movie pretty much was taped in and around Salzburg. Our tour guide, Steph, was pretty cool, and really knowledgeablele, but a bit impatient with us. He was about 24, and from Holland. After the tour, we ate baked goods for lunch and got dad's camera that he forgot at the coffeeshop from the tour. We also walked to the Nonnberg (cloister) where some scenes from Sound of Music were taped, but also where the real Maria was a nun, and where she married in real life. Supposedly it is the oldest continuously used convent in Europe - or one of the oldest, I can't remember, but it's been in use over 100 years. We came back and napped, and then we got dressed up, and at 6 we went to Wienerwald again for dinner, and somehow managed to get a whole chicken with vegetables and fries for 6.80 Euros!! Good thing during this part of the trip Dad is in charge of hotels, and I'm in charge of food! I think I win haha. After we ate, we went to a concert! It was at Mirabell Schloss (Mirabell Palace). The concert was 2 Mozart Sonatas and 2 Beethoven Sonatas. It was really cool seeing a concert in an old palace concert room. During the performance, two pigeons somehow got into the room though, and it was a bit distracting, both for the audience, and for the performers =) At night, we walked around and got some ice cream, and ran into Danny White - another GT guy who now lives in San Francisco. He made a funny comment that keeping in mind how many people we run into on the streets, keep in mind as well how many people we haven't run into just because we're on the wrong streets and the wrong time. haha!