Salzburg and the Sound of Music

Right now we are on the train to Austria. I was ecstatic to see that the seats are set up in little sections along a corridor, just like when Harry Potter and his friends travel to Hogwarts (minus the Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans). We also confirmed my suspisions about how whatever you flush down the toilet goes directly onto the tracks. The entire train trip is going to be over 6 hours long. Yikes!

We finally arrived in Salzburg. Our first order of business was to find some food. Once we ate and took a power nap, we headed off for the marionette theater. The show they did tonight was "The Sound of Music" and it was delightful. I was amazed throughout the entire performance. I would definitely recommend it to anyone.

(We couldn't take pictures during the performance,

 but I found online that someone else did)

Today I learner that Europeans are pretty smart about conserving water with their toilets. There are two different flush buttons. One for #1 and the other for #2. Ingenious.

To finish off the day, we stopped in a restaurant for dessert. It turned out to be Greek, and it was delicious. Plus there were a bunch of very entertaining men in there having some sort of celebration. Now I am super excited to go to sleep.


Things that made today great (Wednesday) :
1. We finally got a good night's sleep. Yay for my body getting used to Europe time and a quiet room!

2. Sound of Music tour
  a. They picked us up at our hostel so we didn't have to find it
  b. Our guide repeated his phrases so many times it was comical
  c. All the sites from the movie (Von Trapp house and lake, convent, wedding chapel, glass gazebo,     Mozart's foot bridge, hohen salzburg fortress, and the mirabell gardens they dance around in, and the lakes from the movie beginning

  d. Apple Struedel and ice cream in Mondsee

  e. Finding out that when the Austrian president went to Washington DC, they played "Edel Weiss" for him because the movie led them to believe it was an Austrian song, but he had never heard of it before because Rogers and Hammerstein wrote that song. :)

3. I found water that only cost €0.63. Water is such a rip off everywhere we go-especially in restaurants.  One of the phrases we've learned in German is "Is the water free?" Nope. Never.
 
4. Watching a bee pollinating the flowers in Mirabell Gardens

Another thing you should know about The Sound of Music movie: If the Von Trapps had actually climbed over the mountain they did in the movie, they would have ended up in Germany.  More specifically, right at the Eagle's Nest (Hitler's headquarters).  The real Von Trapp family took a train out of there.

Czech out Prague

The day has been much, much better from this point on. We're certain this had much to do with the prayer we offered once we got off the underground. We checked into our Prague hostel (Charles Bridge Economic Hostel) and found it to be better than expected. The people who work here are so happy, helpful, and honest.

We had a fantastic lunch /dinner at a fancy Czech restaurant. It was my first time eating duck and I it was my favorite of all three meats we had. Later on we went to the bakery next door and I had a sweet bready thing cooked on a spit. It too was delectable.

               

The best part of this hostel is that it came with a free tour of Prague. Monika, our guide, did an excellent job at showing us around the city's cobblestone streets. We all signed our names on the John Lennon wall, saw the bridge with all the lover's locks on it, and got to look inside the coolest ever art piece in the library, built entirely of books. Up a hill, we were interested in a wall and why it was there. Monika said that King Charles hired a bunch of men to build the "Hunger Wall" soley for the purpose of giving them jobs. I looked it up and others are doubtful that's the only reason, but I'd still like to believe it's the main reason. Everything in Prague was beautiful and the weather was really nice. It has rained a little, but not too badly.

Lennon Wall

 I'm on the wall!

Lock Bridge

 View from Lock Bridge

Amazing book tower

Getting There

No, this is not a post on the worst Mary Kate and Ashley movie ever made (whoever wrote the story line is even too embarrassed to have their name shared on IMDB).

It's about getting to Europe!! Much better, eh?

(Disclaimer: I know that writing should stick in the same tense, but I wrote my notes throughout the trip so it changes from present to past to future tense quite frequently.)

I woke up to my mom ringing the doorbell. Ahh! I slept in! It was just like a scene from Home Alone. Only I didn't have a fallen power line to blame. She was there to take me to the airport for my flight to Prague (via NY) . That was the fastest I have ever gotten ready in my life. And as far as I can tell, I didn't forget anything.

I am now on the flight to New York. I was reading The Book of Mormon and the guy next to me started asking me questions about it and the Church. I have always heard stories about people talking to their seatmates about the Church and I always felt kinda left out, but I guess I just wasn't sitting by the right people.

Getting ready to take off from NYC to Prague with Liz, Katie, and Kristen. I love how Katie described our friendship on her blog:  "The only thing we had in common before this trip was our individual friendship with Liz and now we’re all friends together. It’s facebook official. It was the perfect group of people to travel around Austria with." 

Michael Cera  (or his lookalike cousin) is sitting right by us on the plane. He totally knew that we were talking about him and trying to get photographic evidence he was there.  Thus, he dodged my camera in all my pictures.

Turns out that our take off took over two hours.  Let's just say that I'm really not a fan of JFK airport (this has happened to me before) and the Delta crew did far less than a satisfactory job of making our time on the tarmac bearable.

Note to self : Bring some heavy sleeping medicine next time I go on an overnight flight.  Or start saving now so that I can upgrade to nicer seats. Or both.

During the night, dreadlock man sitting next to Katie spilled his beer into her bag sitting innocently on the floor. He was too afraid to tell her and ended up ruining a bunch of her stuff. :(

Well, we got ripped off only 5 minutes after exiting the Prague airport. A shady man who worked at the airport sold us invalid tickets. After being on the bus for only 5 minutes, the ticket checker showed up and informed us of how naive and foreign we were. We had to pay a fine of 400 Czech crowns apiece (approx. twenty bucks). We are learning lessons quick in this country.

The Hills are Alive

I am about to be here, doing this...

I'll miss you all greatly! 

Workin' in a coal mine

Now that summer is finally here (yay!), I have been getting more sleep.  More sleeep=More Dreams=More Blog Entries. It's a win, win, win.

I should have written this earlier today when it was more clear, but you'll just have to deal with what is still in my head.

I was preparing to enter a mine shaft.  I had to get all geared up.  We needed special clothes and head lamps and all that jazz. My favorite part now that I'm awake was a tight material that covered my hair.  It was very similar to one of those things you use to cover your own hair before putting on a wig.

Later we were being trained on safety procedures.  To warn us about the dangers of using a certain drug, this guy started eating this nasty green stuff and then ended up puking it up all over the place.  I was beyond disgusted (as I would imagine you are right now).

I never actually got to go down into the mine.

I was probably worried about getting the black lung, like this guy:

Chips

Favorite end of school gift:

"Your all that in a bag of chips."

Moved

By "WE," I mean "I."

And by "moved," I mean "relocated to a new house 6 miles away."

Anyway, if you want to send me any mail or packages or mail-order husbands,

you'll have to ask for my new address.