Blogs from Austria, Europe - page 273

Geo: 48.0765, 12.9132Crappy breakfast. Pate and cheese were not good. Ate with the Italian lady and her daughter (the one that helped me with laundry last night). Nice lady, from Torino. Off to Salzburg. Maribell Gardens ... beautiful. Stunning sculptures. Old-town - lively, with a fruit market. Had a burenwurst ... tasty! Kollegiekirche - interesting Baroque style. Mozart's birthplace - boring, but doing something Mozart related is obligatory here. Had a chocolate "Mozart Ball". Unlike the balls that Chef from "South Park" makes, they were not salty chocolate balls. Rather, they were sickly sweet (marzipan?). Continued walking and saw the largest Baroque fountain in the world. Cool. Reminded me of the Bartholdi fountain in Washington, DC, though both are quite different. Went to the "Dom" (cathedral, not an S&M practitioner you sickos!). Just anot... read more

Geo: 47.4898, 11.7043Magically, my pedometer is functioning again. A little late, though. At breakfast ... they had hazelnut yogurt!!!! Whatever genius that thought of that should get a Nobel prize. I tried to learn some German on the train. "Gutentag" is probably the only thing I can say almost perfectly in another language. "Gutentag" used to be 1/6 of my German vocabulary ... I am proud to say that it is now 1/10! Bolzano was good prep for Austria and Germany because it is bilingual and had most signs in both German and Italian. Got to Innsbruck ... rainy and cold. Had to wear pants again ... nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!Pricing is odd here .. some things are quite cheap and some are quite pricey. Walked through the Alstadt (old town centre) - very cool. Almost like a time ... read more

Guten Tag! Wie Gehts? Ich bin sehr gut! Although this is the beginning of the journal, this is actually the last full week that I will be in Austria. I'm going to begin by basically just saying a little bit about the city and my first experiences here in Austria. The city of Salzburg is just over the German border and is situated in the "hills" as my host family says, but as you will see from my pictures, these hills are really mountains. They are the outskirts of the Alps. The city gets its name from the salt mines that are so previlant in these hills and that is why the town began in the middle ages. Salt, as I'm sure you know, was needed to preserve food, so it was considered very valuable and ... read more

Salzburg would have to be one of the most beautiful cities! ...hard to compare with Prague though. Abit too different. Here everything is so green and pretty. But the weather has been shocking! Has basically been raining since we arrived! Im glad i can read signs though, that is making things alot easier than in Czech! Today we went for a walk from our hostel through the city to Schloss Mirabell. The palace these days is used for the town mayor's offices...so not much to look at inside, but it would have been spectacular back in the day. The gardens totally made up for the slight dissapointment though...beautiful! but the fact that is was raining non stop has made things not as pleasant as they could be. For this 'summer' leg of the journey we only ... read more

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been busy planning our itinerary and places to stay, so we do not end up sleeping on the street. We spent five hours tonight figuring out where we are going to next. Our original plan was to head to Budapest after Vienna where we are now, and where we have been since Wednesday, but it is too far out the way, The train from Vienna to Venice is about seven hours and that is long enough. After much debate, we also decided to leave Greece out of our itinerary, because it takes far too long to get to, and we cannot afford to fly. We are disappointed, but are excited for Italy. Also, we plan on spending more time in rural France, for we have more time ... read more