Salzburg

Salzburg *sigh* How I love thee. It's so beautiful there, not to mention the birthplace of Mozart. I took almost 400 pictures there yesterday, just of everything. The buildings, the water, the beautiful mountains (which was so lovely with the super green ones on one side, and the snow capped ones adjacent), buildings, people. We left Bogenhofen at 8:30 and came back at 8pm. It took us about an hour to get there by train. While we were there we went on a tour of Mozart's home...got yelled at twice for taking pictures...we went into a huge cathedral, that i'm sure held some historical significance I'm unaware off. We say some old men playing chess on a HUGE sidewalk chess set, we took a tour of a fortress once overcome by Napoleon.

The first place we went was called "the house of water tricks" or something to that effect. It was built in the 1500s by some important, rich guy (you can tell history is really my thing). There are beautiful scultpures all around. In the middle of one section is this table, that I thought kinda looked like a table for human sacrifices (I apologize to my audience for this reference lol, I think I've watched too much Alien vs. Predator, kidding kidding...kinda) The table looked kinda odd because the center was missing. Like there was a slit in the middle of the table that came six inches to the end, and was about 6 inches wide. This is were water would flow through to keep the wine cool. When the rich guy would want his guests to leave, or they were getting too rowdy, his servants would pull a lever and water would shoot out of the stools they were sitting on. His seat was the only one that would remain dry.

His courtyard had all kinds of "tricks" like this, and I don't think any of us managed to make it out dry.

I felt more at home in Salzburg ironically, lol. I heard a lot of English, big tourist place. Most of the vendors spoke English, so buying things was a lot less stressful. At the end of our trip many of us opted to eat in town. I bought one of my first cuisines (I did have handtossed pizza early, that made me a little sick)...although it was Turkish, not Austria or even German. It was a kebeb. They actually save the meat off right in front of you. There's this large rack of...lamb? Prehaps, that is just hanging over this counter. When you order they pick up this electric razor and just shave off pieces. Nice and fresh and delicious, sorry to all the vegetarians and vegans out there!

I really can't say enough about Salzburg, you'll just have to see it! I'll try to get pictures up on facebook sooner vs later.

This upcoming weekend we are going to a concentration camp site and on Wednesday will be going to Munich.

My teacher has decided that we don't study our vocab words well enough from each lesson, so tomorrow we will have our weekly test, along with a specially made vocab test. My friend, Alexendria from Macedonia, is trying desperately to help me learn things. She always says, "you MUST learn!" (she says must for everything, which makes her sound super serious about everything lol) She has been learning German for the past 7 years. At lunch Erika, a secretary here, sat with me at lunch and tried to teach me proper pronunciation. She made me feel like there MAY be hope, but I'm not so sure. but it's only been two weeks! So I can't get too discouraged. All of my friend agree that I need my own personal tutor, because people can say the same word to me 20 times, and I still can't get it to come out right.