Wien-Salzburg-Venezia

Ciao!

We have been traveling fiends the last week or so. We left Prague and headed to Vienna via the train system that we have now declared ourselves officially masters of. I just knocked on wood to prevent us getting stranded here in Venice. Anyways, we left Prague at around 7 am so that Mollie and I could get some Starbucks before sitting on the train for 6 hours. It prevents the morning crabbiness syndrome that I will RARELY (possibly more often) suffer from. Before we got on our train we met a couple from New Zealand who were half-way through their WORLD TRIP (and we thought we were cool with our Europe trip). The train ride passed and we found ourselves in Vienna. Our grandmother has relatives in Vienna and they graciously allowed us to stay with them for three nights and were amazing hosts and tour guides. They educated us about how Vienna is arranged -- in districts that are centered around district one in the middle and spread out around it similar to a bulls-eye target practicing shooting thingermabob. They took us around to some sweet viewing sights and then introduced us to the local cuisine and drinkage. We tried many things that evening "just for the taste". All of the tastings left us full especially since we are used to eating less more often than more. And this night we definitely had more. Eric got to experience the schnaaps, which apparently are well-paired with beers, but a bit stronger than schnaaps we are used to back home.

The second day, we were full-blown tourists again with our hosts bringing us downtown to the more historical part of Vienna. We saw Stephandom (st. stephans church), michaeldom, the opera house, the Hofsburg palace, Parliament, the Sacher Hotel and many many other places. The city is beautiful and very .....classy is maybe the word Im searching for. There is a withered tree trunk downtown that is super duper old (yes, that old) that had about a thousand nails busted into it. A super duper long time ago the women of the city would put a nail in this tree to wish their husbands a safe journey and safe return. I believe we learned more about the history of Vienna, Austria and the whole of europe during our three days there than in all the other cities we visited.

That evening we went to a huge open air concert that I would say is similar to Lifelight on crack (for those from sioux falls). The music festival lasts three days, has 21 stages, an amusement park, and a MTV stage for those who really like to rock out. At first, I thought it would probably be more interesting if I could understand the music, but then remembered that I can never understand what the singers are saying anyways. And quite often the band leaders would speak in German and than break out a song in perfect English. When we ordered drinks there, we were told we had to pay a euro for the cup as well and then we would get it back at the end of the night when we returned the cup. Definitely not what we are used to in the states, buuuuut the end result was worth it - pretty much no real garbage that you have to wade through at the end of the night. The MTV stage was pretty hilarious -- their was an American DJ who would play all this crazy techno music and then about every 5 minutes would pause the song in the middle and yell out "We gonna party Vienna!" in gangster English. The best band was the last band of the night, they reminded us of what would happen if Backstreet Boys and NSync got together and had a baby band.

Alright, we are going to the Lido Beach now, so I gotta jet....more later

Ciao!