Austria

We have travelled quite a bit since I last wrote you. First we had a couple of great days in Prague (or "Praha" as we natives like to call it). For two and a half days we wandered the city, ate some amazing food and lounged around reading books. Mostly my attention span only allowed me to read for about 12 minutes at a time between long naps. The city was gorgeous and our couch surfing host there was awesome. She made us some great Czek food and wandered the city for a while with us. Prague feels like a step back in time, except for the 12 and a half million obnoxious tourists standing in front of the clock in the center square all day with cameras waiting for it to chime on the hour, every hour, so they can essentially ooo and aaah at absolutely nothing at all. (Ok, so I wasn't super impressed with the clock, and I'm finding out that I'm not ultra crazy about crowds). We also spent part of this day taking classic "girl study abroad in Europe" pictures that we've seen from several of our friends over the years. So far we have great shots of: pretending to open a castle door, emphatic jumping on an old street, making a scandalous face while putting arm around old statue, and many many more. If any of you can think of pictures we've left out, please let us know ASAP.

We hopped on a train from Prague to Vienna a couple of days ago and had a gorgeous ride through Austria. We had a couch surfing couple host us in Vienna and we loved them. We loved the city too but the saddest part about leaving Vienna for me was saying goodbye to them. We hung out with them the two nights we were there and swapped funny travel stories, laughing and eating amazing Austrian food. Vienna was fun. The city was less busy with tourists and so a bit more pleasant to wander. We visited a million more churches and ate food from street vendors that looked suspicious but apparently weren't too bad because neither of us has upchucked yet.

Yesterday we hopped a train out to Salzburg (western Austria). This is one of the most amazing cities I've ever seen. It sits in the middle of and on top of several green mountains and cliffs. The city is really old and really clean. We didn't have a place to stay when we were planning to head to Salzburg and thought we would have to search for some hostels when we got here but fortunately a girl invited us over very last minute. We're staying in this really cool house burried in the forest on the edge of town. They have several bikes sitting out front to ride into town so we've been biking and hiking all over Salzburg for the last 24 hours, looking at castles and churches and eating even more questionable food from street vendors (fingers crossed). The biking has been interesting, primarily because neither of us has ridden a bike since 1992 but also because we have a difficult time reading the signs and understanding the very complex bike traffic laws in this city. We may end up on a later episode of locked up abroad, which is fine with me if they serve schnitzel in their prisons. As for the not riding a bike since 1992, as it turns out, "it's just like riding a bike" has earned its status as the ultimate proverbial phrase for never forgetting how to do something, except for as pertains to the hind parts, which apparently have LONG since forgotten how to ride a bike. But enough about me.

Tonight we'll head out to Italy via train. We're going to a town called Padova which is near Venice (it's sort of a long story how we ended up getting tickets to Padova, but in the end, being the travel snobs that we are, we are excited to go to a less well known place so that we can later tell others that we went there in a tone that sounds like we think everyone should know where Padova is). It will be a little sad to leave Austria just when we've gotten so good at speaking German (and by speaking German, I mean saying English words in German accents over and over and then laughing like it's the first time we've done it. Our current favorite is saying the the word "people" but replacing the L with and R).

~It Just Gets Stranger