Where do I begin?!

Well, well, well...it's hard to know where to begin!

Austria was absolutely beautiful! We got there on Saturday afternoon and did some touring of downtown Salzburg. It is a beautiful old town, with charming 'buildings'. We walked around, and toured a beautiful castle, and then went to see Mozart's home. Unfortunately, we got to his home too late, and it was closed. We walked around a few more hours, taking pictures of just about everything (since everything is so beautiful), and then ate at a delicious Italian restaurant.

On Sunday, we took The Sound of Music tour, which was incredible!! The tour was four hours, which sounds really long, but it felt like 1 hour! We took a tour bus with about thirty/forty or so other people, all from different countries. The tour took us all around the different places in Salzburg that the movie was filmed. We got out numerous times to take pictures, and walk around. We visited the mountains that a lot of the scenes were shot, the church that Maria and Mr. von Trapp got married at, the gazebo where 'I am 16 going on 17...' was filmed, the gardens where the children sang 'Doe a deer, a female deer...'. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, it was incredible! After the tour, we walked around Salzburg some more and found ourselves at one of the famous beer gardens. We had a beer, enjoyed our time together, and then set back for Germany.

We had a series of unfortunate events, that led us to take over an hour to get to our car, instead of the 15 min. it should have taken. It's not a trip in Europe if you don't get lost a few times. Pretty much, a few different people tried to help us, but each of their attempts to help us got us more and more lost! FINALLY we got to our car, and began our 3 hour drive back to Germany.

We got back to Germany for our second week here last night at around 8:30pm. We found ourselves at a beautiful, but VERY rural countryside hotel. We were planning on staying here the whole week, but I don't know if we (I) can take this much rural-ness (a word?) Surprise, surprise...a few more funny things happened!

We set up the computer last night, only to find that there was no free internet, although the hotel advertises that they do. We found out that we could pay $9 for one hour, that's what I ended up doing this morning. When we arrived last night, we were only one key. No one at the reception desk spoke English very well. We were told (in broken Germanligh) that the boss spoke good English and to speak to him tomorrow. We decided to go to bed, and in the morning, I'd get another key for myself to have during the week. John left for work this morning, and locked the door behind him. This morning, I got up to leave for breakfast, and the door was locked. I couldn't get out! I was freaking out thinking to myself, 'What am I going to do locked in here??' I was locked IN! I called down to the reception desk, (who didn't speak English), and pretty much yelled "HELP!". She came running up to my room (because she probably thought I was hurt), and unlocked the door. I was able to get out of my room for about 30 min. to have breakfast. While walking down the stairs with her, I was praying that God would somehow make sense of this situation...because it wasn't looking good! I came to the dining hall, and there was only one person. Praise God, she actually spoke English...very well! She and the woman from the reception desk spoke English back and forth to translate, and told me that I couldn't get another key because the key John had, had a certain ID number on it that was needed to replicate the key. Yikes! I also found out from the English speaking German, that there is no public transportation to take me into town, or anywhere for that matter. The nearest town is 25 miles away...and no way of getting there.

Soooo...I am going to do a lot of reading and journaling in my room today. I think that John and I may look for a different hotel to spend the rest of the week at. My $9 is almost up, and I have a few more things left to do on the internet. Wow...I'm sure more stories to come from the Dorr's this week.