Salzburg to Frankfurt
Salzburg was awesome. Kim convinced me to take a "sound of music" tour of the city and surrounding areas. No big deal I thought to myself....uhhh yeah....well, it turns out the entire tour was "and this is where Maria and the children hung from the trees, and this is where they did the wedding scene, and this is where they did.....(just fill in the blank) and that was the tour. We did get to drive around the countryside and see many beautiful lakes and mountains (all to the commentary of..."and this is where Rolf did this for the family...." It turned out to be not as bad as I make it but I could have done without the whole bus singing to the ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK while we drove around. Basically the trip was worth the apple streudal we had in one of the little towns.
Having returned to Salzburg, we ate dinner at this cool restaurant chain here, sort of a Tex-Mex style. First meat weve had for a while, and I remembered that I am definately a carnivore.
In the shadow of the huge fortress on top of the hill next to us, we decided to go to the top. This fortress is apparently the best preserved in all of Europe. It was awesome. We took the elevator to the top and walked the ramparts. Although we had previously wanted to attend one of the nightly concerts held within, we thought we were too tired before getting to the top. As we walked within the walls, we could hear a chamber orchestra playing and instantly decided to buy tickets. Its difficult to describe the ambiance of the room,...stone pillars, wood ceiling, wood paneled doors set within stone walls. All built in the ninth century on the very top of a mountain. The chamber orchestra had about 11 violinists, a cellist, and a bass. We just sat there enjoying listening to Bach, Vivaldy, Mendelsohn, and of course the baby of Salzburg...Mozart. All this to the twilite view overlooking the city below. One word: cool.
After our first experience with night trains, I thought Kim would never again...but I was wrong. We boarded a midnight train from Salzburg to Frankfurt. Top bunks this time baby! We arrived in Frankfurt at 6 in the morning to an already busy city. Found a pension checked in, and we were off to the Frankfurt temple for a session. The temple, which is actually about twenty minutes from the city is just a skip from the train station. We just walked in wearing our Levis, t-shirts...flashed the recommends and we were sitting in a German session wearing head phones for English. After a couple of minutes, We saw that you could change the channel on the head sets, so I got to do my first session hearing it in French. Although we were both pretty exhausted, it was a great experience. (except for the little lady patron who looked at Kim and said "...never jeans in da temple" in her disgusted broken English) We of course had lunch in the cafeteria (what the heck was that drink? Grosse.) and met a nice lady from Payson Utah. She said the church was looking for a plot of land outside of Paris to build a temple. Incredible.
Since Wednesday is free day at all the museums, we went to the Städel (cool ä eh?)(its just here on the keyboard, no big effort. FYI, the keyboards here are all jacked up) We saw some Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir, Münch (notice the "ü"...FYI, we both dont like Münch to Münch:), Picasso, and many others.
Kim dropped her camera and smashed it up a little. A little minor surgery will be in order when we get home. We'll be on disposable ones from here on out. Off to Belgium tomorrow with a short stop in Köln (notice the ö) (we call the city "Cologne") to see the huge cathedral. Frankfurt has been a nice little stop. The city is the financial center of Germany, and all the tall sky scrapers show it. There was big time rebuilding after WWII, and the allied bombing that wiped 80 percent of the city off the map.
"So long, farewell, ausviderzain, good bye! to you, and you, and you and you and you....."
Since I have control of the keyboard this time, I just want to leave a sample of all the funny little things they have on the keyboard here in the old world.
µ,ö,ä,ü,ß,(I dont know how to do the others.)
See ya.
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