Europe Trip

Hello,

We´re a little behind on the posting since we couldn´t find relatively cheap Internet, and our hostel blocked our blog. Here´s a little recap for those who haven´t been kept informed by Jeremy.

Munich Final Day: tried to recover pictures, couldn´t, bought a new memory card, had all you can eat sushi with a revolving buffet, went to the Deuchesmuseum (science museum), went to the famous Hofbrauhaus for drinks with Jose from Mexico and Zishad from Missisauga.

Salzburg Day 1: Couldn´t take a boat tour because the river was too high, walked around a bit, saw kids playing human foosball, visited a fortress at the top of a very high hill called Festung Hohensalzburg, Jeremy and Eliott played chess for the first time in five years on a very large chessboard to the amusement of and with the help of many spectators.

Now back to Salzburg Day 2.

We travelled out of the city today. Our first stop was the salt mines from which Salzburg got its name (salz = salt). We wore a set of huge white clothing that is interesting only in the fact that with the hood on, we looked like part of the KKK and in the fact that there was no way of doing up the fly. A train took us into the mine. There we learned that the Celts had discovered the salt in this mine and had a village nearby, which we could visit but didn´t because we were short on time. We also learned the basics of how they mined the salt from the guide. Through several short dramatic videos, we had a view into a certain point in the history of Salzburg through the eyes of a snotty archbishop and his clumsy chamberlain. It sounds really lame, but I found it well done, as well as interesting and entertaining. We made our way into the depths of the mine by sliding down a couple long slides and took a boat across a salt lake. All in all the tour was fun and well done.

Afterwards we travelled out again to get to the ice caves. After a bus to the train, a train ride, and a van ride up a mountain through narrow winding roads, a long uphill walk, a quick lunch because we were starving at this point, and a cable car ride even higher up the mountain, we found ourselves with another long uphill walk. The view at this point was absolutely spectacular. By the time we got to the mouth of the cave, we had just enough time to take the tour and make our way quickly back down to catch one of the last vans back to the train. In the cave, we had many, many stairs to climb up and then back down in below 0 in just our sweatshirts. We carried these little flaming lamps and were constantly in fear of setting the person in front of us or being set on fire. However, despite the cold and the stairs, it was worth it. The natural structures formed by the ice were beautiful. Think of the scene from Ice Age 1 where they were sliding around in a ice cave. It was like that but bigger, darker, and colder.

Anyway, that´s it for today. Tomorrow, we´re probably going to hit some more castles.