Italia!

Well after a crazy few days, Rebecca and I made it to Venice! But first, I'll backtrack a little to cover what things since the last post.

The black light theater was quite interesting. The description was an absurd mime show with visual effects, and that is exactly what we got. It started off with a scene consisting of a Barney Fife-esque cop chasing after a guy and a sketchy looking girl who have just robbed a bank. After a few minutes, they left the stage and the whole thing went dark. Then people in glowing outfits came out and did some modern dance using their clothes that glowed in the black light to create illusions like they were flying or whatever. Then after a few minutes of that, it went back to the bank robbery scene. The transitions were hilarious because there weren't any, but both parts of the show were great. It was definitely a Czech show and not American, because it was a "kid's show" where the lady who robbed the bank also snorted something white off of the table. We all looked at each other like, "Did that just happen???" Haha anyway, it really was cool because we could not figure out how they did some of the illusions.

The marianette show the next night was equally intersting. They performed Don Giovanni, which none of us had ever seen, so we had to work to pick up the story line for a few minutes from the Italian puppets. Between scenes, a Motzart marianette would come out to the front of the stage to conduct the orchestra. Each time, Motzart would get crazier and crazier. He jumped in a pool and splashed the audience once, then he came out drunk the next time. For a puppet, all of this was impressive. The story seemed pretty good, and right when we started figuring out that Don Giovanni was a bit of a player, a giant monster (an actual person in a costume) came out and took Don Giovanni off to hell. Talk about a twist. After that, it was pretty much over, except for some songs, during which Motzart came out and started making fun of how boring the singing was. I had to agree that his timing was spot on.

From Prague, we went to Salzburg. The route there was a little complicated, as it required us to get on 6 different trains for a total trip time of 8 hours. Crazy. We accidentally sat in first class on the first train, but we asked how much it was to be able to stay there (because neither us nor our stuff was moving), so we each happily paid 5 Euro to stay where we were. We were on each train for a little over an hour each time, which was basically enough time to hop on, search for a seat, find out we picked the wrong seats, find new seats, look out the window for 5 minutes, then get ready to hop off. Even though we were on a train all day, we certainly got a good workout. We often joke with taxi drivers and other people who are unfortunate enough to deal with our luggage that we have packed other friends in our bags to save money. They usually don't get it, but I laugh every time because they don't get it.

We made it to Salzburg without much trouble and checked into my favorite hotel so far. It was right in the middle of the city, and less than 100 yards from the square where the soccer games were being shown on the big screen. The shower in the room was made for midgets, however. The shower head was below my shoulders, but you could take it off the hook and do it yourself. Mary found this challenging the first day, as I had to tread water to get to the shower when she was done (hahaha jk Mary, it wasn't that bad). Breakfast in the morning was simliar to that in Paris, with the individual coffee pots and the wonderful food.

The first day in Salzburg was really our only full day, so we were very lucky that the weather was beautiful. We went on a "Sound of Music Tour", and Rebecca was in heaven. It was fun to see some of the beautiful places in the movie and to find out first that the Von Trapp family was real (yeah I didn't know that) and that they fled to Italy, then Ellis Island, and settled in Vermont, not to Switzerland as it showed in the movie. There were 4 other American girls our age on the tour, so that was a good time. The tour guide pulled over at one point and said, "Ok, this is your chance to dance around the meadows like Maria." She then blared "The Hills are Alive" and we all got out. A couple of the girls were standing there taking pictures and not really don't anything overly impressive, so Rebecca and I set up our cameras on top of the van to take a video, waited for a good musical moment, and took off! (Video on Reba's blog, soon to be on here too). We then stopped at a luge on the side of a hill. Apparently this is a common thing, but we sat on these little seats with wheels and a hand break, got pulled up the hill, got on the track, and flew down it! It was about a 2 minute ride to the bottom and it was a blast! We were especially popular since we were wearing dresses, but I think that shows how much more brave we are.

That night, we (as we do every night) went to the square to watch the soccer game. The Netherlands and Russia were playing and I think it went into double overtime, so it was quite a game. Some German guys sat next to us (of course) and after talking for a bit, one of them told me that he was going to fly to the U.S. so we could "make a party". I wasn't quite sure what we were going to make a party out of, but it was an interesting idea. Then they asked what has turned out to be the most common question anyone asks us once they find out we are Americans, "Who are you going to vote for and why?" They seem to really like Obama out here. It's pretty crazy that everyone who we've talked to for more than a minute has brought up the election.

The next morning, I went to church in a beautiful church just across from the hotel and got to experience it in German. That was pretty unique, but I kept up with everything except for the songs (that was a hopeless cause). Then we walked around a bit, went to Motzart's birthplace, and headed to our favorite place ever...the train station. We had found out earlier that Italy and Spain were playing soccer in Vienne that night we were going to be there, so we were really excited! Until we saw that our train was PACKED. Mary went down one car to try to find us seats, I went down another, and Rebecca watched our enormous pile of stuff. Mary found a nice gentleman who refused to move both his feet and hand (which were taking up 3 empty seats) because he was hot. I went through the Italy fan zone car, and there were a few people missing here and there, but everyone told me that the seats were taken by people who were temporarily in the dining car. I asked one guy, and he said, "No no, I'm married." So I laughed and said, "well dang, how about just a few seats then?" They were taken, so no dice. So we both return to the luggage (which is beweeen cars by the bathroom, awesome), discouraged. After a few minutes, the guy who told me he was married came to find us to tell us he had found us 3 seats together! He had rearranged his friends to make room for us. If he had not already been married, I would have proposed. His friends even put our luggage away for us. We sat by a guy a couple years older than us who was fun San Francisco. He was really nice and was kind of a free spirit. He said he and his friends had slept in a park one night in Switzerland because they couldn't find a hotel. I don't think I'd ever do that...hopefully. Another perk of this train was that they had turned the AC off and the windows did not open. It was literally a sauna! I fell asleep or passed out for a couple hours, and we were soon in Vienna.

We got a cab to our hotel, which was amazing (the Eurostar, since that's what we were), checked in and walked into our VIP suite! It was awesome. First, there was air conditioning, which was an luxury we hadn't enjoyed since Paris. Next, it had a normal size shower! Then, there were 2 couches, 2 tv's (one plasma...what what), and a fire escape that we called the balcony. We recovered from the train ride for a little while then got some food and found the soccer fan zone. This fan zone was bigger than any of the others we had seen. There were about 10 big screens on a long street, so bunches of people were at each one. We happened upon one where everyone was sitting, so we picked that one since we were pretty pooped. Sadly, Italy did not win in the shootout, but it was still a good game.

The next morning (yesterday June 23), Mary left us to head back home :( After we saw her off, I went back to sleep for a bit, then Reba and I caught a tram (thankfully not a deadly one like Prague) to meet up with Reba's friend from high school, Chris. He had been living in Vienna for a while and was an amazing tour guide. We had an excellent final schnitzle meal and an authentic Vienese cafe experience, along with seeing many of the beautiful palaces in the city. I plan to have a palace some day, just FYI. It has gotten quite hot here, so we took frequent breaks near fountains or sprinklers that would "accidentally" splash us.

Rebecca and I said bye to Chris around 7pm and headed to the train station (again)! We took our first overnight train in a sleeper car last night. The beds were quite similar to Mary's faux masseuse table bed in Prague, but were an enormous improvement to our last overnight train experience. We shared our cabin with an Austrain teacher who spoke English and a very nice man who spoke a little English. The teacher worked at a school for kids who want to work in/run wineries, which I thought was pretty neat.

The train ride was pretty good, a little warm with the window closing on its own (which we called the European semi-automatic AC), but still fun. We got to Venice around 10:00, took a water bus to Rialto Bridge, and found our hotel. The directions to the hotel were quite Italian. They said to go through 2 squares, and then 10 meters before the next square, look for the green door. Miraculously, we found it and were able to leave our luggage there while they got the room ready. We then got some wonderful Italian food and wandered around a bit. Now it's time to check in to the room and to wait for Angie to arrive in a couple hours!