Europe recap

Finally, a little uninterrupted internet time so I can finish off this recap! I believe last time I posted I ran out of time while talking about Hitler's Eagle's Nest. So that's where we were, and it was lovely - right on the top of a mountain, and you'd look out and see the tops of other mountains and you could even see into Austria from the height! But apparently, Hitler only used this house 14 times because he was very claustraphobic (which would be no good for the elevator ride up the mountain), and he was scared of heights. What a chicken!
From the eagles' nest we took a bus to a beautiful mountain lake called Konigsee (sp?) and spent a couple hours lying in the sun and enjoying the impressive surroundings. The lake was damn cold, I did not want to swim! Took a train back to Munich and that was our day!
Our hostel in Munich (Jaegres or Tigers as I called it) was pretty good I think, as I said before it was a 40 bed room, and mine and shannon's beds were right by the door. Super. The first night I got no sleep, cuz it was the weekend, and let's face it - get 100 or so young people together in a hostel with a bar - there will be a party, and people will be coming and going all night. But it was alright. I'd stay there again.
Because so many of the German words are so long and consonant filled, I got into a habit of reading the first two letters and the last letter and making up the middle bit, maybe it was impatience, maybe laziness. But it actually turned out to be quite a laugh. Everytime we'd see a complicated word, I would read it out in my own special way, and Shannon would correct me, as best she knew how. Yep, good fun!
The next day (my last full day), we took a train to Salzberg, Austria. There we walked and bussed around the city, saw some sights, ate some food, just had kind of a relaxing day. Salzberg is the birthplace of Mozart, did you know that? There are tons of statues and museums and depictions of him. It is a really beautiful city. My last couple days, I had started to budget my money a little bit, and I made it so I would have just enough euros to last me to get to the airport. So on the train trip back to Munich from Austria, I had about 9 euros (in coins mostly) to my name, enough to pay for a little snack (we called it dinner) and the transit ride to the airport the next morning. The previous day I had asked a train man what train ticket to buy to get to Salzberg and he said and that's the one I bought for the ride there and back. However, it became apparent that we had taken a different kind of train back (a faster, nicer one), so my ticket was invalid. When we were staying with Jens and Ester they said if you get caught without a valid ticket you have to buy an new ticket and pay twice the amount of it or something. So me with my 9 euros was not prepared to pay for this.
The train guy who told me I had the wrong ticket was so nice though, when he told me I had to buy a different one from him, he watched me turn to Shannon and ask to borrow money, and then he said, "13 euros.......special price" I still ended up having to borrow money, but I am not complaining! Thank you, nice train man!
The next morning we got up early and got organized, I walked Shannon to the Hauptbanhof as she was taking off to Berlin to tour around there, then to Colonge, then back to Frankfurt to fly back to Calgary on Friday. She was a great travelling partner, we had some fun!!! I went back to the hostel and made friends with 2 members of the Canadian national rythmic gymnastics team over our hostel breakfast of toast and jam. I took the underground to the airport and flew back to London Stansted Airport where I caught a train back to Melton. So here I am back. Ahhhhh, what a great trip and what wonderful memories I will have from it!
I went back to work today......boring, but necessary! I have an alright work schedule coming up for August, so should be able to tour around here a little bit more. It'll have to be by public transit or friends though, my orange van is not up to snuff.
So that was my trip in a nutshell. I heartily reccomend Germany to any and all of you reading this!
Bye for now!!