Guten tag!

Sorry for taking so long to blog. We've been on the rails for a while. We're now in Munich, our last stop.

Prague was nice. We went to the Prague castle and had some traditional Czech food....AKA slop. Food was really cheap, but everything else is ridiculous! About twice as much for a same brand shirt in the US. I also had a banana beer, which was different. I'm all for trying new things! It was one of the easiest places to get around with metros and trams. It is very touristy with Amercian chain restaurants everywhere and clothing stores. We found that most people spoke very good English. We asked our waitress where she learned, and she said that she learned at home....almost like "of course I know English". She said most people do in Prague. Well we left there and headed for Salzburg.

Salzburg is beautiful!! I had no idea it was so small. Only about 150,000 people. I've decided that I could stay there for a while....maybe weeks. There are so many places to stay by the lakes in the summer, beautiful fields, nice people, and THE SOUND OF MUSIC! Yes, we did the tour with the rest of the English speakers that know the movie. Most people in Austria and Germany don't know the movie because it wasn't released there...just a little something that I learned on the tour. We took a bus with a great tour guide and went to all the places that they filmed the movie along with real places where the Von Trapp family lived, even the convent Maria was in. We had the BEST apple struedel at a place outside of Salzburg. The place where we stayed, Haus Lindner, was the greatest. It is a family's house where they live on the first floor and rent out 4 rooms on the second floor. The cheapest place we stayed and the coziest. There we backpackers and even older couples staying there too. The only problem was that you had to hike up a hill that was, for all you Tucsonans, twice as steep as that last hill coming back at Sabino Canyon WITH backpacks. I LOVE SALZBURG! Will definitely be back. Too bad it rained the whole time we were there. oh well.

We took the train this morning to Munich where we're staying at our real "hotel"....meaning it has an elevator, electronic key cards, and people with uniforms. How fancy, I know. I've been writing this blog on and off throughout the day when we have time. We just returned from Dachau Concentration Camp. One word, WOW. They have restored most of it recently to uncover things that had been covered up since 2001 like the shower floors and stripping years of wallpaper off the walls to reveal original writing on the walls. We saw everything from where people were in-processed, ate, took showers, tortured, and worked.They had a museum with tons of pictures, which were very saddening. The worst would be going into the crematorium. A lot of the original "gear" was still there. They first had the waiting room where they told prisoners they would be taking showers. Second was the gas chamber. We got to stand in it...no dividing rope or chain like normal museums. It was very eery. I almost found myself not breathing. They even still had the holes in the ceiling. The next room is where they had ovens to burn the bodies with the machinery and pan to put them in still there. All and all, very necessary to do and makes you feel very fortunate.

Any how, we're off to the Hofbräuhaus to have a beer...or two. Hey, what else to do in Munich. :)

We will be going out to Füssen tomorrow to see Mad King Ludwig's castle that they designed the Cinderella castle at Disneyland and world after.