Saturday, June 9th (Austria)

HAPPY 30^th BIRTHDAY SWIRLEY!!!! We are thinking of you and celebrating for you (and with you) here in Munich. Long live the German roots!

Jim woke up early today (even after his HofbrauHaus activities) to go to the Deutsches Museum where he met Seamus (the LA guy). The Deutsches is the most visited museum in Germany and is dedicated to Science and Technology (essentially like our Air and Space Museum in DC only a lot bigger). We spent a couple hours walking around and only got through Ocean Navigation, Aerospace and Astronautical (they had full ships and planes cut-away in the museum). I also did a quick run through Chemistry and Biology but most of the exhibits were only in German so I couldn’t read much.

Carla picked us up and we drove down to Salzburg where we tried to get on the Sound of Music tour. Sadly, they were sold out completely, but they took pity on Carla when it looked like she was going to cry and gave us a map with directions to hit all the good sights. We started at Hellbrunn Castle where the highlight was a walk through the “Trick Fountains” exhibit which was basically and 18^th century waterpark. Pretty sweet, except for the bratty little American kids who kept crying when they got sprayed with water. I really hope they were mentally scarred from a previous near drowning because there is no excuse to run away screaming from a couple sprinklers when you are 8 years old (note to self, must spray future children with garden hose on regular basis to ensure this does not happen to me)

After a quick picture at the gazebo where Carla refused to sing “I am 16, going on 17…” for me we were off to the Salzburg Cathedral and Hohensalzburg Fortress. The fortress is the largest of its kind anywhere and ensured that Salzburg was not attacked for over 1000 years. We got some great pics of the city from here. We were going to go for a great Austrian dinner but Jobby was once again tempted by the Austria sausage so we got some sausage and schnitzel and settled in for a picnic on the river for dinner. Of course we had some gelato for dessert while we toured the rest of Salzburg. It’s a beautiful city.

Our ride back to Munich was easy and less entertaining (considering our LA actor friends entertained us with CDs from this thing called Eurovision the whole way to Salzburg). It’s basically American Idol Europe with songs that sound like a cross between David Hassellhoff and Kraftwerks. Hightlights included “Vampires are Alive” a romantic song about present day blood suckers and “Party Song” which just repeated “We like to Party” and “I’m crazy, like a baby” over and over.