Austria

woah so much has happened since we last blogged, (of course we've waited till now to tell you any of it since we have free internet here) firstly after leaving ljubljana we went back to salzburg, we went for a free walking tour and rented bikes, went up monk mountain, one of the biggest forts in europe. basically some archbishops got a bit of centre of the world-itis and built a huge palace as a kinda shrine to themselves with the trinity replaced with themselves. there is of course the slightly more practical element of protecting them, a little over board though, the rooms of the archbishops are about the size of my house. also, should bishops really be involved in wars?! I liked the fact that the fortress was totally inpenitrable, it fought off attackers like a dozen times (well 2/3 atleast) but then in the end it surrendered to the French (i think) without a fight, what a waste. then we tried (notice the use of the word tried) to find helbrunn palace on bikes, the most successful thing we did was ride our bikes really fast down a hill! (We saw a road sign to Hellbrunn at one point, but followed it and then there weren't any more) so we gave up on that and rode down along the river, where we found a lot of people singing amazing grace, we eventually found out it was an anti abortion march (1000 ungeboren jeden tag) though quite what amazing grace had to do with it im not sure. Oh, and the other thing to know about Salzburg is their obsessed with the sound of music. The Hostel we were in showed it daily! There are "Sound of Music Tours" where you drive round in a "Panoramic Bus" seeing places it was filmed and listening to the Sound of Music Soundtrack ("See and Hear it all in just 4 hours"). what shocks me is that you have to PAY to do this?!?! I'm more impressed by the fact that a three hour film has a four hour sound track. Anyway, needless to say that however much we may have wanted to do the sound of music tour it was slightly out of our budget so we has to, unfortunatly, pass on this occassion.
Anyway, moving on from Salzburg we went to Hallstatt (leaving our bags in Salzburg). Stayed there one night, and on the morning before leaving went to the salt mines which were quite cool. After seeing the "Ice Man" we also heard about the "Man of Salt" a prehistoric miner killed by a cave in, and preserved in salt. However rather than keeping him for acheological research he was burried when he was found and is now lost somewhere in Hallstat grave yard. But the tour guide couldn't tell us this herself, we were slightly dissappointed to here that "you can spent 3 minutes not understanding Joseph (a miner) then can watch another video". so we didnt understand joseph, but we also didnt understand the video... the subtitles were backwards accross the screen! (like a mirror image of what it should look like) there was a really clear underground lake of which we took 1 stunning picture where you can see all of a black screen and then the camera ran out of battery. Its not all bad though, the picture really helps you appreciate the dark conditions the poor miners had to work in. lol it doesnt help you appreciate the lake so much though...
we stayed with a really sweet old couple in a tiny b and b, meaning a spare room in their house. I dont know if we've told you much about Hallstatt, its a little village perched on the side of a cliff looking over the halstatter see, it can only be reached by boat from the train station, and the salt mines there are the oldest in the world still to be mined.
What I loved about their mining process is that they used to just break out and carry up lumps of rock, but now they have a better way, they pump water into holes where there's salt, the salt dissolves, and they pump out salt water to a treatment plant where the water is evaporated to get salt again. This seems much more simple than mining it out, and it is, but given that they live on a salt lake is there no an easy way to get salt water than mining into the mountain for it???
ok moving on from hallstatt we realised there was a significant flaw in our master plan... our bags were still in salzburg. (we were doing a round trip, so no point taking bags, in the end that plan changed and we just had to double back on ourselves to collect them) and eventually ended up asleep on the floor of a train on the way to vienna. where having spent ourso we returned to the hostel, accidently drank a lot hostel money on alcohol we slept on the floor of the train station. (We ressented the idea of paying full price for a Hostel when we would arrive at 1am and have to check out by 10, and no-where gave a discount to us for only staying half a night). some austrian security guards woke us up at half 5 the next day shouting guten morgan, im not sure we could agree with that! by mid day we were on our 3rd coffee shop, though funnily enough our guide book says thats an essential part of viennese culture, we like to think we've experienced it the best way! For the third Coffee Shop we went somewhere specially recommended by the book, and it was really Vienesse. A little coffee shop with big Sofa's either side of each table, a tram line just outside the window and newspapers (unfortunatly in German) everywhere.
Anyway soon enough it was time to leave, we headed out to the Sud Bahnhof by tram to catch the train to Brataslava, in the end we missed it by 5 minutes, and the next one was 55 minutes later. But we were in luck, there was a train to Krakow, so we caught that. We'll double back on ourselves to Brataslavva before going to Praha, but it actually saves us a day! this way we got a couchette aswell rather than a train station floor, which we both felt we deserved after a night in vienna train station. we nearly fell asleep on freuds couch in the museum we went to! a couchette is 6 beds in one carrige about 14 euros each, well worth it i think, you sleep much better than just in the seats.
oh by the way: mum whats nan and papa's post code?! i tried to post them a postcard in austria but didnt know it. So after forgetting to post it in Italy, not having the postcode in Austria, and hopefully actually being posted in Poland its becoming one of the best souvenirs you could want, collecting stamps from each country we've visited (well, 3 of them). it has 3 stamps already, i wonder how many by the time it gets home?!?! anyway, send me a text if you could or i might beat it home!
So thats the story of the last few days, plan from here is to head to Bratislava eventually, but we'll see what happens, love to you all,
Scott and Dani

Song of the Moment (for Salzburg); The Sound of Music (doe - a deer, a female deer etc.)
Song of the Moment (for Hallstatt); Whistle While You Work (for the mining)
Song of the Moment (for Vienna); Whatever Will Be Will Be (for trains)