Climb Every Mountain!

Grus Gott, as they say here in Austria...

Tonight is our second night in the Austrian Alps, near the town of Reutte, very near the border with Germany. (this info is for the benefit of my mom, who is following on a map :)

We are in a lovely alpine guest house, in a little valley, overlooking a farm and a meadow with horses and cows. Best of all, there is a large play yard with a trampoline that Gretchen and I have made some great movies on with my camera. :)

Today we hiked to some castle ruins....although hiking seems such a gentle word for what we actually did. Basically, in this area, the Tiroleans of yore were always worried about the invading Bavarians from the north, and so they built these fortresses on the tops of hills. Today we went to one, then saw another one on the next hill over a kilometer straight up, and we decided it was now or never, and did it. We've got some great pictures to show, if I can ever find a computer with a USB port that I can get access to...I'm working on it!

We also did a luge ride today....something I was very scared of, but then after it was over I wished I could do it again, only faster. (If you're imgagining laying flat like the Olympics, it's actually more like sitting up, with the brake between your feet. Funny thing is that I went first, wasn't quite sure how to make it go fast, and then got stuck, just sitting there a little ways down. The kindly Austrians waiting at the top with Gretchen showed her how to do it better so she didn't get stuck like me :)

Report from the salt mines: a very fun and silly tour, yes, complete with miner's outfits including a leather flap that covers your butt. We even had to slide down into the mind holding on to each other, like sliding down a giant banister. Fun times!

Tomorrow we head across to Germany to the famous "fairy tale" castle of Neuschwanstein. We are renting bikes and biking across the border instead of driving...seems more adventurous that way.

Got to go for now; there is a Rick Steve's tour group here and they are all chomping at the bit to use the internet as well. Sadly, I must say that (with a few notable exceptions), they are the loudest and most obnoxious people we've seen so far. I feeling like writing to Rick to tell on them.

Tschuss for now!
erin