Friends, Foothills, and Fouled Fun

So Salzburg turned out to be a really cool stop. The city is beautiful, mountains surround the place, the tourist bureaus think that every tourist is there to see Mozart. But hey, I got to visit this palace that some prankster built for the sole purpose of inviting over guests and then soaking them. Like he had this table where everybody had to sit at, and since at the time you weren't allowed to stand fromt the table until the host did, then he made it to where he could soak all of his guest, but he stayed dry. It was a pretty fun place...the kids who were there loved it.

From there I took a train to Graz Austria to meet back up with my friend Chris. The trip was all the way thru the Alps and just a jaw-dropper of a train ride. Fortunately when I got to Graz I was able to meet up with Chris no probs and we got to see the remains of the local town festival. There were even people in lederhosen and there was a small group still yodeling, so it was definitely worth it. Then we went to his friend's joint to stay. Speaking of joints, her roommate came in with the biggest one I've ever seen! It was more like a cigar. I of course said no, but man...if that was where I got my kicks I would gone crazy.

We took the first train out to Slovenia, and once we got to Ljubljana, we finally realized what some of our other friends have been raving about. The country is stunning, set in the foothills of the Alps, nice people running around, everything seems just natural and relaxed. Unfortunately those friends weren't there, so we went to a lake about an hour away where there are Canyoning tours, Zorbing, Hang Gliding...pretty much anything that a thrill seeker could want. Well, after a night of sleeping in the woods with some animal crunching branches all around us, we went into town and found out...Canyoning was full for the day, Zorbing doesn't really happen anymore, and Hang Gliding; they don't know what it is! ARGH! So our cool Xtreme sports day turned into moping around town, finding an ice rink and running across it while nobody was looking. Not the biggest thrill in the world.

Now we're just buying a little time before we meet up with a friend of ours from camp (Roxanne Green, physics major from SNU), and spend the rest of the day in Ljubljana. Then we'll either try to meet another missionary friend in Zagreb, Croatia or head to the drunkards paradise of Oktoberfest in Muenchen, Germany.

Weird Zen moment of the day:
So on the train from Austria I had a phone card with some time left on it, so I gave it to a guy who is a student in Graz. Well, later that day, we met some people from Ireland who were leaving the next day so they gave us a local phone card with almost the same amount of time left on it! How cool is that? Especially since we needed to call our friends in Slovenia anyways.