we knew that tours began at 9:30. It was a happy surprise when we walked into an information booth at the station to ask about where to find the tour that we could buy tickets there. We purchased a "Super Saver" for the Sound of Music tour and a tour of the Bavarian Salt Mines. To our even greater delight the woman called the tour place and had a van waiting to pick us up outside the train station at no extra cost. We were very happy about this because we were still a bit tired and hadn't been sure how we were going to find the tour kickoff point. A very sweet Austrian man picked us up in a van clearly marked with
the tour name on it. He asked us if we liked Mozart music and we said of course so he played that while we drove to the pick up point for the tour bus.The Sound of Music tour began with our British tour guide Trudy dressed in traditional Austrian garb welcoming us on the bus. Our first stop was across the water from the house used as the back of the Von Trapp family home in the movie.
Next we drove to Hellsbrun Castle where the gazebo from the film has been relocated to. It was originally on the grounds of the back of the house but so many to
Tourists would sneak over the fence and sing "I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen" that the owners asked it to be removed. Then when they moved it they had to lock the doors so no one could dance on the benches due to old women breaking their hips trying to leap like Leisl. Next to the Gazebo was the walkway lined in trees that Maria walked along to get to the house singing "I Have Confidence." Next we were driven past the house they used as the front of the house but due to heavy rain and the giant field and tall trees in front of it I couldn't really see anything more than the yellow wall around it. We then drove into the Lake District outside Salzburg where they took the opening scene fly by views of the countryside IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! Through the rain and everything else, 
I was still in love with the view. The picture here is looking out over Wolfgang Lake. Then we drove into the town of Monsee named for its Moon shaped lake. The cathedral where Maria and Captain Von Trapp were married in the movie is there so we got an hour break to look around the cathedral and check out the town. It was really cute there and they had yummy apple strudel. After Monsee we were driven back to Salzburg for the end of the journey.Our tour to the Salt Mines left 10 minutes later so we hopped on that bus and promptly all fell asleep from being so tired. When we woke up we had arrived at the salt mine where we had to suit up
in jumpsuits and were then carted on a really small train that was more like a bench on wheels that we had to straddle. We then got to go down to the mines via a wooden slide it was really fun. In the picture is Shauna in front and Whitney behind me and behind her a random German girl that joined in our group. The salt mine we went into was more of a museum underground with showy lazer lights and such. Salt is mined through a process 
where they fill a cavity with water and allow the cavity to expand while the salt separates for extraction which can take around 30 years. But the mine we went to produces 40 tons of salt a day! I never knew salt could be interesting. After 8 hours of being on tours we were pretty toured out but we hadn't made it to Mirabelle Gardens where the Do-Re-Mi song was primarily filmed. The gardens were just across the street from where the place where the tours let off. So we jetted over to take some pictures just as the clouds began to dump buckets of rain on us. We ran inside the nearest building (which happened to be an old palace) and attempted to save the contents of our backpacks from more rain damage. When we had finally decided we were as rain proof as we could get the rain stopped. So we were able to get some nice pictures of the fountain and the archway where the children sang.
By this time we decided to find a nice warm restaurant to eat a good hot meal in and try to waste time in before our 2am train. Unfortunately in Germany everything closes shop at 6pm, and it being nearly 7...well we had very few options. We finally decided on a cute cafe outside the train station which seemed fairly priced. We walked in and asked in German if the waitress spoke English after she replied "a little" we asked her if we could seat ourselves and she gave us a look as if we were monsters before replying with a nod of the head. We then realized it was a restaurant that allows smoking, but we tried our best to find one that was out of the way from the smokers (it didn't help the rest of the trip I smelled of cigarettes) We had barely sat down when the waitress was at our table wanting to take our order and we asked if we could have more time so she walked away. Just 2 minutes later she was back and this time watching us puzzling over the menu. We again asked for more time. When she came back the third time I asked her what kind of soup the top soup choice was and she sighed in exasperation stomped away and then handed us a menu in English. I'm wondering why she didn't just hand it to us when we arrived and were speaking in only English. According to the English menu the soup I had been asking about was Goulash so I ordered some soup and a water. After taking my order the waitress turned and walked away without even looking at Whitney or Shauna for their orders. Once my food was brought out Whitney finally asked "Can I order now?" and the waitress gave her a look that said "why on earth would you want to order food from me?" but after a few seconds she seemed ready to take orders again and the girls were able to order their meals as well. The food was excellent, but during our meal we kept noticing the waitress talking with other customers while staring at us. After we had been sitting around after our meal for a half hour the waitress finally came with the bill. I gave her a 10 it being my smallest bill and she gave me my change, when Whitney gave her a 10 the waitress asked for smaller bills and had to give 3 euro back in small change. I thought it odd for a restaurant to not be able to provide the right amount of change because when she saw that Shauna was going to pay with a 20 her eyes got big and she kept saying "smaller, not enough change, smaller." We were glad to be done with that waitress after that.
We were pretty tired and wet and decided to see if there was any earlier train that would be leaving Salzburg to get us back to Kaiserslauturn fortunately there was, and it was leaving the
station in 5 minutes. We didn't have to time rethink our plan before we hopped on the train...looking back we should have just found somewhere to stay in Salzburg. It was a crazy night of 2 hour layovers, close to 2 hour bus rides standing room only with crazy drunk, puking Germans, and no sleep. The picture is of Shauna and Whitney trying to sleep in the Munich train station McDonalds. When a worker saw them laying on the benches we were kicked out. We finally rolled into Ramstein station around 9am Sunday morning and when we got back to our apartments I went to bed for a 5 hour nap. Hopefully I'll be awake enough to function tomorrow at work.
