Germany Part Two

Hey, everybody!
We've been back in the USA for a week now, but for some reason I just didn't get around to updating this thing. Well, now's the time.

Our last full day in Germany wasn't nearly as exciting as the others had been - not for me, anyway. First stop was the Deutsches Museum, a technology/innovation museum in Munich. I like museums, but this one just wasn't up my alley. Sure, the music rooms were AWESOME and I could have spent a day in the glassblowing room, but other than the fine arts stuff, I just wasn't interested in very much. However, I enjoyed playing in the room that had all sorts of geometrical brain teasers in it - that kind of stuff has always interested me. After the museum, we went to Olympic Park in Munich. Again, nice, but not super exciting since you can't really go in anything (and the zipline was 70 euros). However, we did see two adult swans and three cygnets, so we got our "awwww!" of the day there.

Our last stop was BMW Welt (World), which was right next to Olympic Park. There are a couple simulators, but basically there's just a lot of BMWs sitting around - a lot like a showroom. I got bored pretty quickly, so I just sat down and stayed out of the way while the rest of my family had fun.

The next day we went to Salzburg, Austria, which completely made up for the day before. :)

Salzburg is beautiful. There's this GIGANTIC castle on a hill in the middle of the city (we didn't actually visit it) and there are a million sites they used when filming The Sound of Music. We saw Mozart's birthplace and one of his residences, and we found what I still claim is the best ice cream in the world. Before we got into the city, we stopped at Hellbrunn, a castle just outside of Salzburg, and took a tour. Hellbrunn is known for its famous trick fountains - the guy who owned the castle had an awesome sense of humor and some pretty great engineers. The tour is very fun, but you're pretty much guaranteed to get wet. (Of course, when it's eighty-five degrees outside - about twenty-nine Centigrade - that feels pretty good.) I highly recommend taking the tour if you ever find yourself there, but bring something to protect your cameras. (By the way, all of these castles in Germany and Austria are called Schloss Hellbrunn or Schloss Neuschwanstein - schloss is the German word for castle.)

We flew to Rome the day after we visited Salzburg, and we had a six-hour layover in Berlin. That would have been pretty terrible if we hadn't thought ahead and found out what you could do with six hours in Berlin. We ended up taking a bus to Brandenberg Tor, the gate that used to separate East and West Berlin. We got some fantastic pictures from what used to be no-man's land. The last time my parents were in Germany was months before the wall fell, so to see Berlin like there was never any wall there was pretty amazing for them. We also saw the giant radio tower whose name currently escapes me, as well as a Protestant cathedral (I didn't know those even existed) and several other landmarks. We made it out to the Berlin Hard Rock - we didn't eat there, but my brother had to get another t-shirt. (He ended up getting five on this trip.) After that, we took a bus back to the airport and still had plenty of time before our flight to Rome. Somewhere in Berlin, we saw a street musician setting up a marimba - yes, you read that right, a marimba - and another duo playing violin and bass.

The awesome thing about Air Berlin is that they give you chocolate hearts at the end of every flight. However, I wouldn't recommend leaving said chocolate in your pocket... it tends to melt.

Love you all,
Megan