Hello from Salzburg

Hey everyone!
 
The last time I wrote I was in Vienna!  The next day (Just for Diana) I went to the UN headquarters there.  Two guys from Montreal told me that the tour at the New York headquarters is a lot better as it lasts for more than 10 minutes!  Since it was raining, I then joined them to the Austrian war museum.  It turned out to be quite interesting!  While we were there, they brought in some dignitaries from some Caribbean country and we toured the building just behind them!  They have the Franz Ferdinand's car there, but unfortunately I couldn't take a picture.  That evening we went to the Opera!  They had standing tickets for 3 Euros, which is definitely more in my budget than 30!  Unfortunately we were crammed in there like sardines!  We left after the second act as we didn't understand anything (it was in Latin) and we were all falling asleep standing up.  The next day brought me to Salzburg, but I just wandered around and window shopped after I found my hostel.  (So nothing interesting to report about that day.)
 
Salzburg is such a pretty little town!  There are tons of trees and foothills here and a lot of nice little buildings.  The downtown corridor has so many little streets that you have to walk sideways down, so it's mostly just pedestrian traffic down there. Over the last two days I've gone up a cable car to the top of a mountain, cruised down the river, visited Mozart's house and went to a castle that had some sweet "trick fountains".  Can you believe that this and transportation costs for the two days costs only 29 euros?  It's this awesome "Salzburg Card" that gives you free public transport and admission to all of the popular sites. (This afternoon is an instrument museum!!!)
 
Thursday night was the worst night at a hostel so far.  In fact, the hostel was great, but the other guests were horrible!  A lot of school groups are travelling right now, so the hostel was filled with about 200 10-12 year old French and Austrian kids.  They were screaming, banging on doors, and jumping off bunks until 3 am and started up at 6!  A lot of people complained, and luckily it was a lot better last night.
 
I seem to meet every Canadian in Europe....
Thursday evening I ran into a Vancouverite that I had met in Munich, so we spent Friday together seeing all of the big sites.  Then, yesterday evening I sat in the lobby and read my book for a little while, and after about 30 min another Canadian sat down and started to chat with me.  With in the hour we had 6 people from Canada all sitting around this tiny table swapping travel tips.  I spent today the morning with a brother and sister, (from the table last night) from "Three Rivers" touring around the castle.  This sort of stuff seems to happen everyday!  I think we start to pick up key words from other people's conversations, which draws us in like a magnet.  These key words for me seem to be: Canada, mounties, hockey, Stanley Cup, any province or large city name...  I couple of times, I've met people because of the brand of clothes they were wearing - ie. MEC, Roots.
 
Tonight I hope to go to a small Austrian town called Villach.  It is part of the way to Venice and that's pretty much the only reason I'm going there!  I think it will be nice to split up the 7 hour train ride to Venice a bit... 
 
HAZARDS of travelling:
You have to look at your watch to see what day it is...
You keep track of your travels by how many cities ago stuff happened...
You stop actually referring to the name of your town but refer to it as "A small town in Alberta"
 
Anyways, I'd better stop and book my hostel before my time is up!  See you in 5 weeks?!

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