The boys and I had been in the states for about 6 weeks and I was lucky enough to have my mom fly back to Germany with me. I was much in need of a few days without the kids, so Ben bought my mom and I train tickets to Salzburg for the weekend. I'm still not sure how I felt about taking the train. Have to hop from one to the other, trying not to be late and missing it, and not knowing what to do if we did miss it, made me pretty nervous. The first couple trains we were on were small, hot, and smelly. Eventually we made it on to an ICE train and the ride was better. I did like the fact that I could just sit back and read a book, instead of being stuck in a stau.

We just happened to visit Salzburg during it's busiest time of the year: the Mozart Festival. It was crowded, but still interesting to see people dressed to the nines headed to concerts, and all the musicians out on the street playing music for the masses.

We visited the cathedral, the fortress, and St. Peter's Cemetery. We took a little hike up to a chapel from 500 AD and bought bread from the oldest bakery in town.

In the afternoon, we took the Sound of Music Tour from Bob's Tours. We rode around Austria in a little van with another family for hours. Thankfully we were sitting in the front, and the family wasn't the annoying type who like to sing all the songs from the musical.

After the tour we decided to walk from the Maribell gardens to the Augustiner Brewery, where monks brew beer. Our tour guide told us that you did not visit Salzburg unless you visited the Augustina Brewery. She gave us directions and we started walking. About 5 minutes down the road it started pouring. Thankfully we had umbrellas, which almost got blown out of our hands as we tried to cross the bridge over the river. We wandered around lost for a while, and even climbed to the top of mini mountain looking for the darn place. Finally, we found a small sign on our way back down the opposite side of the hill with the name of the place we were looking for. We entered the back of the building, sopping wet, thinking we would be entering a sit down restaurant. It turned out to be more of a cafeteria type setting than a restaurant. I was totally confused and had no idea how to get food, but there was no leaving because we were in the middle of a lightning storm. So, after taking turns trying to dry off in the bathroom, mom flagged down a guy who looked like he worked there and he brought us some beers.

After the beers, the storm had calmed down enough for us to walk back toward our hotel. We went out the front door this time and realized that there was no need to climb that mini-mountain, the restaurant was on the main street! If we had only walked straight for 5 more minutes instead of going for that climb....oh well, it made for good memories.   We eventually made it back to the street our hotel was on, got some real food for dinner, then curled up in a warm and dry bed.

The next day we went back to Mirabel Garden before heading home on the train. It was a fun weekend and I'm glad mom was there to spend it with me :)