Austria, the Alps, and The Sound of Music

By: Kati Tanner

We traveled to a different country on Sunday.  We headed to Salzburg, Austria by train and it took about two hours to get there.  Once we arrived, we went on a special tour to see the sites that were filmed to make one of the United States’ most famous films.  The film is The Sound of Music, which first came out in 1965 and won five Academy Awards.  The movie has great songs in it and we listened to the music during the entire tour.  The movie is actually based on a real family that lived in Salzburg.

The first thing we saw in Salzburg was the house used in the movie, followed by the real gazebo that was used when the song “I am 16, going on 17” was sung.  It was really cool to see all of the places from the movie.  I can’t wait to watch the movie again when I get home.

To end our day, we went to a neat Austrian restaurant where we ate trout, potatoes, and asparagus, a traditional Salzburg meal.  Walking back to the train station to catch the train (we walk A LOT here), I ordered a gelato, or an Italian ice cream.  It was Nutella flavor and tasted fantastic!

Mom and me in front of the famous Sound of Music Gazebo

The Locks of Salzburg

By Emory Farrand

     On Sunday I went to Salzburg, Austria and found out that the city is more than fine music and the Sound of Music movie.

     I had heard about a tradition involving locks. I looked for them and and found them on a Salzburg bridge. In social studies, we learned about this bridge but I found an additional bridge with locks in Munich. During WWII people from Salzburg were known for attaching locks to bridges, often with their lovers names and their names on them. They would next throw the keys in the river so the locks wouldn’t ever come off. This tradition still goes on today; I found that out when I saw a lock with 2012 on it.

Pushing the square or circle to "flush"

By: Kati Tanner

See the rectangle on the top right of the toilet?  You push it to flush the toilet in our hotel.

Everything in Germany seems to be an adventure, even flushing the toilet and turning on the lights.  Flushing the toilet and turning on the lights is different here.  There is no “switch” to turn on the lights in our hotel, instead there is either a circle or square that you push.  It’s the same for the toilet – there is no “flush,” but instead a button that you push.  It's weird that something so simple can be so different when you're in a foreign country.

Can you believe this is the light switch in our hotel?

I miss ice!

By: Kati Tanner

"May I please have some ice?" If you ask this question in Germany, the answer will be "no." In America you can get ice anywhere and all of the time. But in Germany,  ice is almost nowhere to be found. Today I went to the movies and my mom ordered a Diet Coke. Her drink was hot because it had no ice. Luckily, the popcorn was delicious.  Too bad the movie was in German instead of English. 

Tonight we finally had our first experience seeing ice.  I was very excited!

A sad day at one of Hitler's concentration camps

By: Kati Tanner

In this picture I am standing outside of the gas chamber.

This is the front gate to the concentration camp.  The words mean "work will set you free."

“How could someone come up with this?” This is what I said as I was walking through Dachau, the very first Nazi concentration camp to be built. Well, to answer my question, Adolf Hitler did and it is not a good idea. Hitler built this concentration camp in 1933. It is located just outside of Munich, Germany, about a 20-minute train ride from our hotel.

This concentration camp, which is like a really bad prison, is a place that started before World War II.  Hitler was trying to take over the world and sent everyone that he hated, mostly Jewish people, to this place and basically did everything he could to try and kill them.  If you were sent here, you were beaten, forced to work really hard, and given little or no food. Many people died from starvation.  If you didn’t die of hunger, you could be shot, hanged, worked to death or put in the gas chamber.

The gas chamber is a place that looked like a big shower.  Prisoners were told to get in the “shower,” but instead of getting clean, poison gas killed them instead.  After someone was killed, their body was burned in a fireplace called a crematorium. 

I was scared when I walked into the gas chamber.  Even though my mom told me there was no gas, I still held my breath.  Today was a sad day and I wish Hitler never lived.   Can you imagine living in a concentration camp?  

 I learned that people who were in this camp got so hungry that they would eat dandelions to try and stay alive.
I left some dandelions to honor the people who died at Dachua. 

Munich's famous street performers: White Light

By Emory Farrand

On a warm Thursday night at about 9 p.m., right when street performers come out, I came upon a band. There was a large crowd so I went to see what they were interested in. It turned out to be a 3-person group that I ended up watching for about an hour. Their name was White. White is a band that consists of a bass, a metal-open holed- guitar, and a box tin drum.  White made everyone sing along and have fun. Their genre is pop and rock, and everyone that was there had fun and sang along when prompted by the band. White writes songs and performs already famous songs on the streets. It’s hard to become a street performer in Munch because you have to audition, because they will only take the best of the best. But White seems to have been doing well with a CD with 13 songs on it, whether their own or covers of other songs. In the end I bought their CD . . . and yes I forgot my camera this one time so I could not show you them.

XTreme Castle Climbing

By Emory Farrand

After a two-hour train ride I took on the challenge of Germany’s famous Neuschwanstein castle of Ludwig II (Disney’s castle is fashioned after this one). I was facing a challenging steep hill, on the side of the Alps Mountain range, that I had to climb before touring the castle. This challenging climb was over two miles long, 1,800 feet in altitude and it took about twenty minutes. To add to extreme climb and I was carrying a heavy backpack. I made it to top of the mountain only to face hundreds of steps to climb inside the castle.

As if one extreme climb was not enough, I was now facing a second castle called Schloss Hohenscwangau. This castle is over 200 years old, and was Ludwig’s father’s castle. This second extreme challenge required walking up a path that rose about 1,000 feet to reach the castle. The good news is that I met both of the extreme challenges and got to see some cool things in the castles.

It's all about money!

One of the big differences between the United States and Germany is the money. When you live in America, you use dollars and cents but in Germany you use Euros.  Euros are kind of like dollars but are different sizes, colors, and amounts. And Euros can be coins too. The highest coin you can get is 2,00 Euros.  Another weird thing about money is that Germans use commas instead of a decimal point.  And, the symbol for money is different with a "c" with two lines through it. For example, an ice cream in Germany costs 1,20€.  YUMMY!