Schwabisch Hall

Hey Guys, Just want you all to know I'm here safe and loving it. I don't get very much internet access since we don't have it in our dorm so it will be difficult for me to post things. I just wanted you all to know I am loving it here. Classes are good, my teacher is wonderful and I'm really enjoying getting to know people from all over the world.
I miss you all.

If you want to send me a letter or something before Sept. 15, because it won't get here in time before I move to Vienna otherwise.
Ann Nelson
c/o Goethe Institut Schwa(with 2 dots above)bisch Hall
Am Spitalbach 8
74523 Schwa(..)bisch Hall
Germany

Love you guys. I really am having a great time. I'll try to update soon.

Potato Pancakes!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so Day 2 in Reutte. We went up to the Ehrenburg Castle ruins. It was a really nice hike up the hill and you could see the entire city of Reutte from above. Everything was so still and calm, I didn't ever want to leave. There was this cute little kid running around with a wooden sword and shield he got at the gift shop. Mom got a picture of him, it was pretty funny. We went down to the museum afterwords, it was neat too. I thought it was going to be about the castles, but it was mostly about the life of a knight during the crusades. I got to wear some awesome, but smelly, armor. It was pretty cool.
After Reutte, we drove up to Fuessen in Germany to see the Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein Castles. The first used to house the royal family of Maxiamillian I of Germany and the second was supposed to house his son, but he did before it was finished, that one is also what gave Disney his inspiration for the Disney castle. They were really elaborately decorated, and they were really cool to see, but I didn't really learn too much because we didn't really any information from the tour guides. On the way down on the suuuuper long hike from Neuschwanstien, we stopped at a restaurant and you'll never guess what I had, well I guess the title gives it away, real potato pancakes! Well, Oma makes real potato pancakes, but I got to have them in Germany! Oma's still win as best ever, but these totally destroyed Wurstfests. Anyway, I was pretty stoked about having those.
From there we drove to Hallstatt, Austria. It's another small, stunning town, but this one was settled in the middle of the mountains on the lake, Altsee. It was another one of those nights where we got in late and everything was closed so we just walked around the town and then had dinner. The best part of Hallstatt other than its awesome beauty was that instead of having a busy street outside our window, we had a babbling brook. It was so relaxing we all slept the best we have yet this trip.
The next day, after sleeping in we drove to Salzburg, again in the rain. We got in pretty early so we had some time to actually do things! We went and saw the house where Mozart lived, which was cool to see, but the museum was just a tourist trap because they even admitted they didn't really know anything about when the family lived there and it was a lot of music by other composers than just Mozart. We also went up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress which was built in the 1100's originally and was added onto several times and it now a massive complex that was used for royal living, a monastery, a fortress (believe it or not) and emmm.. something else. It's also the most preserved fortress in Europe, I'd believe it. It was in really good condition, but we only got to see a small part of it before it started pouring again. But before then, I got to shoot a crossbow! That was pretty sweet I'd say, I did get a bullseye!
Today was a super busy sightseeing day. We tried to take a river tour, but because the water was so high they were closed. So we went and saw Mozart's house, a panorama museum of Salzburg in 1850, and a scenic overlook. I thought they were all busts. We bought this tourist card that you pay a smaller price and get into all these museums and stuff without having to pay, so we went to a lot of those things- we didn't just randomly pick silly sounding places to go. We also took a horse and Carriage ride around the old city. That was a lot of fun! We also went to the old residence of the prince/bishop. I think that was the best tour we have been on so far. A lot was still in it's original state and the tour was really detailed in explaining everything. It was a good tour. Another floor of the old housing was an art museum with an exhibit there on sin. I really enjoyed that and thought it was really interesting to see the hundreds of years view on the same seven sins. I probably could have spent most of the day in there. Man I never thought I would say that about an art museum. Anyway, we came back to the room pretty early since we were all tired. Tomorrow we head out to Munich!
Love,
Ann
Sorry there aren't any pictures, I haven't had time to upload them since Staufen.
oh and jeff. We heard Guantanamera today being played in the art store across the street from our hotel. It made me think of you :D

Eating Sparrow and a town smaller than Sherman?

Okay, so the rest of our time in Baden-Baden was really enjoyable. On Tuesday we went into the center of the city and toured around, we saw the "world's nicest casino" from the outside, since you had to pay to get in and the tour was only in German and I'm not that good.... yet :D. We climbed this part on a mountain and got some really good pictures (the first picture above) of the city. We saw several other sites, like the Trinkhalle, the Roman and Roman-Irish Baths, and some really expensive stores. My favorite part of the day was when we went up this hill called Merkur and took this tram thing up to the top where we could see the entire city and surrounding areas(Pictures 2&3). It was breathtakingly beautiful! We had our first completely german meal there, of sausage of course, overlooking the town and watching the hang gliders jump off the hill and float down into the city. That 4th picture is proof I'm actually in Europe with my parents and not just making this all up!
Wednesday we drove through the black forest (picture 5) on our way to Staufen which is a small town on the outside of Freiburg, which is a "nicer place to stay than Freiburg." I thought we were going to spend the day in Freiburg, but I think I slept through that part of the drive. Anyway, we stopped a clock museum, which was cool, for about 5 minutes, then it just got kind of redundant. Chris, it would have driven you nuts with all the thousands of clocks ticking away. I felt like I was at Oma's house, times 10 thousand. Anyway, the black forest was really beautiful too. I wanted to go wandering through the forest for a while, but we never stopped to do so :(.
So Staufen, was like the east side of 75 of Sherman except exceedingly more beautiful (like everything else, also I need a new word for beautiful), everything was closed by 6, and was either residential or a restaurant. There really wasn't much to do there, so we left right after breakfast this morning, after accomplishing the impressive feat of getting out of the parking area which was designed originally for horse drawn carriages.
It was pouring down rain all day, the scenery was very very pretty (ha! I didn't use beautiful), well what I was awake for anyway. Now we are in Ruette, Austria for a couple of days. We just got out and walked around the city some. Another small, quite town where everything closes at 6, but tomorrow I think (and hope and pray) we are going up to the Ehrenberg castle ruins. We probably won't get to luge since it rained and they close the track when it rains, but maybe if we get lucky!
Anyway about eating sparrow, so on several menus we saw Spaetzle, and we couldn't figure out what it was, so I busted out my trusty dictionary and the closest thing we could come up with was.... sparrow. Anyway, the sad news is, it's not sparrow, it's actually sort of a mushier version of udons noodles and kinda looks like sparrows intestines.... it wasn't very good. But if I didn't remember what I was eating, the liver I had for dinner last night was really good! Something tells me I'll never try that again!
So all is well here, we are having a great time!
Love and miss you all,
Ann

People actually understand me when I speak German! Who knew?

So, I don't think I'm coming back. So far, this trip has been pretty amazing. You know, all 3 days of it.
So the first two days were in Amsterdam. If I get a chance I would definitely go back there. It was really neat to just walk around the city to see all the old houses and the canals and the weird people. We visited the Rijksmuseum, where I learned quite a bit about Dutch history and saw a number of Rembrandt paintings and we also went to the Van Gogh museum, it had about 200 of his paintings. We took a '100 sights' canal cruise, but then learned that the 100 sites were 25 sites repeated in 4 languages, it was still fun though. We also went to the Anne Frank house. The walk through was really well put together, but still eerie to be there none the less.
Today we took the train into Frankfurt then rented a car and drove into Baden Baden. I say we took a train, the train we were supposed to take was broken, so we had to change trains twice, with what we learned today is definitely way too much luggage and then one the 3rd train had to stand because only half of the train was there and there were no seats left. It was a pretty awful experience.
Baden-Baden is a really nice small and quiet town out in the country. All we have done here so far is wander around through the Lichtentaller Allee and out around the city outskirts where our hotel is. Tomorrow we are going into the central part of the town to experience.... something. Ha! I only know what we are doing when we are doing it, my parents are in charge of the finding things to do, I just translate. And often not very well, but hey I'm communicating! Hopefully it'll start getting easier soon, I still sort of look like a deer in headlights when people start speaking to me in German.
Love,
Ann

We Finally made it!

Just wanted to let you all know we made it to Amsterdam after two long days of travel. I'll tell you how awesome Amsterdam is when I have more than a 20 minute limit on the internet.
Love
Ann

t-minus 42 hours till take off!

Okay, so the blog starts now. I want you guys to be able to keep up with where I'm going and where I've been while I'm studying abroad. So I thought it would be easiest to keep you all up to date at once. I will still be happy to e-mail or write letters to you guys individually, but this is just easier than telling everyone the same stuff over and over again and I'll probably be able to get around to updating this more often than with correspondence.
So I leave Thursday afternoon, my parents and I fly out to Amsterdam and should get there I believe Friday evening. We will spend a couple of days there then we are going touring around Germany.