trace evidence

Now, everyone, quit telling mom about Pogo!!! I want my computer back on the 25th of August, 2007!!! Nice to hear from you, Sharon.

I tried to call home, but couldn't find a pay phone, and I have 3 minutes left on line.

Yesterday's weather was beautiful and we went up the mountain and took great shots of the Matterhorn. Then we wandered around the city. Switzerland is expensive, but they have great stuff!

This morning, the weather doesn't look too promising. That's OK as I've seen the Matterhorn in all its glory.

Off to Berne...hopefully they have good computer access.

Trace

First of all, thanks for writing your message with the top post...it's much easier to find! Now, if the punctuation would just stay the same on every keyboard, I'd be happy...I think I'm almost too used to the y in the z position now...I'll need to adjust when I come back. When is Dad actually going to type a message?!

I have to pay here for the internet, so this will be shorter.

We drove away from St. Moritz in the fog. Some of the more neurotic people on the bus were afraid, but it was beautiful...you could see about 20 feet, and the rocks and cows and sheep in the foggy distance were magical. However, that broke up soon and we were again under the clouds in amazing valley after amazing valley. At one point, on a narrow bend around a cliff, we passed another bus at about 1km/hour, with centimetres between us. We all cheered our driver Stefano when we cleared that! The ever-growing lineup of cars behind us didn't cheer, however.

We reached Chur, and our tourguide got us our first class tickets for a panorama car on the Glacier Express. Until about half way it was cloudy, but then the sky cleared and lent itself to even more beautiful scenery. It has to be one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world! Our tour guide ended up sitting with us, so we got even more information about the surroundings (and a couple interesting scoops on other tours where he had to break up fights for seats!). It's absolutely amazing how some of the houses got where they are, so high up on the cliffs. Very often, the church is the highest building in the little villages.

Once we got to Zermatt, the weather was beautiful, and we saw the Matterhorn for the first time. Of course I've already got tonnes of pictures of the Matterhorn, Mom and Brad! I'm known on the bus as the woman with the camera at her face constantly...although I'm still on card number one.

We had a wonderful dinner and our hotel is just absolutely adorable. We have a balcony with flowers and two bathrooms (which meant I could do some washing and hang things up in my own private bathroom!). The only problem is that for the three beds, two were bunk beds, and no one wanted the top bunk! The main bed was king-size, though, so we put pillows in between the sides and Darrin's mom and I shared the bed.

We took a walk later and took pictures of the Matterhorn in the evening light just before sunset.

Today, we take a trip up one of the mountains and in the afternoon enjoy some leisure time. There is a folklore festival going on this weekend (which meant very busy streets last night), and a parade, we think, goes by our balcony at 2:00 this afternoon...should be fun!

Running out of time now, so I should go.

I DO want my computer back eventually, Mom. Don't listen to Brad. Pogo is not fun...nope, not at all.

Luv,
Trace

We spent most of yesterday driving towards Switzerland. We stopped in Innsbruck of Winter Olympics fame (which is very pretty) and took a quick walk around. Our tour guide is not allowed to give tours on the streets, so he filled us up with information and just told us to follow him. Apparently, if they're not official city tour guides, they could get fined. When we got to Maximillian's Golden Roof, the sun popped out briefly for pictures.

I noticed that Mom is using computer slang now...uh...am I going to get my computer back when I get back home? And yes, I realized that it was your message, mom, that won the prize! You were first, anyway, even if wirt does mean worthy as well.

We stopped for lunch at another roadside self-serve restaurant in the mountains. I don't know how many castles we have passed. Then we hit the Swiss border, and I found a German book of pixel puzzles, so was happy. What seemed like forever later, we arrived at Pontresina, which is near some glacier. We hopped on horse drawn carriages that took us up the mountain for an hour to a little viewpoint. The sun peeked out on occasion on the mountain while we were there...it's very good for those picture ops!

After that, we arrived at our hotel in St. Moritz at 7 and had dinner. I'm glad dinner is included here, as this seems to be the haunting ground of the rich and famous. The streets are lined with Versace, Ballys, Rolex, etc. stores.

This morning we're off soon after breakfast as we have to catch the Glacier Express into Zermatt. We've got two nights in Zermatt. One of those days we will go up the Grogneratt and one of them the Klein Matterhorn (not the Matterhorn itself) - although I myself might just opt for one of the mountain ascents.

I'd better go as I do have to pay 1 swiss franc for 20 minutes here...

Later, folks!

Trace

Congratulations to Bingo Lady for winning the contest...yes, wirt means host! However, it is not determined if it is Bingo Lady number one or number two...the message wasn´t signed.

Also, please try VERY hard to put your post after the top-most message so I don´t have to search for them. I´m sometimes limited on time!

Yesterday, we did a city tour (walking) in the morning with Veronika as our guide. Lots of the shop owners and guides wear traditional Austrian clothing. She showed us around the city including inside the Dom Cathedral, which is beautiful even without any stained glass anywhere. We also walked through the cemetery where the Von Trapps hid in the movie (although they couldn´t actually have hidden there, as there is nothing to hide behind!). We also saw Mozart´s birthplace, statue, house where he grew up, and lots of other Mozart memorabilia. It was drizzling off and on throughout the day.

After the city tour we walked around on our own through the "old city" (the "new city" is only 400 years old) and I bought a hand-embroidered little tablecloth. It might be too expensive to use as a cover for the bird cage (!), but we´ll see! (It really wasn´t that expensive!)

In the afternoon we went to the Eagle´s Nest (in Germany; we passed through Bavaria), the only part of the Nazi headquarters that was not bombed to smithereens. It was too bad that it was foggy as you couldn´t see the view, but the historical part was very interesting. Some parts along the drive we were on the edge of the mountain and you couldn´t see anything but white on the open side past five feet away! You still knew it was a long way down, though!

For dinner we went to a little restaurant in the outskirts of Salzburg (where I saw a car with a designer license plate "HA WIRT 1" - yes I took a picture!) whose food was a lot better than the night before, and then we went to Hellbrunn Castle, which is an amazing place. Some archbishop with a lot of money and a cruel sense of humour built it for fun just so he could tease his guests. There are surprises around every corner, including trick fountains that could be coming from anywhere! The technology was amazing, considering it was built 400 years ago and was just powered by water coming down from the mountain.

Anyways, I should be going, as we need to have breakfast and leave to go on to St. Moritz. We stop along the way there to go for a horse-drawn carriage ride up to a glacier.

Don´t know when I´ll write next!

Later,

Trace

Well, here we are in Salzburg! And no one has won the contest!

This could be because I forgot to include the link to the hint!

Click on the burgundy words above, scroll down until you see the little box, click in the little box, type "wirt", and hit the button that says either "send," or "search" - I forget what it says. Wait, and scroll down to the definition. When you´re done, you can hit the back button (the left-facing arrow button in the grey part) to get back to this screen.

http://www.ego4u.com/en/dictionary

No, it does not mean "worth" but something else. And happy anniversary to my favourite cousin who lives in Calgary!

I think I know what happened to your posts that "disappeared," Mom - you posted them under a different entry! I just did a search and discovered a whole bunch of comments I´d missed before. Are you doing anything but the computer, Mom?! I guess the instructions worked!

To update the journey, the morning started out with beautiful weather in Vienna, and we travelled to Krems to hop on our boat cruise of the Danube. After waiting in the heat crammed together with little pushy senior citizens and equally pushy bicycle travellers on a little dock (once again, the concept of a line seems foreign to people here), we boarded our cute little cruise ship. The weather was beautiful for the cruise; just enough of a breeze to keep things refreshing. We docked briefly at Dürnstein (didn´t get off the boat) which has to be the cutest village ever - there is a gorgeous blue cathedral right on the water, surrounded by little homes, and above the village on the cliffs are the ruins of a huge castle.

Then we went further to Weissenkirchen (White Church) and disembarked. What took us 55 minutes by boat took our bus driver 20 minutes by bus...but we had the better view! As soon as we got off the boat, it started to cloud over off and on for the rest of the day.

We then visited the Melk Abbey, which was impressive, and stopped at a little cafeteria-style restaurant at a gas station along the highway for lunch. This doesn´t sound impressive, but I guess they have a chain of these restaurants, and this one was in a beautiful country area surrounded by little villages in the distance. Later we stopped at Mondsee which reminded me very much of Leavenworth (the most touristy place we´ve been so far), but had the cathedral which was used for the wedding scenes in The Sound of Music. It doesn´t look as gaudy in the movie as it does in real life. The building itself is very plain - painted pink and white on the inside - but the "extras" they have all around the inside are dark, dark wood and dark, dark paintings...and they´re huge!

Then we went on to Salzburg. It rained along the way, but dried up by the time we got there, although it was still cloudy. The tour guide said that the saying in Salzburg is, "If you can see the castle, it´s going to rain. If you can´t see the castle, it´s raining."

Our hotel room is right by a bunch of train tracks. Luckily, the windows cut a bunch of the sound out, because even with me living near the tracks, the sound of what must have been 15 trains thundering by (just little ones, but they didn´t sound like it!) every 15 minutes was rather deafening.

We went down for dinner in the hotel´s restaurant (salad, boiled beef and potatoes - blech - and curd dumplings with stewed plums - at least the dumplings were ok). Then we went for a walk through the park just prior to 8:00.

You know the scene in The Sound of Music when they are getting married and there are bells ringing everywhere? That´s what Salzburg sounds like. Or at least it did at 8:00. There were bells ringing all over the city for around 10 minutes straight before they rang the bells for the time. It was beautiful. As if on cue, right during that time the sun came out briefly and lit up the cathedral and castle in the distance, which led to some pretty impressive shots of the two landmarks...I wish I could share them with you now! We walked around the fountain pictured in The Sound, walked across a footbridge to the "old" city, and then headed back through the park where a young orchestra was giving a concert right near the fountain mentioned earlier.

Then we went to bed. I´m sure I was asleep by 10:00, which leads me to the realization I just had about 15 minutes ago. What I thought was 5:10 when I got up this morning was actually 2:25. So, here I am typing in the lobby at 3:30 in the morning. I´m sure I´m going to hear from Darrin and his mom when they wake up. And again later. And later after that. At least this gives me lots of time with no one else wanting the computer!

Anyways, I´m wide awake now after four hours of sleep. I´m not too worried, as the anti-motion-sick medicine made me fall asleep several times on the journey yesterday. Today, we are doing a walking tour of the city in the morning, and then taking an excursion to the Eagle´s Nest, of Hitler infamy. Apparently it has wonderful views. We go through the salt mining area as well on this out trip. Then, in the evening, we go for dinner at Helbrunn Castle, a castle known for its "trick" fountains. Water spurts out from unexpected places, apparently!

Well, I should probably head back up to my room and hope they didn´t notice me getting showered etc. in the middle of the night. (I was wondering why the sun hadn´t come up yet!)

Night, and talk to you later!

Trace