Posting from Austria!

Well, here we are in Europe...we can't believe it and are having a wonderful time experiencing everything. We left Atlanta on Sunday afternoon. We had a pretty good flight to Zurich, only 8 hours and got through customs with no problems...Andre got his stamp in his passport which he loved! We stopped for some coffee at the airport and then picked up our rental car. Andre did a fabulous job with the driving and is really good at a stick shift! We managed to navigate most of the way successfully with only one or two minor detours :)


Andre and our car at Zurich airport


The Swiss Alps

Almost as soon as we left Zurich, we were driving through the Alps, mostly in valleys between the mountains. Everything is very green in the valleys still and then suddenly at a certain point there's the snow line, usually just above the villages


Coming up to the Austrian border...we didn't even have to stop!


Here's a rather bad shot of the countryside. We drove from Zurich, across the border into Austria, through Innsbruck and then on to Mittersill. We stopped there to have a look at Schloss Mittersill, which is the castle that is now owned by a Christian organization, sort of like La Bri but focused on the arts, business, music etc. They host conferences and anyone can stay there. My boss is on the board, so I know some of what goes on there and have occasionally been in contact with people at the castle, and we thought it would be fun to stop by, as it was almost exactly on our way. And we're so glad we did! It was definitely worth it. The castle is 1000 years old and was built to protect trade routes between Austria and Italy. It has quite a history of persecuting Christians, so it's really amazing that it's now used for Christian work exclusively! As the lady who showed us around said, "If only the walls could talk!"


The courtyard of the Schloss.


The view of the town of Mittersill from the Schloss


The side of the castle, all original and in tact


The dungeon. Ironically it's directly below the chapel!


From there we drove further across to the town of Schladming where we're staying until Saturday. It's gorgeous and so picturesque! We arrived at about 6:30 pm (I'm not sure what took us so long; maybe it was all the bathroom breaks I had to take!!). We were exhausted and after nice hot baths we slept soundly all night.

It's pretty cold, about -2 by the evenings but we had lovely weather today, very sunny. Our apartment is very comfortable has lots of room.


View from our room

After breakfast at a bakery in the town, we stopped by a shop to get some groceries. One of the highlights of the day for me was finding this machine filled with oranges at the top, where you could press a handle and squeeze your own OJ into a bottle! How cool is that!

The OJ machine

This evening we took a drive up onto the mountain directly behind us, and watched the sunset. Tomorrow we're taking the gondola up the mountain opposite us to see a glacier. Thursday is supposed to be rainy so we'll probably drive up to Salzburg then.

Bye for now!