Saturday, May 10, 2008


A few nights ago on the Subway there was a huge fight. There were two guys standing right next to me and my friend Kelsie, and they started yelling at each other. There was a lot of tension, more than a regular argument, so I grabbed Kelsie´s arm and ran to the other side of the subway. Then they started physically fighting. One guy bashed the other guy´s head on the side of the subway and blood got all over. The bloody guy ran right over to where I was standing (I was trying to hide myself in a big group of guys who had awful B.O. but at least I would be safe), and I started praying that the scary guy wouldn´t come over too. Some of the Nigerian immigrant guys pinned down the pschyco guy. I got off at the next station. It was so scary! On Saturday I got to help the missionaries with their street preach. The whole Zone sang hymns in front of Stefan´s Dom (a really famous church from the middle ages), and told people about the gospel as they listened to the music. On sunday I got to go on splits with the missionaries again. We got to go door to door, and at one door that I got to do the talking for---which is kind of scary in German---the lady started screaming at us and slammed the door. That´s about it for this week. On thursday I am going to Salzburg for 3 days. That will be fun! Oh yeah, on Saturday morning I bought super-rad stuff at the flee-market. I got an old porcelin doll in Austrian clothes, an old jewelery box, one of those little hand-painted porcelin beer mugs from the fifteen hundreds, and an old record of a leder-hosen wearing brass-band. By guys! I just went to Salzburg and got to meet up with some of the LDS friends I made on my Switzlerland temple trip. We all went to dinner together, and it was so fun! (Although I spent more on my one meal than I usually spend on groceries in an entire week, because I ate out, and I got the only gluten-free thing on the menu). We went to tons of castles and went on lots of tours. We went to all the historical sites having to do with Mozart, the Sound of Music (we even got to go to the Do Ray Me stairs that they really sang on, and we ourselves, like four of us anyway, choreographed a chunk of the song and taped it. Lots of Japanese people gathered around us and either filmed us or took pictures---that was my favorite part of the trip). We also went to a place called Halstaat, and I´m pretty sure it was Heaven. We went inside a salt mine, and had to dress up in the coal-miner clothes, slide down giant wooden slides deep into the mine, and see all sorts of cool stuff. We were up in the mountains, there were giant lakes all over, and we even got to ride on a boat for a tour of the lake. It was raining really hard, but we all insisted on being on top of the boat instead of inside. The orderly Austrians thought we were crazy. Another highlight was one of the palaces we visited---It was inhabited by the American troups during WWII. There is a great hall, full of hand-carved wood all around, gold leaf covering parts of the art, and frescos on the ceiling---just like every palace. But the funny thing was that the tour guide told us that the American troups played tennis in that room. In another room, there was a bed made especially for Prince Eugene (in those days whenever people knew a special person was coming to stay they had a room prepared for them and made lots of either art or furniture for them). Prince Eugene had led Austria against the Turks twice, so this palace made him a bed made of dying Turks. It is really ugly, but the carvings and artwork is emaculate. He saw it, and said both that it was ugly and refused to sleep in it. The tour guide told us that it has only been slept in by the American soldiers during the war, and that they thought it was hillarious and took pictures in it. I think our culture is funnier, but I can see how we come across as being disrespectful.

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