Farewell Porsche, Gruss Gott Salzburg.

We drove from Bled to Ljubljana this morning (pronounced lee-you-blee-yawna in case you were curious) and dropped off our Porsche at the main train station. As we rounded a corner, there was a man in a white t-shirt who waved to us and pointed to the curb. It was surprising that it was that easy to find the rental car rep since there is no official drop off in Slovenia. Either that or we were victims of the nicest car jacking in history. The Ljubljana train station was a bit . . . rough for lack of a better word. It was fairly bare bones.

I went to the ticketing office to get our tickets printed out since I only had a confirmation number from ordering the tickets online. The woman said we wouldn't be able to print it until getting to Austria, which also happened to be our destination, so this was not exactly problem-solving. She kind of shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "not my problem" and we boarded the train without them. This greatly upset the Slovenian guy checking tickets on-board, who referred to the situation as a "catastrophe." Nicole and I thought that was a bit much. A train going off the rails and into a bayou is a catastrophe... or as some call it, Amtrak. We ended up going all the way to Salzburg without ever having our tickets officially scanned.

We arrived around 2pm and walked from the station to our hotel. This coincided with the finish line for the Salzburg Marathon so reaching our hotel was met with much applause and music. It did seem like quite an accomplishment in a way to have driven through the Balkans without having the Porsche dinged, nicked, or ticketed. The weather in Salzburg was a bit dismal -- rainy and chilly. Not a good day for a long run. It wasn't a downpour, however, so we were able to walk around without too much discomfort.

We walked a bit around the old town and where Mozart used to live and so on. We had tea and strudel for an afternoon snack and later had schnitzel for dinner. It was a nice change from the pizzas we've been eating almost every night save two. Tomorrow we have another train in the afternoon to go to Munich. I checked this time and see that I can get tickets to show up on my phone. This is a German rail company, so efficiency is something they pride themselves on. The Austrian rail could learn a thing or two, like maybe have a method of retrieving tickets purchased online without using a kiosk that can only be found at your destination...

I dragged Nicole back out at night to take some more pictures before it began to rain again, so we went back to the room to call it a night. I have been carrying our free wine from Bosnia for the last four days, so I opened it up to celebrate France's decision to not elect a Nazi. This, ironically, is likely to greatly upset the French, who are not known to respect the fine wines of famous Mostar region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a 2013 so you know it's good. Has good legs and tannin. Gute Nacht.