32: Venice, Vienna, Munich and Austrian Tyrol

Hello all! sorry for the wait, it's been a long week packed full of things to do, time has been quite scarce as of late. We explored Venice a few days ago, beautiful city, such a pity that it is sinking, so many generations will miss out on its splendor. After leaving Venice we travelled up to Vienna in Austria for two nights. With the city touring, the Schnapps museum and tasting and the partying, we had little time to do anything else before paking up and heading out to Munich in Germany. Along the way we stopped at a service station which had a beautiful mountain scenery view out the back where 'The Sound of Music' was filmed. looks like part of the area was fenced off due to too many people running down the hills singing songs from that particular musical. Munich was quite an experience to remember, though we were only there for a single night, it was quite a lot of fun. Everybody was suitably impressed with the size of the steins at the Bavarian beer hall, where we stood to sing a German drinking song every 15 minutes and ate traditional pork knuckle (or a chicken schnitzel). The beer hall was excellent fun, though everybody was a bit out of it on the bus the next day. We travelled to the Austrian Tyrol yesterday and stopped along the way in the Dachau concentration camp from Nazi Germany. The remains of the camp were quite depressing, it was like being back in the Killing Fields in Cambodia. After that we headed for Austria once more, stopping to do white water rafting and bobsledding. I didn't do the bobsledding, but the white water rafting was one of my highlights of the trip, which i'm sure i'm not alone in thinking, as everybody else loved it as well. the beautiful scenery only added to the excitement, which grew even more when our raft was chosen to be filmed for an Austrian tourism show for television. I was the one who was asked to help with the filming by having a camera strapped to my leg which, while being somewhat uncomfortable, was quite thrilling at the same time. The rapids were excellent fun, and though we all cme out drenched and shivering, i'm sure everybody will remember that trip for a long time to come. Tomorrowwe head for Liechtenstein, then the Swiss Alps to stay in Contiki's special Swiss chalet. Sounds like it will be good fun indeed. Hope everybody is good at home, and a special shout out to my Grandad, who's birthday is today, so Happy Birthday Grandad! hope you have an excellent birthday!

Dale Chapman, signing out