Yummy beer and pretzels

Grasse Gott, or something like that. I am havign to learn German earlier than I had planned... in Bolzano, German is definitely the language of choice. I am horrible at th pronunciation, but it isn't that hard to read or understand when the nice people here speak SLOWLY for th dumb inglese.

And they call me inglese when I say I am from America.

This is another gorgeous mountan town, with castles, churches, and th frozen stone age man thay hacked out of a glacier in th early 90s. He was the first thing I saw here. I remember seeing a show on him on the discovery channel at th Academy, but unfortunately, the only detail I remembered about him was that they accidently chopped off his penis while they were cutting him out of th ice. I learned lots more during the exhaustive audioguide at the museum they've built in his honor. Funny, they didn't mention the whole penis incident, at least not that I could make out. One disturbing thing... they have an exhibit of pottery discovered at sites nearby, and I have to say that these prehistoric people made better pots than I did in my pottery class last summer. It is a great museum, though, without any English signs, so I got to practice my German.

Yesterday, I wandered (wandern in German) to the duomo, I thought for mass, but was instead surprised by a parade for some feast day or other. It seemed like the whole town showed up in costumes, and they carried a requilaria of some saint around. I never figured out which saint, but it was fun. I followed the parade with everyone else, tried to figure out what prayers everyone was mumbling in German, and enjoyed the oompa loompa marching music. I tried to picture the staid parishoners at St Joes following some saints' toenail around Cap Hill... yeah right.

Next, I walked to a castle along a river, about 3 or 4 kms outside of town, and found a jazz festival inside the castle! After my tour of the place (it was pretty cool, very castle-like, it even had a moat) I sat down in the courtyard and listened to jazz all afternoon.

I have also eaten a weinerschnitzel and have (so far) lived... it does not involve sausage of any kind. It is actually chicken fried steak on a bun, but I don't think it is steak. Probably pork. But it was good! They have all these little weiner stands around (haven't stopped laughing when I see them, though) and most people get these big bratwurst. They come on a piece of paper with a huge puddle of greenish mustard and a piece of bread. Sort of nauseating to see them eaten with the hands. I've not gotten the courage together to eat one of those so publicly yet.

I'll leave here tomorrow for Zell am See, Austria, then to Salzburg where I'm especially looking forward to The Sound of Music tour. Yeah, baby, I am 16, going on 17.

auf weiderschein!

Erin