Austria and Slovenia in a Nutshell of sorts.

Salzburg, Austria
When we arrived in Salzburg, Austria, all I knew what that the city was in Austria. That's it. After arriving to the city pretty early on in the day, Django and I toured the places where the legendary movie, The Sound of Music, was filmed. The city consisted of 10 or so quite charming streets, a very very blue river, and a castle/fortress surrounded by mountains. Back in the day, Salzburg was famous for still holding on to the tradition elaborate street signs advertising the trade of the store owner (Apotheke, Cobbler, Pekanra, etc), but now the city seems to be a tourist attraction for Austrians that live on the wealthy side. Stores ranging from Hermes to Rolex lined the streets and Django and I could find very little to do that didn't involve a ton of money. We did have drinks down by the river, visit the castle and take in it's amazing view, and visit the a gorgeou Cathedral in the middle of the town. Food wise- Salzburg wasn't the best. We weren't able to try much local food because of high prices, and the Italian restaurant that we did stop at charged over-cooked the pasta a bit, but the Penna al Arrabiata was still magnificent and about the spiciest thing I can ever see myself eating (not that spicy). I crossed my fingers that I would do better in Dubrovnik and we took the train to Slovenia after two days.


Ljubljana, Slovenia
The train ride from Austria into Slovenia was one of the prettiest I have ever witnessed. For hours our train drove through valleys surrounded by gorgeous ice-capped mountains. I haven't yet been out west in the United States, but I'm willing to bet that Slovenia does mountains even better than we do. We also got to see rolling green country side and some of the more agricultural parts of the country. Two people shared our train car, a magnificently funny old man that had more Orange Fanta and coffee than I've seen someone over 50 drink in ages, and a very quiet middle-aged woman. The man helped up by repeating the names of the stops slowly enough for us to understand where we were.
Django and I hit a rocky section of time when we first got into Slovenia. We were lost without bus tickets, couldn't find our hostel, wished we hadn't once we finally did, and finally had to walk two miles into the city because our concierge was clueless. Once John and Betsy (my parents) were so generous enough to pay for a room at a different, MUCH nicer hotel near the city center, we really got to enjoying ourselves. Django tried a horse hamburger one afternoon and thought it tasted good, but wasn't ever sure exactly what it was made of. I was a little on the safer side and had a chicken salad, the dressing on which seemed to be a local standard: vinergar, sour cream, salt and pepper. Though the dressing was a bit too watery and too abundant for me the salad was an overall success. Our last night in Ljubljana we tried a local restuarant called Ljubljanski Dvor that boasted some of the best pizza in Ljubljana. Not the case. It turns out the pizza was seared for about two minutes and then served right away to keep a steady stream of customers in and out of the restaurant. The result was burnt cheese and a soft crust, neither of which we very appealing.
 

Django and are now in Dubrovnik though and look forward to some better eating and the beginning of my Croatian food project. Though I can't say that I like seafood (in its defense I have never tasted much of it) I am excited to embark on this culinary adventure and see what happens.