It is Sunday night in Austria. We are sitting in Thomas' living room watching what else=== The Sound of Music. It is so neat to watch the movie through different 'eyes'. We have seen many of the places where the movie was filmed in Salzburg now it means more to watch it. We are watching it in English with the subtitles in Germam. It is really an experience.
We will be going back to America on Wednesday. The Hasenzagl family will be traveling to Chicago with us and then we will go our separate ways. OH How sad!!!!! We have had such a wonderful time on the entire trip. It is going to take us a long time to get our thoughts together and realize just what we have seen. Just like today, Thomas' Opa took us to a village that was wiped out by Hitler during the war. We saw the remains of a church and walls from the village. There was a overrun cementery where Hitler's grandfather is officially believed to have been buried. Many of the Hitler family were buried in this cemetery. All of the markers have disappeared or have been stolen. I guess the Hitler name has been wiped out. Most of them probably changed their names after the war. It was really neat because we were the only ones on this hill. Someone had been there before us because there was one lone candle burning on the church entry way. I will include pictures later. It was totally fascinating to hear the story or I should say to listen to Thomas interpret the story through the eyes of someone wh0 lived there during that time. Opa was 11 years old when all this took place and he remembers it like it was yesterday. It is a very isolated place and we really had to search to find it and then we had to walk up a hill.(Everyone knows how I like to climb hills!!!!!) It was amazing. I plan to continue writing in my blog when we get back. It takes a while to download the pictures so we will work on it when we get home. We are going back to Vienna tomorrow. (Or as they say here Wien) Tuesday we are going to stay in St. Pölten and pack to get ready to come home. We are looking forward to seeing all of you soon. Hope you will continue to check back. Love, John and Nita