Every picture tells a story. 754 photos (you can view them at our flickr account or right here by clicking the ‘travel photos’ link on my sidebar) may seem excessive, but when you factor in the 3,000+ we actually took it becomes clear that I really did use a little self-restraint. When each turn of your head is another magnificent view, you can’t help clicking away. Anyway, feel free to look though as many as you’d like… a big gold star for anyone who makes it through them all (I haven’t even done that yet). And if you don’t come away wanting to visit Austria as soon as possible, I’m sorry, there’s just something wrong with you.

Anyway, here are a few random observations from our trip. I’ll be back later with my top 6 (couldn’t limit it to just 5) greater Salzburg area must-sees, after which I promise to move on & talk about something else.

• Dogs are uber-large in Austria and have super-fancy collars. We went to the park and it looked like an MTV ‘pimp my dog collar, St. Bernard style’ show. Tons of short old men walking around with dogs almost as big as they were. I finally came to the conclusion that the size of your Austrian dog must be a subliminal extension of your penis. Then I looked over at Jim walking our 4 pound Chihuahua and laughed four about 4 minutes straight.
• Everything is so freakin’ cute. Houses, churches, soup kitchens, urinals- you name it. Even the bums… seriously. I saw one sleeping on a park bench covered in a big green coat, and I wanted to take him home and display him in my living room like the cute little Austrian bric-à-brac he was!
• The word ‘hohen’ is just great. We saw the Hohensalzburg, and the Hohenwerfen, the Hohenmauterndorf… and each time Jim would make a sad face and say “Really? Only one hohen the whole town?? How sad… ” Of course, by the end of the trip he’d taken to calling me his little hohendresden… still not sure how I feel about that. Heh.
• We did notice one interesting phenomenon we dubbed ‘jesus in a cage‘. Every few miles along the side of the road were these little shelters with statues of jesus nailed to the cross and seeming to be in a considerable amount of pain. Not sure what the purpose was/is, but they’re kinda creepy. Plus I think it’s just wrong to cage jesus. It makes me think of him in terms of the WWF… or worse, I want to pull a Dirty Dancing and shout ‘Nobody puts Jesus in a corner… errr, cage!’