Well, last night we got a new TV.  I know, wtf?  Were we looking for a new TV?  not really…but I’m always on the lookout for things involving the word FREE.  In this case, we upgraded our livingroom TV from 19″ to 27″.  Also, now we can use that 19″ as our bedroom TV.  YAY.  Did I mention the word free?  Basically, I was doing my usual thing, checking the toytownmunich.com forum and I noticed someone posted that they were giving a 27″ Philips TV in good condition away for free…well, it turns out it’s a damn nice TV, and umm…yeah, we’re thrilled.  Here’s some pics of old and new:

That reminds me of just last month when we picked up my new monitor, which you can also see in the picture.  That was a free upgrade from a 17″ to a 19″…and it is damn nice.  Did I mention the word free? 

SO, tours have been all over the place lately, as far as how I feel at the end of them anyways.  Yesterday was a good day, except for it being cold of course…but not too bad.  Neuschwanstein has snow on it at the moment, which only happened a total of 3 days last year, so it’s quite impressive this early.  We don’t have any snow here in Munich, the other day it snowed, but it melted on impact.  Tomorrow I’m heading back to Neuschwanstein so I’ll see if it has snow again.  For some reason I didn’t feel like taking any pics of NSS in the snow yesterday. (I only had my phone camera anyways)

As far as tour numbers are concerned lately it’s been pretty consistent for me, around 9-15 people every tour…which is pretty nice.  DB, the german train company, is planning strikes again…this time thursday and friday.  Well, I have a Salzburg tour on Thursday and it always makes me uneasy when my boss wants me to go ahead with the tour during the strikes…I just don’t like starting a tour when I don’t know for certain we can get there and back.  With Salzburg, if the tour is thrown off an hour, it really hurts the tour as they don’t have time to go into the museums or up to the castle…and well, I just want to make sure everyone’s happy.  …so we’ll see how it goes for Thursday.

I’ve also had a couple very odd tours to Salzburg…both going well…but…well…odd.  The last one had 2 from spain (nearly no english but for some ungodly reason their spanish was EXACTLY what I learned in school so that I could actually understand them…this nearly never happens with spanish-speaking people.  They were from Madrid, for the record), then a couple guys from Chile (here on business), then a couple americans (cali), and then three chinese guys who understood about 3 words that day (friendly, though).  So in total, I had 2 who could actually understand everything I said, 3 that understood NOT A GODDAMN WORD, and then of course the 4 that understood only every 5th word.  That makes things interesting, especially since they’re still working on the tracks, so with the multiple train switches….I’m happy to report that everyone made it there and back and were happy at the end.

The Salzburg tour before that was DURING the DB strike last Thursday.  Now, I really didn’t want to do it since DB wasn’t promising anything…but surprisingly, it went well.  Our train left on the other side of Munich, so we took the scenic route across town on the subway, then a train to the border, then switched trains….then our normal train right on time got us back…well, to the Ostbahnhof again, then an U-bahn ride over to the Hauptbahnhof which is where we started.   Anyways…I hung out with a really nice old man from Malta whom I hope to someday visit.  Also, an American guy who was from Seattle…and reminded me of my favorite professor from college….Dr. Fred Lee.  We had a good time, despite the DB strike looming…and crappy weather.

I think I’m gonna put a beer in the fridge.  My friend Andi, he owns the small restaurant (imbiss) that I stop at on my Neuschwanstein tours, gave me a beer the other day that I didn’t drink…so I hauled it all the way back here…so I’ll report back on how it tastes…as I’ve never had that brand of beer.  I really do try to taste EVERY beer I come across…I’m slowly making my way.  I should make a list.  Anyways, this one is called:  Schussenrieder Schwarzbier