europe is causing us to hate children

...with the fire of a thousand suns.

They´re everywhere! Every freaking tour, sight, bus, hostel, streetcorner, is swarming with large groups of children. Don´t they ever go to school? I swear education in Europe is one giant field trip.

On our boat trip yesterday, 7 year olds in matching hats literally took up all but 5 or 6 of the seats. Then we had to bus to Schloss Hellbrunn with them. The same group of rugrats showed up at our hostel that night, along with like 5 other school groups, running around an screaming and shouting and laughing and swarming like angry bees. Today at the Mozart residence we somehow got ourselves caught in a room with a group of junior high aged kids, yelling and laughing and whatnot.

I never thought I´d say this, but children should be seen and not heard. And preferably never in my way.

My anger at children is somewhat enhanced by my anger at the Stiegl Brewhouse. Why, you ask? Well, I´ll tell you.

Yesterday we bought "Salzburg Cards", passes valid for 48 hours including all transit, and admission to most attractions in and around Salzburg. They paid for themselves yesterday afternoon alone, but today we used them to visit the Hohensalzburg Fortress (over 500 years old, overlooking the whole city), and both the birthplace and later residence of Mozart. In the early afternoon, we realized that among many other things (like a wax museum and a marionette museum, both of which I find extremely creepy), our cards include admission to the Stiegl Brewhouse, touted as the biggest brewhouse in Europe, and whose tour includes 2 glasses of beer, a pretzel, and something else that we don´t know how to translate.

How exciting!

We promptly jumped on the bus, and headed in that direction. We got off the bus, walked down the street indicated on the map, and after several blocks, realized that the brewhouse was not on that street, but since it was on the edge of the map, they just put the little icon there to indicate that it was in that general direction. The actual brewhouse was like 5 blocks over.

Thanks, Tourism Austria.

So we trudged through the hot streets (the rain is gone, it´s warm out today), undaunted because, hey, we were about to get free beer and pretzels! An hour and a half after we left our hostle on this trek, the brewery rose into view. Free beer here we come! When we arrived at the gate, however, a sign was posted in three languages. "In order to make our brewhouse tour better, we are closed for renovations from January to Autumn 2007. Thank you for your understanding."

No, actually, I do not understand. You mean to say we passed like eight signs pointing us toward you, saw three or four advertisements in various tourist propaganda, and no one thought to mention until the front gate that you´re closed?!?

We stood and stewed.

Then we marched the several blocks to the nearest bus stop, got back on the bus, and rode back into the centre of town, and now we are sitting in an internet cafe, drinking cans of Stiegl that we bought for € 0.89.

It still would have been cool to have a tour. And a pretzel.