Nine Mercersburg students and two teachers jumped the pond for an often vigorous, frequently instructive, and always-social three weeks in Germany and Austria: the group visited Salzburg, Munich, Worms, Koblenz (via a Lorelei cruise on the Rhine), and Heidelberg.

Here’s a full recap from faculty trip leaders Jim Applebaum and Peter Kempe:

Trips to foreign lands, as any Gulliver will tell you, are in part wonder and curiosity, pain and dislocation, and cultural and social window-shopping; we take stock of ourselves and our beliefs from new or different perspectives. Our three-week excursion had all this.

The extraordinary situation of Salzburg, Austria, is the stuff of postcards: a domineering fortress ruling over a red-tiled city of church domes and spires, fine baroque architecture, and crooked and lively shopping streets bisected by a lazy river; the whole scene is framed by a line of massive alpine peaks to the west and green hills to the east.

First and foremost, Salzburg is identified as the birthplace and true home of Mozart, and our group paid homage to the 18th-century musical genius when we visited his homes (now museums). Next comes the fortress Festung Hohensalzburg, the presence that sails above the city. We Wanderers climbed the sinewy path to the top where, winded, we captured the panorama of the city below and the imposing peaks of the Salzkammergut region – a Thoreauvian experience.

Our home for nine days was a clean and noisy student hostel where the “real” reason for throngs of international visitors to be in Salzburg in mid-June became evident: the Euro 2008 football (soccer) championship. Austria and Switzerland co-hosted the games this year, and Salzburg was one of the venues—so this coincidence attracted swarms of kids and their adult chaperones from Germany, Austria, Spain, Russia, and Greece—perhaps even a yahoo or two. And us. While the games were being played out in stadia, one of the prominent squares of Salzburg was revamped into a “FanZone” with theater-size projection screens, vendors of snacks and European soccer paraphernalia, and loads of police on the perimeter. On several evenings, ours was a tiny raft in a large sea of cheering, moaning, jiggling fans; many wore team jerseys and funny hats and waved their nations’ banners and sang hearty fight songs in different tongues (“Immer wieder, Österreich!”).