Ah, Austria: where even a simple iPhone photo looks like a postcard.

When you're an expat, you can sometimes feel really left out if big things happen back in the U.S. I have to admit I found some of the pre-eclipse hysteria amusing rather than envy-provoking. But when I saw all the after-photos of people huddling together with homemade and store-bought eclipse aids, I felt like I had missed out on a great party. And as I've mentioned before, it's not just the solar system that leaves you behind when you're an expat. It's also people. You may recall from a previous post that we went hiking with friends in the Swiss Alps last summer. Of the four couples, only one (the Drucker-Vines) are left holding down the fort in Amsterdam. So this winter, we dangled the prospect of a hiking reunion out to the group, and happily, they all took the bait. I did my best to pack the news about Rachel's medical challenges into the far reaches of my mind so we could go on this long-planned and -looked forward to trip to Austria. As they say, it takes a village, and the trip would not have been possible without my dear friend Laurie from N.J., who had previously signed on to watch Casey while we were gone. She was game for also keeping an eye on Rachel. And Rachel put on her bravest face and told me she would be fine. I decided to take her at her word.

Like many of you who are roughly my age, The Sound of Music loomed large in my childhood. Before the days of instant gratification via Netflix, we had to wait patiently each year to watch it replayed on T.V. Like I'm sure you all did, I knew every word to every song, and I sang along at the top of my lungs. The only difference between you and me is that I still sing those songs, although at a lower decibel and usually just to Casey. So when this trip to Austria started to take shape, and with it, the chance to tack on a few days in Salzburg, I was beside myself with glee. And can you even imagine how I felt when I saw Salzburg offered not just any ole Sound of Music tour, but a bike tour dubbed Fraülein Maria's Bike Tour , where singing along was not just allowed but encouraged, and all while riding a bike? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning

When it comes to planning a trip, it doesn't hurt to have at your beck and call experts who were either born and raised in your travel destinations, or who lived there for a good long stretch. This happens with happy regularity here because so many people here are originally from somewhere else, or have lived as expats in that somewhere else. Enter Vera, my Amsterdam friend who hails from Munich. She basically told us not just where to go and where to eat, but also what to eat (and not to eat).

This beautiful spot in the English Gardens in Munich was on Vera's yes-yes list. On the no-no list was the Hofbräuhaus. Full of tourists, Vera warned. She recently turned all her expertise into a new business. And, as you can see, I'm also doin… — This beautiful spot in the *English Gardens* in Munich was on Vera's yes-yes list. On the no-no list was the *Hofbräuhaus*. Full of tourists, Vera warned. She recently turned all her expertise into a new business. And, as you can see, I'm also doing my best to give a shout-out to the company Ben works for: *Eaze*.

This beer garden, Augustiner-Keller, was sanctioned by Vera. There, we sat among the natives. You buy your beer, but food can be BYO.

Here is the Kaese Spaetzle that was on my must-eat list. Five stars! You have to love a cuisine that provides pretzels in the bread basket. I think the common denominator in all the German and Austrian food is that it goes well with a cold beer.

We visited several beer gardens and saw sights like a young guy reading a huge book while drinking an even larger stein of beer, and lots of elderly couples enjoying equally large steins at 3 p.m. Would you see that in the U.S.? Nein! We talked about how Americans can't really handle the beer garden concept easily, although there is some evidence we are trying. We tend to drink too much and get belligerent, not savor the beer with a book or a sausage.

Climb Every Mountain

From Munich, we headed to Ehrwald, Austria for the hiking portion of the trip. We were the lone Americans in a hotel filled with Brits (we were, after all, on a hiking vacation run by them). Thankfully, the questions about Trump were kept to a bare minimum. I think they realized we were probably there to escape the absurdity, not defend it. On the long hikes - we always found the uphills longer and steeper than advertised by the young, fit, and optimistic guides - we caught up with each other's lives. I wonder what millenials talk about when they are hiking. Unlike them, we have a lifetime of stories about ourselves, our aging parents, our own aches and pains, and our mostly newly-launched batches of twentysomething kids. There was a constant supply of chatter topics.

The cows nearly outnumbered the people on this stretch of the path.

Utter beauty everywhere you looked.

We are finally listening to the voices of our mothers telling us to wear our hats in the sun.

Truth be told, the last photo was taken before the hiking path got significantly steeper and our smiles significantly narrower. Luckily, the hiking hut at the top of the path was not a mirage, and it served up some truly delicious traditional Austrian food, like dumplings and something called Kaiserschmarren. The word combines the words Kaiser (emperor) and schmarren (a scrambled or shredded dish). The result is delicious: think crumbled pancakes sprinkled with powdered sugar and flanked by apple sauce and jam. Can you think of a better reward for finishing a hike? Well, not really finishing at all, since what goes up must come down. After stuffing ourselves, we had to make the several hour trip back. I needed to play Start Me Up inside my head to get back myself upright and back out on the trail. At the end, our sore muscles could have made a grown man cry. I notice Mick Jagger is already wearing knee supports in the video.

We also bonded over our first-world uniquely American problems, like the Sahara-desert-like heat in the dining room and the lack of coffee in the lobby for early risers. In this recent BuzzFeed article #1 on the list of 23 Things American's Don't Realize Are Weird is, "Air conditioning everywhere, pumped up to the max." Hey, what's wrong with that? Our-non American friends also like to poke fun at the way we Americans like to order food from a restaurant menu "our way". Think of Sally in When Harry Met Sally, ordering her food in excruciatingly exact detail: "I’ll have the chef salad with the oil and vinegar on the side and the apple pie à la mode. But I’d like the pie heated. And I don’t want the ice cream on top, I want it on side, and I’d like strawberry instead of vanilla, if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream but only if it’s real; if it’s out of the can, then nothing." This will give you some idea of how some of us ordered our food. Let's just say the Europeans aren't used to this sort of thing. I think they were amazingly patient with us. It helps to smile a lot while you are placing your special order. As Sally would say, "I just like it how I like it." My way.

My Favorite Things

When you are traveling with a group, you learn to smile at those little idiosyncrasies. In fact, those little quirks are what make you bond like a family. One night, we sat in the lobby, laughing away, poking fun at each others' Achilles heels. We cleared the lobby, since I suspect no one could stand the sound of our American raucousness after a while. Between the laughter sessions - definitely one of my favorite things - we tackled the world's and life's joys and problems - like gun control, climate change (this was just before all the apocalyptic weather in the U.S.) and expat/repat life.

And, as you already know by now, food is another of my favorite things. As with the shots of the mountains, some of these food shots speak for themselves.

This beauty (a cheese dumpling) was the main reason I agree to extend one hike by going straight up a mountain for over an hour.

Here's what you get when you order iced coffee in Austria. There was a hint of coffee, and a lot of iced and whipped cream. A healthy post-hike rehydration.

The idea of a pretzel sandwich was better than the execution. It was a sloppy mess to eat, but I persevered.

And the iconic wiener schnitzel. Although Vera told us it was a cliché, we had to order and reorder it, just to make sure it was just as good at almost every place we went.

At this point in the trip, we said goodbye to part of our posse, Seanette and Richard, who headed back to London. The rest of us forged ahead to Salzburg. Peter has always wanted to visit. It seems his grandmother - who wasn't exactly known for her enthusiasm, though she had other fine qualities - always remembered a summer she and Peter's grandpa spent in Salzburg. Although she could complain about things like a restaurant's service till the cows came home, she would positively glow when she talked about Salzburg. Now I see what she was glowing about. It's incredibly gorgeous, tucked away in the mountains. There's music everywhere and kitschy reminders of Mozart, and people wandering around in traditional dirndls and lederhosen.

They even have upscale dirndls for the chic traditionalist.

Because we had planned way, way ahead, we had tickets to the Salzburg Festival. It's the Coachella of classical music festivals and apparently this was a banner year. We loved watching the red carpet rush of Salzburg society lining up to see and be seen. There were an astonishing number of people dressed in traditional garb. I guess wearing a dirndl is not just a ploy to satisfy tourists, but an actual fashion choice. We heard the Vienna Philharmonic play, conducted by the Boston Symphony's head guy, Andris Nelsons. That made our friends from Boston feel right at home. We also heard a 26-year-old whiz kid, Daniil Trifonov, play the piano at lightning speed, earning him a standing ovation the likes of which Bruce Springsteen would be proud of. That Salzburg crowd sure was an appreciative audience.

While the concert was wonderful, you all know what I was really looking forward to was the musical bike ride the following morning. On the plus side, I got to belt out the songs to my heart's content. We saw many of the locations which were either in the movie, or recreated on a soundstage in L.A. Now to the minus side of the ledger: instead of singing the appropriate song at each location, we had to wait until we were outside the city limits to let it out. It seems the locals complained about the (American) tourists who clog the streets on their silly Sound of Music tours, with their loud voices. Apparently, the Austrians are just not that into the Sound of Music at all. In fact, they hate it. They think that it was historically inaccurate, told the story of the Nazis too soon after actual events for their comfort, and causes Americans to miss out on the real Austria. In fact, most Austrians have never seen the movie. Our guide told us an ordinance was passed that restricts singing tours to the outside of the city limits. Or so he said. And because we were on bikes and he had the boom box, I had to keep up with him in order to hear the music. And no one else seemed to be singing. No matter. I still enjoyed it.

In sometimes annoying fashion, the hills were also alive with the sound of the children who were on our bike tour. You can see that Peter (in blue) is trying to stay far ahead of the noise and reckless biking of those kids. We have reached the age w… — In sometimes annoying fashion, the hills were also alive with the sound of the children who were on our bike tour. You can see that Peter (in blue) is trying to stay far ahead of the noise and reckless biking of those kids. We have reached the age when we don't always want to tell other people how cute their kids are. Let's leave all of that for the future, when we hit the grandkids stage. We did have a lot to say after the tour about how some parents are allergic to discipline. Ah, the sound of Americans complaining.

Here's the gazebo where the song Sixteen Going on Seventeen was filmed. You can no longer go inside and pretend you are Liesl singing to her Nazi boyfriend. It seems a tourist tripped while dancing around and sued the city, so now the doors of the g… — Here's the gazebo where the song *Sixteen Going on Seventeen* was filmed. You can no longer go inside and pretend you are Liesl singing to her Nazi boyfriend. It seems a tourist tripped while dancing around and sued the city, so now the doors of the gazebo are locked shut. Our tour guide, also an American, made sure we all knew the lady was an American. Sadly, we seem to be known the world round for our love of a silly lawsuit.

So Long, Farewell

We headed back to Amsterdam full of good memories and sore muscles, glad to have pulled off our mini-reunion. I really felt like an expat when I looked around and realized our hiking pals would soon scatter around the world, Deb and Marc to Boston, Darlene and Rob to Mendham, New Jersey, and Seanette and Richard to London. We were all united by our time spent living - once upon a time - in Amsterdam.

When we returned home, the news was flooded with pre-eclipse anticipation. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I couldn't help but feel left out. Sometimes, like when you read about events in Charlottesville, you're glad for the distance. Sometimes it's even easy to pretend that everything stays the same in the U.S. while you are away. But sometimes things happen when you are an expat that make you wish you weren't so far away. That happened the day we returned from Austria. We found out when we woke up early the next morning that our friend Arthur - who I wrote about in the October 2015 post Half Full/Half Empty Glasses - had died of ALS the evening before. We read the Facebook posts and tried to process what had happened, but it still felt unreal. You know that people change, move, and yes, even die, while you are abroad, but did it have to be Arthur? This is a guy who used every ounce of his smiles, his wit, and his charm to make all the rest of us O.K. with his disease. The problem is the only person who could help us get through his death is him, and that's not possible. If you are so inclined, please visit his website to read more about his mission to battle ALS by making and selling his special pickle recipe. And even better, make a donation or buy some of those pickles. I promise you will love them. In the meantime, I will try to follow Arthur's motto for living: "Until further notice, celebrate everything." I know he would have been thrilled to hear about our adventures in the mountains of Austria that he could no longer climb.

Too bad we can't all remember to live as if each day might be our last. I try to remember that people like Arthur would love to have even one more of my crappy days. Then I complain about a long line, or bad weather, and I forget all about the celebration motto. Being in the mountains is a good way to get some of that sense of appreciation and celebration back into your life. Thank you for that, Austria. I'll end with one last Sound of Music song, sung by Captain Von Trapp. The Von Trapps are about to leave Austria for the safety of Switzerland, so the song feels full of sadness and regret. It's also about the happy memories the Captain has of that small white flower. Happy memories mixed in with sadness because of your loss. We will all miss you, Arthur.

Arthur and Janet in Amsterdam, in October 2015. Watching them travel together in Amsterdam was magical.

"But love is the answer to a question that I've forgotten."