Two years ago we took a sabbatical and visited places Twain lived, worked,
or
wrote about for most of the year.

_Our famous Guest_ was the most useful book about the time in Austria. We
met
the daughter of the hotelier who lured Twain from the Krantz for the second
year that the family spent in Vienna. She remembered the portrait of Twain
her father had hung in the lobby. There is a fair amount of pretty general
information about Twain's time in the city available generally, but  _Our
Famous Guest_ makes clear how little there really is. There is a medal of
Twain in the museum.

An Austrian novelist told us that he met an American in Vienna who was
amazed
at the number of statuettes of Twain available in the souvenir shops. The
Austrian had to tell the American that it was Strauss memorabilia.

There are small books available in Heidelberg concerning Twain's time there,
and also a German language text available in Weggis, Switzerland, concerning
the sorrowful month spent there. Weggis also has a couple of pages about him
in their centennial book.

The same family from whom Twain rented a room atop the Konigstuhl in
Heidelberg is still running the place. The hotel at which he stayed in that
city still stands although it is now student housing.  His room and view of
the Nekkar River are easy to pick out. The inn where he observed student
fencing is now considerably more upscale, but it has silhouettes of the
various fencing fraternities decorating the exteriors of the windows.

His dwelling in Munich has been replaced by a sleek new building.

Dennis and Hene Kelly