Talking to Salzburg students this afternoon, may mention this. It's fun now to see them begin to think about bigger concepts and feel their ways toward addressing them. What words do they use? Do they trust their own perspectives, or how much do they incorporate others? How do they exchange these thoughts without talking past each other?

Hard to do! How do they see their way "out of the box"? Oh yes.

The phrase we love and the phrase we love to hate … especially when it takes on extended life in bad idea conversations (bad conversations, not bad ideas). The video couldn't be more accurate, but awareness of the problem inspires better conversations and tactics for innovation. Makes me think of Jackson Hole and life since. Via @mattmansfield.

outside the box from joseph Pelling on Vimeo.

Here at Big Old Palace, they give you a map when you want to go into town. The map shows three roads. Those roads are the only three you need. In the middle of the map, there's a drawing of the mountain with a fortress on top that you can see from everywhere. That's helpful too.

Walking into Salzburg's city center: The very first thing I saw.

"The old man by the clock would watch passersby from his window…"

The Austria-Australia jokes apparently never end. Which I like.

At a cart in the market, I tried to order a local beer with a local accent. The cart people replied in English. Oh well. Beer was obviously good.

Amazing violin on the street. The summer music festival is beginning…

How long could I stand in front of the horses and still get a shot? The best test of the new digital camera so far as this pic was mid-jump.

What was this building? A church? Another palace? Need a better map.

I'd had Wooden Heart stuck in my head all day. All day. And I'd almost gotten it out when I ran into this man playing it. Redemption moment!

Why I know Wooden Heart, based on a German folk song, which the man was probably playing. This reason will not surprise you at all.

Austrian humor at the airport…

… and a mountain by the taxi stand. Mozart Airport, my friends.

The Frankfurt-to-Salzburg leg was quick, and the Knight folks got a ride to the palace together. We're now exploring the grounds and amazing rooms. Pix of those to come. Exhaust kicking in a little, but lunch soon.

Are free drinks enough to offset bad movies? Yes. It's a busy 6 a.m. at the Frankfurt airport, and that's my best European travel lesson so far. While Lufthansa seatback screens may go heavy for the chick flicks and kid stuff, the steady wine pours, a chocolate mousse and an after-meal brandy should be a lesson to the industry. A lesson! If Lufthansa could do some trades with Virgin, we'd be close to the world's perfect airline.

The plane was packed, but my seat choice yesterday morning lucked out with an empty seat to my right. A dozen or two Academy students were on the flight, and hopefully they're all as excited for the program as Denisha Chase who sat to my left. The trip is study abroad for her.

Didn't get in any sleep, but knocked off a New Yorker and a half and watched some TV and He's Just Not That Into You. Could have been decent, failed. How did the people making the movie not realize they were blowing it that badly? How could they have justified that script to themselves? What made them think gays should be the new Magic Negro? Ugly. Why did so many young people have landlines? Where was a little thing called Facebook? But I did like Affleck and Aniston.

The Frankfurt airport is now even more packed than when I began this post. Signage could be better — Germans, you're letting me down — but I guess navigating between terminals, through a passport line and a security check without any English earns the airport two thumbs up.

On the front row of airport newstand racks, National Geographic is two magazines down from Playboy. A little cart brought stacks upon stacks of newspapers to the store, so … take heart, Web-hating journalists?

Sunrise here is blocked by a few buildings but looks good above them. Salzburg flight in two hours. Time to hit the Camel smoking lounge? No.

Behind the two random people in front are my aunt, my grandmother, my mom, my uncle, and my grandfather. Into the salt mines we go!

The last thing I thought about before I fell asleep last night and the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning were the same. This dream is a daydream, but the dream, as they say in Risky Business and on couches everywhere, is always the same. I grab the yoke and pull back hard. My heart pounds and the jet fights to level.

When the thought hit this morning, I got out of bed, checked my e-mail — it calms my nerves, a reminder of connections, people and comfort — and watched a video that I knew would distract me for a few minutes.

I fly anyway. That's how I usually put it. Fear of flying is dumb, plain and simple. It's irrational. People ask me if September 11 contributed, and I don't think so. Falling in love for the first time was what did it.

Years into the guarantee of the family, love was different, expanding, pushing on map lines. When you said goodbye at the airport, there was a new and tenuous connection with the world at stake. You can call this reason as dumb as a fear of flying. It's true for me, that's all.

So, you, let's have a toast. Here's to … flying to another country, flying on a tiny plane, flying with a passport, flying to a new region, flying in the cockpit, flying across the country, flying over real mountains, flying the red eye, flying to a new altitude, flying on a huge plane, and the loved ones and friends alongside, slowly leading you from the ground to the sky, from the aisle to the window seat and across the ocean.

A website headline self-explanatory in 1) my capacity for misreading it immediately after waking up and 2) my subsequent disappointment. "Good Times dinner-conversation primer on health care reform."

Freed at the top of the G.W. Parkway and onto the Beltway. Thanks so much to my parents for a good dinner and leftover Euros. I can hardly see the rainbow in the pic, but it's there. Packing continues in earnest.

Between packing and preparing like crazy, not counting mini-meetings.

Update at 5:55 p.m. ET: Subtract one Thursday meeting, add two more, subtract one of those, add one on Friday. Guten tag!

A sampling from William Styron's "Rat Beach" in the New Yorker before last: "I escaped this horror by a hair. … The beach was still littered with the jagged metal junk from the American assault the previous summer, although you could always, with caution, pussyfooting among the rocks and debris, find a decent enough spot for swimming. … But an ambulance was not the only memento mori, and there were other auguries capable of scaring us shitless. …  My immobility was complete, as if tendrils of myself had burrowed down and sought root in the soil of Japan, rendering me brainless vegetation."