I never really fell in love with the Sound of Music. But other people did, and I am sure that those people will be excited to know that the original von Trapp family house is being turned into a hotel.

If you're having trouble remembering the true story that the movie was based off of, there was an aspiring nun (played by Julie Andrews) who did a whole lot of singing and somewhere between "do" and "fa," won the hearts of Baron von Trapp and his seven children.

The von Trapp family lived in the house from 1923 to 1938 when they fled Austria during the Nazi takeover; eventually they made their way to the US where the youngest of the children operates a Vermont lodge. Now Salzburg will get the von Trapp touch, and starting this sumer, visitors to Villa Trapp visitors will be able to sleep in family members' former bedrooms or even choose to exchange vows in the chapel. Located just outside of Salzburg, Austria, the hotel will open sometime in July.

Building a hotel that capitalizes on the fame of a movie really isn't that crazy and sometimes hotels even star in movies themselves. Salzburg tourism officials say that actually 40% of overnight stays are made by fans of the Sound of Music. So if you are one of those fans, now you too -- for only 100 euros a night -- can practice your singing skills right in the von Trapp household.

I recently found out that Leuven, Belgium has trumped Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2007, Epybird, the two guys that orchestrate mentos geysers, turned Fountain Square into more than 500 bottles of simultaneously shooting Diet Coke.

On April 23, 2008, a group of Belgian students donned blue raincoats, and, with the help of Epybird, turned Ladeuzeplein Square in Leuven into a mentos Diet Coke mess. It's reported that 1,360 people participated in this latest Guiness World Record-breaking endeavor.

I generally find Spain very laid back and relatively lagging in the world of technology -- it's what I often enjoy about being here.

It's somehow possible to stay away from the high-tech hysteria everywhere else, be it use of technology in your personal life (I don't know anyone here who cares about the iPhone), or in the professional sector (when I went to pick up my resident card in Madrid, my appointment had been noted on 3 different hand-written(!) lists.

So when I read that a group of tourists who were robbed in Barcelona about a year ago are finally going to get justice by testifying via webcam(!) from their respective country, I almost fell off my chair!

According to the Guardian, 24 British, Belgian, German, Danish, Portuguese, American and Australian alleged victims of a Romanian gang who posed as police to rob tourists in Barcelona last year, will see the culprits punished, assuming the case is revolved. Time differences between the countries are being coordinated, webcam identification of the criminals, and stories of the victims, are being heard. Apparently, all this "tech-justice" process was devised to quicken clearing the backlog of nearly 270,000 such pending cases in the country.

Tourists often get robbed when traveling and can never do much about it because they are leaving the country shortly, this webcam justice initiative by Barcelona has taken things to a new level -- I would never have expected such a thing to come out of Spain. Bravo!

Venice has been ultra-progressive lately, especially when it comes to quality of life issues. Not only did they finally prohibit pigeon-feeding, but they have also just caught the mysterious serial female butt snapper, who has been walking behind women in Venice in a hooded shirt, taking photos through a small hole in the side of the bag.

He doesn't seem like your typical bottom snapper, mind you. This man has been doing this for two years and has accomplished to take more than 3,000 pictures of the various bottoms of female tourists in Venice.

The man was stopped after police became suspicious of a large bag he was carrying as he followed women through St Mark's Square. He has been charged with infringement of privacy, BBC reports. It is a cheeky crime, which could earn this 38-year-old Italian (married, with two kids, by the way) from six months to four years in jail.

This guy should have really gotten together with the serial bottom-pincher, who is currently on the run in the UK. What a team of superheroes those two could form!

I was surprised Parisians have accepted the new smoking ban as willingly as they have.

There is, however, one resistance movement: Hookah bars. Some of them have continued to break the law by continuing to offer customers tobacco in water pipes, IHT reports.

Hookah or shisha bars, which began springing up in France more than a decade ago, became increasingly popular across Europe, both among immigrants from Islamic countries and among the hip student crowd. France had 800 hookah bars before the smoking ban, half of them in Paris or its suburbs, but perhaps one-third have closed since the ban took effect.

So far, Sarkozy's government shows no inclination to negotiate since declaring in December that there would be no exceptions to the smoking ban. Apparently, "it's a matter of public health."

That seems harsh. These are, after all, as close to private smoking clubs as you can get.

What would we do without The Economist and its great sidebars? This one shows just how much certain countries smoke. According to ERC, a market research company, the heaviest smokers come from Greece, with an average of 3,000 cigarettes per person in 2007. At 20 cigarettes per pack, that makes 150 packs in a year; a lot of puffing.

Despite recent smoking bans in many places, European countries still manage to hold 18 of the top 20 spots. The most surprising statistic? That France smokes less than the U.S. Whatever happened to the stereotypical image of the French, dressed in all black, a serious look on their face and a Gauloises glued to their fingers? It could have something to do with the price of cigarettes; a pack runs about 5 euros in France, equaling just a little under $8.

Click here to see how these results changed from 2006.

The luxury restaurant market in the Czech Republic is apparently looking for new, creative ways to cater to their clients and be "distinguishable from others."

The strategy? Putting insects as an item on luxury restaurants menus, the Prague Daily Monitor reports. The Brno restaurant manager Martin Kobylka says: "We want to shock people. A lobster, a crab or a crawfish are offered everywhere, but a cricket in caramel or a chocolate cake with a cockroach are unavailable in this country for now." (I love that the name Kobylka actually means grasshopper in Czech. It is about the coolest name for a guy who wants to market mainstream insect-eating.)

Chocolate cake with a cockroach sounds like a delightful way to end a first date. Especially if you are really not that into her.

It is possible that from this summer, all alcohol serving establishments in France will have breathalysers so people can take breath tests before they leave clubs. 350 bars/clubs around the country have already had trial runs.

In France, the legal drinking age is 16 and you can get a driver's license when you are 18. For years, the country has seen people killed on the road because of drunk driving and this decree is particularly to reduce the number of people driving when over the limit.

Solving the problem by focussing on keeping the roads safer as opposed to controlling alcohol consumption seems more practical, keeping in mind that France has one of the highest rates of road fatalities in Europe.

In principle the idea is great, but how can you force people to take breath tests before leaving? When youngsters drink and drive, they know what they are doing and their over-confidence that "nothing is going to happen" is what lets them drive home instead of taking public transport. So what will make them take a breath test? Will they put someone at the door who makes them do it before they leave? Will it be free to use?

A bar in Boston has taken a similar initiative into their own hands by selling a device called "Breath Scan" in their vending machines -- two for US$7. It looks like they are selling, which is at least reassuring.

But once they've taken the test, what's to say that they will still not drive home?

In Dubai (where the population is 70% Westerners from Europe and the US), drink driving is a huge problem -- even though the limit is zero and the punishment is a month of jail plus a fine! Such rigid rules haven't discouraged people from drink-driving, so although France's initiative is great, I'm not sure how effective it will be.

Whenever I hear about rich individuals owning whole islands, I always wonder how one actually goes about buying such a piece of property. Do you just walk into your real estate agent and say, "you know, I'm really in the mood for an island, do you have any available?" Seems like an odd question.

If you are in the market for your very own island -- and who wouldn't want one? -- the island of Hanö, off the Blekinge coast in the southeast of Sweden, is currently for sale. The idyllic island includes 6 kilometers of beach front and even a 19th century lighthouse. Although Hanö is protected under Natura 2000, an EU ecological network which protects the island and limits planning to the fishing village, whoever ends up buying the island will still obtain hunting rights to the many deer that wander it.

The island is being sold by the Swedish real estate firm Svensk Fastighetsförmedlingen, who is going so far as putting an ad for the island on national television station TV4. So how much does the island of Hanö actually cost? The real estate agency has not made a comment on the asking price, instead it will all depend on incoming bids, which need to be made by June 20th.

Even if you're not in the market for an island, Blekinge is still a beautiful part of southern Sweden that definitely merits a visit. Last summer I spent some time island hopping in the region that has a similar, but much more rural and laid-back, feel as Stockholm's archipelago. If your summer plans include a visit to Sweden, consider heading south for some traditional Swedish relaxing.

Fitting in with the local culture is often the most difficult of tasks when traveling. But if you're a young adult headed to Europe this summer, acting like a European might only entail living up to frat party standards. According to a study published in BMC Public Health, young adults in Europe deliberately booze it up to increase their chances of scoring.

According to the BBC, the study was done with 1,341 people from 9 different cities across Europe. A third of the men, and 23 % of the women -- who were all between the ages of 16 and 35 -- said they drank to improve their chances of having sex. The researchers concluded that the fun-loving youngsters were "strategically" binge drinking or taking drugs to improve their sex lives.

All jokes aside, drinking and sexing is a health concern; especially since the rate of unprotected sex goes up. However, now that we know what the European strategy is, it looks like we no longer need a "How to Score a European Fling" post.