Salzburg
In Europe, at least in all the places we’ve been on this trip, the shops are shut on Sundays so it’s a good day to be on a train. On 13 April, we left the land of mayonnaise and flat pillows (Germany) for an 8 hour train trip to Salzburg, Austria. It sounds like a long time, but the train was really comfortable and by the time my book was finished and Mikey’s coding completed we were there.
Our first tourist destination was Festung Hohensalzburg, a castle fortress built in 1077. It is perched atop a hill and provides the best views of the city of Salzburg on one side, and the mountains on the other. It was wonderful to sit in the sun and look out over the fields and mountain range. The hills were alive with the Sound of Music!
View of the mountains from Festung Hohensalzburg
Yes, Salzburg prides itself on being featured in the famous movie, The Sound of Music. For an arm and a leg, you can take the ‘Sound of Music’ tour and see the locations which appear in the movie. Having not seen the movie, it didn’t mean much to me. Apparently, some hard core Sound of Music and Julie Andrews fans take these tours with great enthuasiasm. The two main locations from Salzburg that are in the film are the formal gardens of Schloss Mirabell and the Stift Nonnberg, which is apparently where the movie first encounters ‘Maria’.
The formal gardens at Schloss Mirabell
Stift Nonnberg
Both Mikey and I were thrilled to get our first full day of warm weather in Salzburg. Spring seems to be on its way, and this was the perfect place to enjoy it as Salzburg has plenty of gardens, park benches and lawns on which to soak up the sun.
When the weather got cool again, we headed inside and toured St Peterskirche, a church/abbey dating from 847 AD. It was our first look at an Austrian church, and it seemed to be a lot more white and have a lot more altars than most church/cathedrals I’ve been in lately.
St Peterskirche
Of course, the other thing that Salzburg is famous for is Mozart. Both Mozart’s birthplace and residence (until he was 24 years) was here, although – unfortunately for Salzburg – Mozart couldn’t wait to leave. Still, this doesn’t seem to bother the people of Salzburg, who make the most out of this piece of history.
Mozart’s Wohnhaus (residence) included a sound and film museum that showed a short film about his life up until he left Salzburg and displayed some of the pianos he played as a teenager. Strangely, no information was provided about his later life. No mention of his wife and children. It was a rather selective recounting of his life, which was disappointing. Mozart’s Geburtshaus (birthplace) was, quite simply, weird. This may sound harsh, but there was really nothing of value there. For example, one room had paintings of Salzburg upside on the walls to illustrate how Mozart saw things from a unique perspective. ??? They also had a freaky looking doll in a cradle that was supposed to be Mozart as an infant. The Mozart Geburtshaus was one of the poorest attempts of getting money out of tourists that I’ve ever seen. It was worse than the mozart ties and violin magnets available on every street corner.
Despite this unfortunate tourist attraction, there was a lot to like about a little town like Salzburg. It was easy to get around, yet lots of places to go and plenty of different foods to eat (good Italian and Japanese). It is incredibly pretty, especially with the river running through the city and all the well-kept gardens. The people were lovely and it seemed, not only were they used to tourists, they were happy to have them around. Salzburg seemed to embrace its history and set its own pace, and its hard not to like that.
Our first night in Salzburg, with the Festung Hohensalzburg in the background