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| On the Salzburg Waterfront |
From Venice, we continued our EuroTrip extravaganza with a train ride to Salzburg, Austria (via Innsbruck). This was our first real Euro rail experience of the trip, as the journey from Milan to Venice was a very short one. After arriving several hours early to the Venice station (as is my preferred style…being perpetually early is a highly underrated quality in my opinion), we had to wait quite a while for our departure. I assured Michelle that one is supposed to spend many hours waiting in train stations while Euro-tripping…I stand by this belief…
Anyway, the train ride turned out to be quite nice. I decided almost right away that I enjoy riding trains…the 5 hour first leg to Innsbruck didn’t seem to take nearly that long. Not even the big shirtless (Italian?) guy and his shirtless teenage son sitting a couple compartments over could put me off. I walked past them on my way to the bathroom and just gave them a little nod like, “Yeah, that’s how it’s done.” Plus, the two Americano college students traveling together that we shared a compartment with were pretty entertaining…if only for their complete lack of interaction (gave me a good idea how Phat and I would look if we did a EuroTrip together). And then…this happened…made our day (and maybe entire trip)!
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| Bizarre sleeping positions on train pictures...classic. |
With the train fun out of the way, we arrived in Salzburg pretty late in the evening. Beautiful Salzburg, the home of Mozart, and more importantly, The Sound of Music. We trekked our way to the Amedia Hotel in standard taxi-eschewing style and were greeted by happy reception desk guy. He helped us with our wireless access (crucial), pointed out some good nightlife spots (also crucial), and suggested that we hit the town (and the Irish Pubs in particular, of course) that night because it was supposed to rain and hail all day tomorrow (it didn’t…was sunny all day…take home lesson, never trust weather forecasts from Austrian hotel clerks). Instead of hitting up the nightlife, we opted to walk across the street to McDonald’s…mainly because it was open, it’s easy to order without knowing the language, and it has the best food in the world. I was also excited for the opportunity to try out my latent German language skills that I had carefully groomed in high school. I gave it a spin with the McDonald’s cashier…he had no idea what I was saying…I was devastated. The worst part was that I was only trying to say “no, mayonnaise.” Really thought I could pull that off. Literally almost ruined the entire trip for me…but eventually I recovered.
Now for the condensed notes on Salzburg, which is quite a beautiful little town and was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.
- We went full-out sightseeing mode here and invested in the Hop-On Bus Tour for the day. We love these; ever sense our first experience in Barcelona. Have to say though, Barcelona is probably the best one we’ve done (Paris was pretty good too) and Salzburg probably isn’t worth it due to its small size.
- First stop was the Mirabell Gardens. Beautiful spot and also the home of some of the Do-Re-Mi footage from the Sound of Music.
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| Mirabell and Michelle |
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| Chill-axin' in Mirabell |
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| Fountain |
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| We think these statues were in the movie? Just go with it... |
- Sticking with the Sound of Music theme, we also saw the lake/house where the boat scene was shot and the Abbey where the real life Trapp’s were married. I was really hoping that the Abbey was the one from the movie so I could pose for some highly inappropriate, hiding from Nazis behind tombstones photos, but alas…I don’t think it was. It was quite nice though…up on a hill with a pretty view of the city and mostly quiet and free of tourists (and nuns for that matter). I could almost picture little Maria climbing up a tree as a child and peering in at the nuns busily at work. Or adult Maria losing track of time in the surrounding hills and frantically running back to the Abbey when the bells tolled (and almost forgetting her wimple!). Or Reverend Mother counseling conflicted Maria and belting out that glass-shattering high note at the end of “Climb Every Mountain.” Sigh, so many memories…
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| Boat scene locale...picture children wearing converted drapes falling out of a canoe here |
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| View from the Abbey |
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| The Abbey |
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| Inside the Abbey...how do you solve a problem like Maria? |
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| Abbey Gardens and Cemetery |
Also on the agenda was the Gazebo from the Rolf and Liesel, “You are Sixteen” number (confession, I feel like Liesel was perhaps the second weakest character in the movie…behind Louisa, obviously). Unfortunately we couldn’t get inside to recreate the scene. I’ve been struggling most of my life with a pent-up Rolf complex I was hoping to work out…but alas.
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| Picture rain-soaked Rolf and Liesel here |
- In addition the brilliance that is The Sound of Music, Mozart also hailed from Salzburg…and he really isn’t a slouch in his own right. Hard to fathom that a man who lived for only 35 years in the 18th century had such a tremendous impact on the world. I’m such a slacker by comparison. In any event, Wolfgang is definitely all over the town. Luckily, I was able to get a picture with him as he was hawking his famous Mozart Balls outside nearly every shop (they’re actually quite good…pistachio center with a nougat and chocolate shell).
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| Commercial Mozart |
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| More Classical Mozart |
- And with that, it was time to bid so long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, and adieu to Salzburg (and you and you and you). If you haven’t been yet, you really need to visit. One tip though, avoid the Chinese restaurants…the one we went to was really sub-par. I mean, you would really expect to find high-quality Chinese food in Salzburg, right? Sometimes this world still confuses me…
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