Salzburg

Three years ago I had the opportunity to travel around Europe, and I had a ton of fun. We didn't, however, get to visit any site with musical history, which I love, music is my thing. Because of this, I planned for one of my weekend trips to be to Salzburg, and however hesitant I was to travel instead of taking a relaxing weekend, I am glad I went.

Katie, Kathy and I left on a night train for Salzburg on Thursday. We each had a couchette, mine was on top, and both of theirs were on bottom. So very little space, and a bit difficult to get up to with my foot being newly bandaged by an overly expensive but nice Orthopedist. The train ride there went fairly well, I even managed to get a bit of sleep, and we arrived around 5:30 to the Salzburg HBF. After sitting in the station for about 30 minutes, we walked to our hostel, which was on the other side of town and across the river. Regardless of that, we managed to get there quite easily in about 30 minutes. We checked in and paid, though we couldn't get in the room till1. The morning nap we took was quite welcome, although a bit awkward at a breakfast table at the hostel, and set us up for a busy day.

We visited the Residence in town and saw the different rooms, visited Mozarts birth house, explored the fortress, walked through the marionette museum, and hiked to the elevator from the fortress, about a 3-5 km hike. After eating lunch, we went to Mozartplatz and watched what we thought was a Texas high school marching band perform, only to find out at the end that they were from Canada. What were they doing in cowboy hats and boots then?! We also saw a string quartet of youngish boys perform after getting our tickets for a concert the next night. That all done, we went to an imbiss near the hostel and picked up a cheap dinner of sandwiches. Ein mas sandwich bitte? didn't get me very far, and we all had a laugh about that. I should try to stick to one language, we decided.

We met our roommates, all of whom seemed quite nice and spoke english, although from different areas of the world. We had 2 Aussies, 3 Americans, 2 Brits, and 1 Candian altogether, and anouther funny Aussie who often came in to chat. I was so tired that i didn't even make it through The Sound of Music that night, I only made it to their departure for the festival.

Our next day was quite full as well. We took the Sound of Music tour, and although it was raining, we still enjoyed seeing the sights. After eating some delicious apple strudel, we ate our sandwiches made at Breakfast on the bus on the way back into town. By the time we'd returned, it had stopped raining, so we were able to enjoy the beautiful Mirabell gardens. We also made our way through to the other Mozart house, which I enjoyed more than the Geburtshaus. It wasn't quite as odd. While Katie shoppped, Kathy and I enjoyed our Mozartkugeln - chocolate with nougat and marzipan inside - enven though they were a bit melted. we went shopping again - I swear we walked down one street over 6 times this weekend, just shopping.

The concert we went to that night was so much fun - definitely worth the extra 3.50€ we had to pay to take the funicular up to the fortress. It was another string quartet, and they played Mozart's Nachtmusic as the amateur one had the afternoon before, as well as a Trio with Piano accompaniment also by Mozart, and a piece by Dvorak. It was so great!

The night train back was a bit of a hassle, a story for another blog. But I got back safely.