Salzburg = winter wonderland. The best way I can describe it. Coming into Austria on the train the scenery was beautiful, and Salzburg was just as beautiful. We weren’t staying in the prettiest area of Salzburg, but the next morning when we woke up and it was snowing, everything looked amazing.
Sound of Music tour was awesome, but not so much because we were seeing places from a movie, more because we were seeing some beautiful spots, had a hilarious tour guide and listened to a soundtrack that reminded us of childhood on the way. We also met a lovely Canadian girl called Sophie. We saw the lake and the gates at the back of Schloss Leopoldskron where Maria and the children capsized the boat in front of the Captain and Baroness first. That was cool, the edges of the lake were all sluggish and starting to freeze, and three ducks swam past with little drifts of snow on their backs. Then we went to Hellbrunn Palace where we saw the gazebo from ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’. It was originally at the place on the lake, but so many tourists were jumping the fence day and night to see it/dance around it that they wanted to get rid of it, so it was moved. Now its also locked, cos apparently a couple of years ago an old lady hurt herself dancing around in it. Anyway, then we went to Mondsee, which was a gorgeous little town and home to the church where they shot the wedding scenes. The church was beautiful, though not half as big as it looked in the shots in the movie! We also had lunch in a little restaurant there - Grace and I tried some Austrian goulash, which like the Czech version was pretty delicious, and Jo and Sophie had Käsespätzle. We all had tap water too, on the recommendation of the tour guide, and he was right that its definitely delicious water! Though we were all a bit shocked when they charged us each 50c for a glass of tap water?! We also drove past the house they used for the von Trapp house in the movie, with the avenue of trees that the children were hanging out of leading up to it. We weren’t able to get very close to that though, as the road in front is restricted to residents and guests. And on the way home we watched a video about Salzburg and the Sound of Music, narrated/hosted by a somewhat older Liesl. Altogether very enjoyable :) Here's a few pics - you can see all the rest on Facebook of course!
In the afternoon we just wandered the streets of Salzburg - had to go and buy a big backpack for me, as unfortunately my suitcase wheel stopped turning in the UK, and as I still had to use it the wheel had worn almost completely down on one side just from dragging it around by the time we got to Salzburg. So I am now the proud owner of a hiking backpack, which I managed to get on sale. But its not quite as big as my massive suitcase so I have also had to send a whole bunch of stuff back to Australia - definitely not a cheap exercise! :( Ah well, the joys of travelling I guess! We also had to stop many times to take lots of snow pictures - it was just so beautiful and I was trying as hard as I could to catch it on camera! Made a wee snowman, checked out the gardens where some of the do-re-mi scenes were filmed... But the other main touristy thing we did in the afternoon was have a piece of the famous Original Sachertorte from the Sacher Hotel, which was very fancy and very delicious. Sachertorte is basically just a chocolate cake with apricot marmalade and covered in chocolate. Although the hot chocolate tasted more like warm milk, which was weird but in the end good with the richness of the Sachertorte.
Anyway after our relatively lazy afternoon we went to the Augustiner Bräu, which is a huge brewery that can seat around 5000 people according to our tour guide. He also gleefully pointed out that it is both attached to a church and next to a hospital. It was pretty cool - kinda like a big indoor picnic area as there are just big halls filled with tables, and you go and get your stein of beer served from big kegs and then either bring your own food, or go choose from the wide variety of foods available at the little stall-like shops in one of the area between halls. Apparently they have really nice big areas outside too when its summer. We met our new friend Sophie there, and also 4 other Australians that she had met on the salt mine tour she did in the afternoon. (Note: according to them, if you’re in Salzburg then DON’T do the salt mine tour!). It was nice to have some company other than each other for a night - you can kinda run out of things to talk about when you hang out with the same people all day every day for a few weeks... But aside from that, everyone was really cool and we had a really good night. Had a beer and some dinner at Augustiner, then went to search out the oldest restaurant in Europe. Turned out they didn’t just serve drinks, and was a very intimidating and fancy fine dining restaurant, so we searched out another bar in the Old Town. It was quite interesting - it was a little underground and appeared to just be a hole hacked out of rock. It was also empty except for one guy, and blaring really loud music. But we all sat down and got a drink, and eventually a massive group of about 40 guys came in. We stayed for a bit, debating what would cause such a large group of just guys to go out together (buck’s night, sports team...), and after Jo and I chatted with one guy and found out why they were there (not a football team, but a group of football team FANS out for a belated Christmas do?!) we headed to a rooftop bar across the river. Then after that we headed home.
We were going to try and do something like the Red Bull hangar the next morning, but then left the hotel and had so much stuff with us that we decided to just head straight to Budapest. Little did we know... But I will elaborate more on that in my next post, which should be soon as we're on a train all night tomorrow night! :P
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