Salzburg! (pfingstferien reise- May 20. & 21.)

In the US we tend to get holiday breaks surrounding Christmas and Easter. In Germany, the entire country is given holidays for Christian celebrations, including things called "Christi Himmelfahrt," and "Pfinsten," which are Acension Day and Pentecost respectively. For the latter, we are given an entire week off of uni class (which I guess is somewhat related to how normal US semesters include a week long spring Break). As I have desperately been wanting to visit Austria, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity.
 Originally I was thinking I would go to Munich, Salzburg and Vienna. However, the entire train ride to Vienna would be about 8 hours, and Munich is expensive, especially when booking fairly last minute. Therefore, that changed into just Salzburg.
But I somehow convinced 2 of the Australian students that they should go to Salzburg. With that, the girl Jenny, told me that her and the other Austrailien, her boyfriend, Anthony, were going to a national park near Salzburg, then to Salzburg, then to Innsbruck, Mt. Zugspitze and to the town Fuessen to see Schloss Neuschwanstein aka the Disney castle. So, I planned to meet them in Salzburg, and travel with them for the week until they went to Fuessen, at which time I would come back to Stuttgart (as I want to save the trip to Fuessen for when Tyler visits me).
 And so was the plan.

 

I arrived mid-day to Salzburg on Monday. It was a lovely day, sunny and cool but not cold when I got off the train. I met up with Jenny and Anthony, and we headed to the first place on my list of things to see : Castle Hellbrunn.

There are a lot of castles in Austria and Germany, but at this one, there is a famous "Wasserspiele" garden, aka a trick-fountain garden, as well as the gazebo from the sound of music! (they filmed the movie all over Salzburg)

                                   

 

 

 There was a storm arriving as we were, and so we decided to take a leisurely tour of the castle before touring the fountain garden!

 

Left: One of the rooms in the schloss. The entire ceiling and the walls were painting. It was so beautiful. To the bottom right in a view of the ceiling of the tower-like music room. It was apparently designed for the acoustics. Top right is a super old water pump that was on display, it was demonstrating how some of the fountains work.

  HECK YES wooden unicorn head! The designer/guy who lived here: Markus Sittikus, apparently loved unicorns, by the way

 

This was awesome: Ok, so Markus Sittikus had this special table built outside for entertaining. The guy apparently loved practical jokes. The middle of the table would be filled with water to help keep wine and food cold while he and his guests sat down for dinner. With the flip of a switch, the fountains all around the table would magically turn on, soaking the guests. Additionally, there were fountains built into all of the stools except at the head of the table where markus Sittikus would sit, thus ensuring that all of his guests were soaking wet, while he stayed dry.

There were a bunch of these little diaramas with moving figurines powered only by water movement.

magic turtles: one is spitting water out and one is swallowing the water, so that together they make a continuous stream, but you never know which direction the water is going.

 

This was an awesome figurine theater. It's about 10 feet wide with about 150 moving characters carved out of wood. They move around on tracks and such, completely powered by water.

 The magic crown fountain: It's just a cone shaped metal crown that sits a top a fountain, and the water pressure increases and decreases making the crown rise and fall. It's supposed to be a metaphor for power, how kingdoms rise and fall.

 

 This is a statue of Apollo skinning the satyr. I don't know why, but this was a popular scene at this place.

Neptune fountain

 

 

 

 

 

The sound of music gazebo!!! It was locked unfortunately, so you couldn't go in, but I danced all around it!

Mountains in the background as we were leaving

Leaving Schloss Hellbrunn

 

 The schloss was about 25 minutes away from the city center, and by the time we got back, we didn't really have time to go to any other museums, so we decided to look for a restaurant. We had a pretty good idea of where we should go, but wouldn't you know that as we started walking it started raining. As as we oontinued walking faster, it started pouring, and then all of a sudden it was hailing!
Yes- we ran through a hail storm in Salzburg trying to find a place to eat dinner. It was cold, and unpleasant, and we were completely soaked. And therefore dinner in the cozy little austian/Italian restaurant was extremely welcomed, and delicious. I had a schnitzel stuffed with bacon and cheese, which came with veggies and rice, and I order I nice cup of tea with rum to warm up.

 

And now onto the hotel I stayed at Monday night. It was not at all what I had expected. Online the hotel claimed that all rooms are themed. Either Mozart (this town loves him), Sound of Music, or Dalzburg theme. It turns out that each hallway has picures in one of those themes, with a wall that has the theme name on it, and apparently each room on that floor has ONE picture of the theme and is minimalistic else wise. BUT, surprisingly I actually really liked the room. It was a lot smaller than I expected, but it felt really classy- mostly due to the old fashioned chair and tea set I think, and there was free wifi, and  I had a whole queen bed to myself, and the breakfast was amazing in the morning...

 

I had the Sound of Music theme. Aka there was just this picture, which was behind the door actually. I might consider that false advertising. But I liked the hotel overall too much.

 

 

***

 

I woke up Tuesday morning, and did lots of window shopping and exploring the city. I found the Mirabell castle gardens (which are very easy to find) and took a lovely stroll. I am fairly certain that parts of Sound of Music were also filmed there.

 

 



There were these awesome hedge paths that led to an outdoor theater! But there was a gap between the stage and the chairs section, so that you had to find the right path through the hedges to get to the stage!

 

 

 I was trying to be like the fountain statue

This looks to me like somewhere that was in the sound of music.

 It was very neat!

 There was classical music (probably Mozart) playing inside this tunnel made of plants!

Walking across the river

Locks!

More river

 I stumbled upon a farmers market!

 On Getreidegasse- a super old and famous street in Stuttgart, that has lots of expensive stores, and for some reason a McDonalds. Every shop has old fashioned signs as well, including McDonalds!

This town adores Mozart. I don't get it, he basically hated the place, but the folk there are still so proud of him!  Also I was really creeped out by the Mozart mannequin in the window. eeee he was staring at me!

 

Fancy old pipes, and a really awesome old door bell system (at least I think that's what it is)

  This is a tunnel in a mountain. For some reason it leads to a parking garage.

 Mozarts Geburtshaus and Museum
aka where he was born

 one of mozarts childhood pianos

Mozart kugeln! A special kind of chocolate candy, filled with marzipan. A Salzburg specialty!

 

 The Christmas store- I was thinking of my mother-in-law when I saw this place.
Although they also have Easter tree decorations.

Horses!!!!

 

And then I saw this building. We had bought tickets at the train stations for 35 Euro that let you in to basically any museum and attraction in the city, as well as any bus or city train. So, since I always have to get my money's worth, I had no idea what this building was, except that it's called the Residenz schloss. But I decided it looked cool and old enough to take a tour.

It was a really beautiful place, and not ridiculously overdone, either in my opinion. The tour was also really nice because it was all through audio guide, which means they had you what looks like an 80s cell phone, and you push buttons to hear about specific rooms and items as you walk through them. It also means you can skip over the parts you think are boring. :)

Looking back across the river

This building had a sign that said it was built in the 1600s!

The remains of the gray building mostly covered in greenery is apparently from 1423!

 Annnnd I found myself back at Mirabell garden. I'm pretty sure Markus Sittikus had something to do with this place too, because there are more magic horses!

 

Tuesday afternoon, I met up with Jenny and Anthony and together we went to the Hohensalzburg Festung. (the high Salzburg Fortress). The Salzburg 48 hour tickets also entitled us to a free round trip ticket on the Bergbahn, which was awesome because it meant we didn't have to hike for 40 minutes up to the fortress!

 A little watch tower hut,     and an old well inside the festung

We also happened upon a marionette theater museum inside the Festung. It creeped me out. These are some of the marionettes that were on display. They were pretty FRF nightmare closet worthy!!!

 Also this

Inside the main fortress wall

 And here are some views from the other side of the fortress.

It was so neat, and there were a lot of very cute little houses that I wished I could stay in, or own as a vacation home.

 

 

 On the walk back to the main part of the city.

Tuesday night I stayed with Jenny and Anthony at a B&B. It was kind of a pain in the ass to get to: take a train or a bus from the city center, which each only come once per hour, and if you miss one,
 the station for the other is a 12 minute walk away. Once you actually arrive to the station near the B&B, you have to hike up a hill for about 8 minutes until you finally get to the house. HOWEVER, I think it was worth is. This is the breakfast room:

And this is a better picture of the view from the breakfast room:

Also there was a cat that was very cute.

 And in the morning, in addition to cereal and bread with jam, the B&B owner/host made us all scrambled eggs, that were super delicious and topped with chives! :)

 

And that, family and friends, sadly concludes my days in Salzburg. I would definitely go back and recommend it! Parts reminded me a lot of Mackinac Island, in the sense of it being a small town with lots of charm and history.

p.s. my souvineers from Salzburg are Mozart kugeln, and 3 tiny bottles of Mozart alcohol: chocolate, dark chocolate and vanilla. I bought them mostly for the bottles, which are spherical!