Salzburg Austria

Salzburg Austria- a great substitution to Midwest Christmas weather. We flew out on December 14th. I had to get to the airport straight from work and man was it a tight squeeze. Of course I missed the train at my first station, had to wait 15 minutes for the next train, which ended up being late! I arrived at London Paddington to catch my next train, which then had a severe delay once I boarded the train and I had to wait an extra 20 minutes… all the while I am saying in my mind “bullocks, bullocks, I should have left earlier, I am going to miss my flight.” In the end, I caught my last train on time with no delays and arrived at the airport with a bit of time to spare.

Emily, Sarah (her Canadian roommate), and I arrived in Salzburg around 21:30. We split a cab between the three of us and an Australian bloke. Once settled in our hostel, Yoho, devoted to the Sound of Music, we headed out to try and find some grub. This turned into a bit of a problem, because unlike London, Salzburg seems to die at 18:00. This in fact was nice, wandering a street at night without still having to fight a crowd. The peacefulness was well enjoyed the entire trip! By now, it was 23:00 and we wanted food. We finally settled on a small café and we all ordered an authentic, freshly baked Italian pizza.

The plan for Thursday was to get up early and watch the Sound of Music at our hostel (they show it every morning) and then go on the big Sound of Music Tour. I did forget to mention that the entire purpose of this trip was to fulfil Emily’s life long dream. It turns out that we got down for breakfast five minutes late, so therefore, I put the icksnay on no breakfast before the movie. We headed out to locate breakfast and discovered this unbelievable market just outside our hostel. This market was once a week and full of cheese, meat, fruit, and pastries. The best part of the market was all the locals out doing their shopping. The entire market was over 50 and everyone was chatting to each other. No tourists, young people, kids, or anything except your older, very Austrian crowd doing their weekly shopping. All the stands had food out to sample as well so I was in Austrian heaven. The cheeses smelled like dirty feet, the breads were very colourful, all sorts of meat hung from various hooks, and the pastries screamed my name. After about an hour of browsing and sampling, I settled on a pastry filled with some sort of cream and an orange. While browsing, I ran into two women, about 70 with three times as many wrinkles, and we had a conversation about my height. The funny thing is that neither spoke English nor I speak just as much German, so we grunted and motioned for seriously 2 minutes. In the end, all three of us were laughing and walking our separate ways.

Because of this lovely market, we failed to make it back in time for the movie so we altered our game plan to do the movie and tour on Friday. Instead we climbed one of the hills of Salzburg which had a spectacular view of the city. On the top of the hill was also the Fortress that has long defended the city. We walked the hill for an hour or two and finally made our way to my fortress (when we went in, I gave Emily and Sarah a commentary as though I was the king whom resided in the magnificent chateaux.). We entered and toured for about an hour (it was a bit colder than London -1C and we had been out for a while so we decided to leave the fortress). The fortress was actually really nice and had been preserved with several museums and lots of guide markers.

After this we went down the massive hill again, roamed St. Peter’s cemetery (inspiration for the cemetery in the Sound of Music) for a bit and then headed into Old Town and the Christmas markets.

Now let me tell you, the Christmas markets were marvellous!!! There were loads of stalls selling freshly made pretzels, roasted nuts, mulled wine, sweets, sausages, dolls, and every German Christmas trinket (authentic and hand made) you could think of. Christmas carols were being played and the snow started to fall! This was the first snow I had seen all year and my face lit up like it never has for snow before. I was ecstatic. Horse sleigh rides were going through town, an ice rink was set up, and hundreds of people were chatting with friends over a hot mulled wine. The atmosphere was bliss!!

From here we decided to warm our hand with a glass of hot chocolate in a cute little café in Old Town. We sat for about an hour until our hands were able to move again. At this point we attempted to locate a “world famous” restaurant to no avail. We settled for another café dinner, this time I chose the seafood salad (because I really miss Grandma’s salads that I was so spoiled with this summer). During the course of dinner, Emily ordered a cup of tea. This was the largest tea we had ever seen with a tea bag that rivalled our imaginations. Emily was swinging it back and forth so I nicked it from her and put it down so she would not play with it (hit me with it) anymore. It lasted on my plate for about 2 minutes before I found myself throwing it at her face. In shock, Emily started her whining about the bits that had splashed her elbow. In this, she swung her arm and tipped over her massive tea into her lap. A huge clank followed and the entire café stopped to stare. We could not contain our laughter and nearly died. Emily’s trousers were soaked to her knees, fortunately it was not too hot and she was a good sport. Due to the wet pants, we returned home and decided to get some sleep for the next couple of big days. Sarah was unable to sleep due to my persistent questioning of Canadian politics. Our conversation lasted well into the night, with me now knowing loads about Canada.

The next morning we were up and early for breakfast and the Sound of Music. We watched the movie, all three hours of it (with a couple of occasional song and dance step break outs by Emily). Immediately following the movie, we were picked up by the tour company and dropped off to meet our group. The tour consisted of the three of us, a Hollywood mobile Austrian, and some weirdo Canadian. Let me not forget our guide, a middle aged British woman by the name of Sue. She was crazy and in love with the Sound of Music (SOM from here on out). She had a SOM pun for everything. We took the tour: the lake and back of the house, the gazebo, and the tree lined street, and so many more places. Being I had just seen the movie, I was full of answers to her trivia questions and was able to join in with the sing along. Our tour took us into the Austrian countryside, which was my favourite part of the trip. We stopped in two small villages, one with a Christmas market (I purchased an apple dipped in white chocolate) and fires burning in the intersections to warm your hands up. At this point, a storm was moving in and dumping extremely wet snow on us; absolutely brilliant and cold! This market was unbelievable- quaint and rustic with all your local villagers roaming about. Next we went another village with the church that Julie Andrews and the Captain get married in. The wind had whipped up and nearly blew us away. After struggling back to the person carrier (van), we returned to Salzburg. I loved the tour because of the countryside aspect. We were able to see these small villages and everything!

For dinner, we hit up the Marcehammer, recommended by crazy Sue. We all had schnitzel and a nice Austrian pint. For dessert we had apple strudel which unfortunately was dry and not very good (a better version to follow in the blog). Upon the last bit of strudel, we went out for a walk in this wet blizzard. I would say we walked about 2 miles until we finally decided to stop for another pint of lager. The place we entered is what I thought was a sports pub, but it ended up being a gambling hall. This and the silent stairs did not stop up because there were four or five games of football (soccer) on the TV. We had a pint, Emily almost had her bagged nicked, and we dried off about NONE before we decided to head home. We ran and slid, had a snow ball fight along the river, and laughed our way home.

The next morning we went to the infamous fountain where Doe Rae Me is performed (and yes, we all ran and sang the song together while taking pictures). From here we climbed another hill to an old monastery. From here we walked up this trail through a forest along the old city wall. Now let me remind you, this hill is called a mountain by some, 8” of snow had fallen in the last 24 hours, and we had no idea where we were going. To me, this walk was peaceful and safe, but to Emily and Sarah it was not. They decided to return to the base while I continued my trek up to the top to look out over all sides of Austria. I sat down and contemplated life for a bit before returning to the bottom (about 1.5 hours after I left the girls). At this point I roamed some more Christmas markets, visited the Convent from SOM, and discovered the University of Salzburg. I had a great time. I returned to the hostel in hope of finding the girls for dinner. Upon their arrival, we left for another Austrian dinner. At this restaurant, our waiter interrogated us about our feelings into capital punishment. We all disagree with it, as he does and to his bewilderment (because we are American and Bush kills lots of “criminals” so he thought we would be in favour of it too). Now the whole discussion centred on Arnold Schwartz…(CA gov), an Austrian who is pro-death and how shameful it is and on and on. After dinner, Sarah and I continued to Salzburg’s largest beer garden for a pint with our Australian hostel mates. The garden was large, loud, and typically German (guys up chanting and doing crazy cheers). On our walk home, we were blessed to give these girls a Snow 101 because they had never walked in snow before. This was great, we had another snow ball fight, showed them how to make snow angels, and demonstrated how to walk in snow and more importantly, how not to.

The next morning we left at 10:00 for home. This here concludes my Austrian Christmas excursion.