Salzburg

Mozart, Sound of Music, and Austrian Alps... how could I not love Salzburg? Even though it was freezing cold and rained basically the whole time, it still became our second favorite city so far (Prague still holds first place!).

Walking down from the Abby

Our first impression of Salzburg was not the best. After being at the concentration camp in Dachau, we boarded the train for Salzburg. We did see a spectacular rainbow, but it did not make up for the fact that our train took twice as long to get to Salzburg because of a little incident... In the middle of no where our train stopped for no apparent reason. A few minutes later, an ambulance comes, along with a helicopter a few minutes later. Sarah takes a walk to see what's going on, and there's a guy laying beside the tracks wrapped in foil heat blankets from the medics. We aren't sure why he was on the side of the tracks all dirty in the rain, but they took him over to the chopper and was going to load him, but then they turned the blades off, so we're assuming he died. So anyway, we eventually make it to Salzburg starving hungry as we didn't have any supper. Thankfully the grocery store in the train station was still open, so we grabbed some stuff to eat. Thinking it was only a 15 min or so walk from the train station to our hostel, we start walking, in pouring rain. Little do we know its actually an hour walk... By the time we arrived at our hostel we did not have the best attitudes to say the least.

Tricky picnic table...

When we woke up the next morning tho, things were much happier, as we were going on a Sound of Music tour on a bus and everything. It was a great time, we got to see a bunch of places where they filmed the movie, and we drove out to the lake district outside of Salzburg to the church where the Captain and Maria were married in the movie. Amazing church, amazing little towns, and amazing lakes! I could move there. It reminded me of Lake Louise and I got homesick for a moment.

After our lovely tour, we walked around Salzburg. We wandered in the Mirabell gardens, did some shopping, and went up to the fortress to look around, have expensive original Weiner Schnitzel at a fancy restaurant with an amazing view. We then stopped by the Abbey of Nonnburg where the real Maria Von Trapp was a postulate before going to the Von Trapp family. Sadly we couldn't look around because it was prayer time and a nun kicked us out.

Wednesday morning we brought our wardrobe staple and best $20 ever spent - our rain coats - to the Hellbrunn Palace. In the gardens here are 400 year old trick fountains that spray you unexpectedly. It was super fun, like an extremely classy water park. We also toured the palace and learned how to play this really old game called Owl. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering in the cold.

Thursday, our last day in Salzburg, was pretty relaxing. In the morning, we went to St. Peter's cemetery, which was quite an odd cemetery compares to ones in North America. Many of the graves were quite recent, but there were also some from the 1700-1800's. I'm pretty sure you have to be rich and/or of a high social standing to be buried in there. We popped our heads into a few churches and saw some fountains before going back to the hostel to warm up. Before going to the marionette theatre that evening, we stopped at a grocery store to get some supper and stock up on cheap Red Bull - Salzburg is where the Red Bull headquarters are. The marionette theatre was absolutely fantastic. The show we saw was a German opera with a typical fairytale princess rescued by the prince storyline. It was crazy how realistic the puppets were.

Hellbrunn Palace in the rain

The things we did in Salzburg was what gave Salzburg second place on our list. If the weather was better it might have made first! My favorite things were the Hellbrunn Palace and the marionette show. Salzburg also has an undeniable charm that works magic regardless of weather!

Mirabell Gardens

Little town in the lake district

Interior cathedral dome

St Peter's Cemetery