Tuesday 17 June - Wednesday 18 June 2014
I was going title this story Saucy Salzberg. Opposite the hotel is a turkish bakery and next to that is a very gaudy and very loud visually sex shop. I can hear the inevitable question from here. No, I did not visit the sex shop and neither did Gloria - the Turkish bakery was much more interesting and very tasty!
The train from Wien was a fast train called a Railjet that plodded along at 200 km/hr. As usual, we passed through hills rather than going around them until we were on the other side of Linz where we slowed appreciably to go around the hills rather than through them. And as is becoming quite usual, the scenery is typically un Australian with lots of green trees and grass, although disappointly we did not see much for quite a deal of the journey due to earthern mounds or steel fences often running parallel to the rail line, presumably acting as sound barriers.
Salzburg was not what I expected. The terrain is reasonably flat although the mountains are quite visible nearby. I was expecting much more hilly terrain, but l suppose that is a perception I had of Austria, all mountains and short days. Wrong !
Salzberg's old town is similar to the other old towns although some buildings seemed older. Certainly some of the churches had an old feel about them. The old town is very small, so it did not take long to walk around it.
The major attraction in Salzberg is the Festung Hohensalzburg or Salzberg Fortress, and it is worth a visit if only for the spectacular panoramic view of the city from the viewing platform at the top of the fortress. Apparently construction of the fortress started in 1077, although there is practically nothing left of that now - the fortress has been expanded over the centuries and much of it is quite old. When we first saw it, it reminded us of the Acropolis, becuae it is perched up on this big rock. Apparently, the fortress was never taken by force, although it was surrendered to Napoleon without a fight!
There are quite a few buildings that hail from the middle ages and the old town has cobblestones still.
The other places we visited were Mozart's birthplace and his residence. The birthplace was really interesting, the residence much less so
Salzberg uses Mozart as its signature for tourism. Everywhere you go you can buy Mozart souvenirs and even Mozart chocolate. What makes this a little hilarious is that Mozart hated Salzburg and left as sson as he could - the birthplace and residence is all about his childhood - he lived in other places, predominately Vienna, but spent a lot of time touring Europe. Something that we didn't know was that he married and had six children Only two of those children survived and they never married, so there are no direct descendants of Mozart.
As we were walking back to the hotel on Tuesday evening, we could hear orchestral music so we walked towards it. We discovered a youth orchestra of about 25 young people, who we assumed to be music students of one of Salzberg's universities, playing in the gardens behind the Mirabella palace. We sat on the grass for nearly an hour and enjoyed a wonderful free concert, with the orchestra just 5 metres away from us. It turned out that it was a group of kids from Salt Lake City who were doing a tour of Europe and we just stumbled on them. It was probably the highlight of the trip so far.
Tomorrow Innsbruck, the home of 2 Winter Olympics.
