Home of Mozart

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December 27, 2008
We made it back to our hotel after another long day; we're sitting here eating pizza from a place down the road (which was run by a Japanese family who sold pizza and sushi, Japanese beer and Russian vodka all in this tiny shop), and watching a funny German show on television (the host is visiting a royal family - whose royal family I'm not quite sure. Germany? - and acting really silly and enough is getting across to us that we are laughing through dinner. We were hoping to stumble back upon the little Afghani restaurant that we found yesterday so that we could try it, but we didn't have much success. So, pizza it is! And we found a grocery store, too, and stocked up on a few necessities (bread, cheese, oranges) so that we won't starve tomorrow if everything is closed. This is very important, since last night I woke up at around 2:30 and was awake for several hours, reading and thinking about food. Lots of food. I realized when I woke up that we'd only eaten our pastry at the cafe in the morning and the pretzels with a couple chicken wings in the afternoon, so that wasn't really enough to sustain us after walking so far. Well, maybe it was enough to sustain Matthew. He doesn't seem to need as much food. But I was starving and wishing for the convenience of home and 24-hour food places. Eventually I fell back asleep dreaming of all the things we could eat on our trip to Salzburg.
I was not disappointed. We started the day going to a chain bakery and having latte macchiatos (yum!) and pastries - I had a croissant stuffed with Nutella, which was amazing (and made me think of Peter and Sara, who would both love it, I think) and Matthew had a roll with apple. We were actually pretty full after that, but my eyes and mind are always bigger than my stomach, so I insisted on some pretzels and a chicken leg for the train trip to Salzburg.
We figured out how to get the special weekend ticket, which made the trip to Salzburg very reasonable. The train was packed with people, many in groups because this ticket can be used for “up to five adults and a dog.” (Everyone travels with their dogs. If only dogs back home were as well behaved as the dogs we've seen here and in Prague!) This train with the bargain prices was supposed to be slower, but it still only took two hours to get to Salzburg.
I read that Salzburg was a touristy city, that they are totally reliant on tourism. I didn't realize what all that would mean. The main areas of the town were so crowded it was nearly impossible to walk down the main streets. In the new, main town, as well as the old town, it is a shopper's paradise. We walked around and looked in myriad boutiques and shops catering to tourists and those with lots of money. Needless to say, we didn't actually go in to any shop, but it was nice looking. Yet even with all of the looking, as soon as we could we made it out of the main areas and headed for places less crowded. We took a nice walk up and above the town and hopefully got a few good pictures of the city. Back down in the main areas we walked through a number of places with open-air markets. While there, we found numerous stalls selling giant-pretzels of various flavors (pizza, chocolate, donut, butter, apple), so we bought a giant apfelbreze for the walk back to the train.
We actually had just under 26,000 steps on the pedometer today, which is less than yesterday but I think it's still impressive given that we spent four hours on the train today. Of course by the time we were getting close to the hotel I felt dead tired. What a long day! But it was a good day. Salzburg was pretty, albeit touristy. The countryside out the train window was very, very rural (although not as poor as the countryside outside of Prague, if looks say anything), and it reminded me a bit of western Pennsylvania (like the rural areas outside of Pittsburgh).
My cold, which has been plaguing me for a week, sounds worse today, but I'm hoping all of the exercise will beat it into submission. And hopefully Matthew won't get sick. But Benedryl does wonders to help at night, so except for waking up thinking of food, I am sleeping well. (After all the pizza I just consumed, I don't worry about waking hungry tonight.)
Munich is one of the largest cities in Germany, at somewhere around 1.4 million people. I didn't actually think it was that busy earlier, probably because yesterday was still an off day for so many and this morning when we left it was still early (with only Starbucks being completely packed - we still haven't actually set foot in a Starbucks, but it is very tempting, or would be if there weren't so many people). Tonight when we returned, Marienplatz was almost as bad as Salzburg in terms of crowds. Matthew and I nearly lost each other a few times as we were trying to weave in and out of people. If we could find a good cafe in that area it would make for great people-watching.
Our plan for Sunday is to get up and go to a few museums and then check out the Hofbrauhaus. We realize that it's now incredibly touristy, but we can't come all the way to Munich and not go. Monday we'll go walk the English Gardens (largest garden on the Continent) and Tuesday we'll make the trip to Dachau. And Wednesday it's back home! We leave for the airport at 4AM (oy vey!) for the long trip home, but I think that our stay here will be long enough to see everything and become familiar with the city.

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Photos

Salzburg
View from Mozartplatz