Salzburg

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Well I’m sure many of you are thinking that I’ve been slacking on journaling about my travels. But the real, honest truth is that things have been insanely busy on this side of the world. Not only do I find myself buried in school work but I’m also on sensory overload. There are so many new things and I’ve had so many cultural experiences, all of which have been fun and amazing, but at the same time they can be very draining because of the time it takes to process everything.

But enough of that and on to the exciting stuff. The weekend before last (September 10-11), I went to Salzburg. Salzburg is a fun and exciting city where the Sound of Music was filmed. Apart from the postcards though, you would never know this. To my utmost surprise there were no engravings in stone stating, “This is the fountain that they ran around in the Sound of Music.” No, nothing of that sort…if you go to Salzburg, as a true Sound of Music fan, you need to know where this stuff is.

I can’t say that I am at all a true Sound of Music fan…I can’t really even say I’m a fan in any sense of the word, but I still did try to appreciate all of the sights (Colleen, I know that hurts).

Before we headed off to Salzburg we had a movie night Friday where we watched…drum roll please…The Sound of Music! I know this is a shock but what I say is true. It has been years since I’ve seen the Sound of Music so I made a point to watch it before I made my excursion to Salzburg. As a small child I remember it to be boring and too long but after watching it again, being older and wiser and more able to appreciate things, I have decided it’s not all that bad. Perhaps still a bit too long, but it is a classic and there’s a reason for that.

Saturday morning left much to be desired for the rest of the weekend because I shut my alarm clock off in my sleep and was left with 15 minutes to get ready before mass. Needless to say, I pulled it off and then things started to get better : )

We made one stop on the way to Salzburg and that was in Mondsee. Mondsee is the home of the Church, Pfarrkirche St. Michael, where they got married in the Sound of Music (once again, no sign of any sorts indicated this but I was told by well informed people so I believed it). It was an absolutely gorgeous church and after we had lunch I was able to go over and look around. What was so amazing was that there was a wedding that day. So while I was meandering around the church looking at all the beautiful things people started processing in for the wedding. I guess when you get married in a church like this it’s pretty much an open invitation to your wedding because there were quite a few tourists in there taking pictures of the wedding (one of which was me!) The bride and groom didn’t seem to mind though. It was a beautiful thing to witness. One surprise was that when the bride marched down the aisle the song playing was “Why do Fools Fall in Love?” Interesting choice for a wedding song I thought.

Lunch in Mondsee was funny because we had chicken legs and French fries…could it really be any more American? But it was yummy so I have no complaints.

When we were in Salzburg we stopped at the Von Trapp’s house which was beautiful, as anyone who has ever seen the movie would know. We didn’t get to go inside but we did get a nice view from across the lake.

After that we checked into the hostel and then went on a tour of Salzburg. The first place we went was the Mirabel Palace Gardens which were gorgeous. I would have to say I was a bigger fan of the Burggarten in Vienna, but still that palace gardens in Salzburg were beautiful. After the Mirabel Palace Gardens we walked around Salzburg and looked at some of the different churches. We saw a Baroque church and a Franciscan church and then we went and saw Salzburger Dom, the cathedral, which was amazing. It was really neat because towards the top of the cathedral there are two angels holding a crown and out in front of the cathedral there is a statue of Mary. So if you stand far away from the cathedral right in front of the statue of Mary you can see that the angels on the cathedral are crowning Mary, it was beautiful and was one of my favorite things in Salzburg.

After a tour of Salzburger, Coreen, Kim, Kat and I left the group and went back to the hostel to change since we were going to a chamber music concert that night. It’s always fun when you’re in the middle of a city and you don’t know how to get back to the hostel and honestly, European maps don’t do me much good. But thankfully, Coreen seemed to know where she was going and as she confidently led the way for the other three of us she promised that if she was wrong she would kiss and wash all of our feet. Lucky for her, she did know where she was going.

We ended up having plenty of time to change and eat before the concert so we stopped at Spaghetti & Co. for dinner. That place was amazing and I had the best margherita pizza ever. Their crust was delicious and was the greatest pizza crust I have ever had in my life. I seriously want to go back to Salzburg just for that pizza and it was only 3 Euros, so it really doesn’t get much better than that.

After dinner we headed off to the Salzburger Schlosskonzerte (chamber music concert) in the Baroque Marble Hall of the Mirabel Palace. The room was gorgeous; words can hardly describe it…so look at the pictures. Needless to say, there was a lot of gold. The music was beautiful. It was classical (perhaps that’s a given in the term “chamber” music, but I thought I would throw it in there just for clarification) and so relaxing. Perhaps a bit too relaxing, but it was enjoyable. It was definitely one of those once in a lifetime cultural experiences I’m glad I didn’t miss out on. I mean honestly it’s not everyday you get to go to a concert in a Palace with royalty (there were quite a few important people from other countries there).

After the concert we went in search of Augustiner beer, which supposedly, according to one of my household brothers, is the best beer in Europe. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of beer so I just went along for the walk. When we ended up finding the place they were tapped out so we couldn’t get anything anyway. So Kim, Kat, John and I left and went to Murphy’s Law, a pub on the way back to the hostel. That was an interesting experience because after we ordered our drinks the bartender gave us rules. I don’t really remember what they were because I wasn’t really listening to him but I think one was to not try and speak German because they knew how to speak English and that tipping in Europe is the same as in America…seeing how none of us were regular bar-goers in America that last rule had very little meaning to us.

We weren’t at the pub too long and then we headed back to the hostel where I crashed from utter exhaustion.

The next morning we got up early and went walking around Salzburg at like 8:30 a.m. We did a lot of window shopping that morning, not only because we’re all broke college students, but also because all the stores were closed so we weren’t given much of an option. I’ve found that one of my favorite things to do in big cities is to walk around them in the morning when it’s cool and there aren’t a lot of people around. Then you get to see so much more and don’t have to worry about working your way through the crowds.

Salzburg is really a cute city. Most of the shops are on narrow streets and they are so cute! There was one street of shops that looked exactly like Diagon Alley from Harry Potter!

After walking around Salzburg for a few hours we had mass at Salzburger Dom (the cathedral) which was an experience in itself. It wasn’t a normal mass, perhaps for Austrians, but not for Americans. They pretty much had a parade into the church with drums and other loud instruments, banners, flags, and people dressed up in fun Austrian apparel, it was amazing! It was my first German mass…I didn’t understand anything. But I’m learning how to sing the Holy, Holy, Holy and say the Our Father so perhaps by the end of the semester it will be perfected.

After mass a few of us attempted to climb up to the medieval fortress Festung Hohensalzburg (which is really just a castle on a big hill). It was nice because I didn’t have to do any intense climbing, seeing how that would not have been possible since I was wearing a skirt. I only had to climb up some steep stairs. We didn’t get to go very far up because you reach a certain point and your journey isn’t free anymore, that’s when we decided to turn back.

After our excursion to the medieval fortress, Kim, Mark and I went to Café Tomaselli for some coffee. It was wonderful! We got to sit outside under an umbrella and drink Melange (which I believe is espresso with cream), it was sooo good! It was served with sugar cubes which I thought was magnificent because never in my life have I had real sugar cubes, they were cute and that made my day!

Prior to our coffee experience Kim and I were walking through the market when I saw this big cow bell. Before I left for Austria Colleen’s dad told me to keep my eye out for a cow bell that he could use at the football games. So I have been looking and I saw a decent sized one in Salzburg. Without thinking I went over to ring it because the whole point of having it would be for it to make a lot of noise and if it can’t do that then there is no reason for me to get it, so I had to try it out. So I’m standing there ringing this bell and the guy selling all the stuff came over and was like “Can I help you?” and I said, “No, I’m just looking.” Then, after a little while because it took some time for me to catch on, I realized he wanted to me stop ringing the bell…and so I did.

When we were finished with our coffee we headed off to lunch at Sternbrau where we had some sort of pork stuff. Really, all we eat here is pork. Let me tell you, in the Mensa it’s pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but that’s a whole other story.

After lunch we had 45 minutes to get back to the hostel before the buses were going to depart. So we stopped and got this huge pastry pretzel dipped in chocolate which was the perfect end to an amazing weekend!

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Comments

[Christie McVicker]

Thank You!
Jenny, Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. You are beautiful. May God Bless the rest of your travels and... you are starting to sound like someone who works for the food channel...pretty soon it'll be Jenny's International Tasty Travels!!! God Bless, Scott and Christie