Notes from Abroad

The train ride to Salzburg was quite beautiful. Well, for the parts that I managed not to sleep through…

Because I had decided to go to Salzburg at the last minute (I love spontanaeity, especially when traveling!) I had to find myself a hostel – a task that is becoming increasingly difficult as we reach the high season. Hostelworld only listed about 5 hostels in Salzburg, 2 of which didn’t have any ratings at all. The best rated hostel (YoHo) was all booked out. Nathan and I settled on the next best one and booked our beds. It wasn’t in the most central location, but it was better than sleeping on a bench.

While en route we decided that since YoHo is only a few mintues from the train station we’d be arriving in that we’d give it a shot and just walk there in hopes that someone didn’t show up or that someone left early and that there were beds available. After getting a bit lost (seriously, why can’t they put street signs around the train station so that people can orient themselves before they’ve walked 5 blocks in the wrong direction?) we made it to YoHo and surprise, surprise: there were lots of available beds. It turns out that they’re changing their booking system and hostelworld is showing them as booked out even though they’re not. Go us!

YoHo was a really nice spot. Really well-located and the rooms were clean and spacious. That’s pretty much all you could ask for. Our roommates for both nights were also really nice people which makes things even better. Oh…and the best part: They play The Sound of Music every day at 10 AM and also upon request.

After settling into our room Nathan and I decided to go for a wander into the Old Town. We grabbed our maps and set out with no particular destination, which is really the best way to go in my opinion!

Our first stop was a pastry shop. It was the first food shop we’d come across after leaving the hostel and we were both kind of hungry. I got some sort of lemony fluffy roll thing. Mmmmmmm. ANYWAY…

So we ate our pastries and crossed the street to a park. We didn’t know it at the time but it was Mirabell Gardens. The landscaping in that place is absolutely gorgeous! I didn’t exactly realize where I was until I saw the arbor. I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it was the one they ran through in the movie, but I took a few photos just in case. It turned out that I was right – that was the arbor. And not just that – I’d passed the Do-Re-Mi steps, the fountain they run around, the statues they pull the needle through the thread through and more! This place was a veritable treasure trove of Sound of Music nerdery!

I can’t exactly remember where we went after the park, but it was in the general direction of the Old Town. We crossed the bridge over the Salzach and ta-da, there we were. At first it was a little too touristy and there were way too many American shops lining the streets. It was cute (nicest McDonald’s ever), but it wasn’t what we were looking for. We then stumbled upon this random car tunnel thing by these murals of horses. I didn’t recognize them at first, but it turns out they’re in the movie too. We went through the tunnel (it was intriguing) and didn’t find anything on the other side so we just went right back in the other direction.

More wandering and we came across some more squares, some shops, and some markets, where I stopped off to get an apple-filled pretzel. Soooo tasty. The streets get to be a bit like Venice at times – they wind and weave and you really have no idea where you are, but it was so pretty. So many churches and steeples and it was all just so quaint and picturesque!

At one point we turned a corner out of curiosity and found ourselves in a cemetery – a really beautiful and ornate cemetery. It reminded me of the scene in The Sound of Music where the family is hiding from the Nazis behind some grave stones (and it turns out that the set was modeled after this particular cemetery). We walked through it just admiring how nicely appointed some of these gravestones were and we noticed some windows in the cliff. Nathan mentioned that it would be cool to go up there but we figured that it wasn’t an option. A bit further on, though, Nathan found the entrance to the catacombs. One Euro and you could climb to those windows.

Such amazing views! What a hidden treasure! The catacombs weren’t all that special – it was just some empty crevices in the walls and things, but that really wasn’t the point. I’m pretty sure it was just for the views. What a lucky find!

So…then we wandered some more and found ourselves at the entrance to the funicular that takes you up to the fortress high above Salzburg (the name escapes me at the moment). we decided to go for it. More great views! The fortress itself was really cool (I could definitely live there!), but the museums and things inside weren’t particularly interesting. The only things I did enjoy were the few rooms such as the bedroom (it had a toilet that basically stuck out beyond the main plane of the wall and basically just dropped everything down about 5 stories. Grossss…) and some other rooms that were absolutely beautiful. I wasn’t too interested in the military things that were on display, but it was still a cool mini-trip. We decided to walk down instead of taking the funicular. Those hills are STEEP. Like San Francisco steep. Good thing we decided to take the funicular up.

I’m pretty sure that after the fortress we decided to head back in the direction our hostel. We met our roommates and chatted for a bit and decided to get dinner in the hostel. The six of us ate together and afterwards we decided to go for yet another wander around Salzburg, but this time it was dark out.

Salzburg is also gorgeous at night and it feels incredibly safe. We found some really cool little spots like this shop that sold really ornately decorated Easter eggs and things like that. We also walked over the Mozart bridge (yet another spot from the Do-Re-Mi song!). It was a nice little jaunt and it made me love Salzburg even more.

The next day I was scheduled to go on The Sound of Music tour. I knew it was a tourist trap, but come on. I had to do it. I was scheduled to get the 9AM tour so that I could be back with enough time to explore the city and anything that I missed. I was waiting in the lobby along with six other people. 9:40AM rolled along and still no bus. We finally decided to ask reception what was up. OH. They forgot us. LOVELY. They said we could take the afternoon tour.

So now it’s almost 10AM and I have about 3 hours to kill. Katie, one of the girls also waiting for the tour wanted to go up to the fortress and I knew I wanted to go back to the Old Town just to wander around some more. I ended up showing her the way to the fortress (it’s amazing how quickly you can get oriented to some cities but how lost you will always get in others) and then went off on my own. I don’t know where I went really. I passed the Mozart statue at one point, but that’s the only new spot I can think of.

On my way back, though, I decided to stop off at Mirabell Gardens again so that I could take some more pictures and just maybe plop down on a bench for a few minutes to kill time. I ended up sitting there for about 45 minutes, just people watching and attempting to read some of the book that I had in my backpack. Then I started to get hungry.

Excellent timing, too. Right across the street from Mirabel Gardens is a church and Mirabellplatz whose parking lot had been turned into a market for the day. WIN! It was absolutely packed. I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I ended up getting a pretzel (when in Rome, right?) and a 1/4 kilo of fresh cherries for super cheap. (Side note: I still associate kilos with drug busts. Thanks for the brainwashing, American movies.)

I walked back to the hostel with my snacks, grabbed my laptop, and sat down in the common room to catch the end of the daily showing of The Sound of Music. I love the little moments like that where you’re not doing anything particularly special, but the fact that you’re in a cool place doing something that you don’t normally get a chance to do at home makes it all the more fun and memorable.

Then it was time for the tour. They remembered us this time.

The tour guide was SUCH a cheezball. Really. I don’t think there’s a word in the dictionary to explain this guy. I can probably do a good impression if you see me in person, but wow. The tour itself was…decent I guess. I wasn’t too amazed by it, mostly because the trivia he was telling us wasn’t all that new. I’d heard most of it before – in the Special Features section of the DVD (NOW do you see why I love the special features!?).

It was cool to get to see some of the shooting locations though. Most were from afar (like the I Have Confidence yellow path) and some weren’t accessible any more (like the gazebo), but when we got further into the countryside, in the pouring rain I might add, we did get to stop in this small town where they filmed the wedding scene. The church was really gorgeous and the apple strudel was even better!

Back at the hostel after the tour I met up with some of the people I’d met during the day and we went out to dinner, which was quite tasty. I believe the place was called Indigo. It was in my guidebook and I wouldn’t have gone if these other 3 girls weren’t, but I was hungry and feeling spontaneous (I was just in the common room with my laptop, but luckily I had some money in my pocket) so I went along. It was nice to have something DIFFFERENT to eat. Bread, pasta, and wiener schnitzel get old after a while.

Nathan and I caught up later (he’d been to the Eagle’s Nest for the day) and I spent my evening watching The Sound of Music (the whole thing this time) with about 25 other people in the common room. I hadn’t seen the whole thing in agessss and it was actually pretty cool to watch it in the city in which it was filmed having just seen most of the locations!

The next morning Nathan and I were headed to Vienna. I was sad to leave Salzburg, but there’s really not all that much to do as a tourist, so it was time. I’d love to go back there during the Christmas season though. It seems like the perfect place to spend the holiday!

Tags: Adventures, Austria, City, Journal, Salzburg