Salzburg

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Sound of Music land. A wonderful Kaiserwetter day in Salzburg, on the "Locks o' Love" bridge we walked across about 10 times during the day. 

We scurried off from our nice Burghausen gasthof, after their buffet breakfast, planning to meet Wiff and Renate at 11:00 in front of the Salzburg Dom. Wiff had told us the car-park where they would be parking, which they preferred because there was no time limit, versus having to go back and add money. Well, if only we'd have made it to that lot, because returning to add money became a theme of the day.

By the time we saw the bank that Wiff had told us to park at, we were past the driveway for it. So, we just went on hoping for the best, through tourist crowds along the river. Suddenly we saw a car pull out of a spot on the river street and took it. We did not see any signs about parking, so we just assumed we'd lucked out with a free spot. We hurried off across the bridge to the the inner old town where we were supposed to meet Wiff and Renate, because we were late due to heavy traffic in Salzburg and the parking snafu. When we got to the meeting place, only Wiff was there; Renate had a family problem arise regarding her mother, and she had to stay home. Janet and I were bummed about that.

The first thing we had to do was walk all the way back to the car, because Wiff assured us that where we parked would NOT have been free. When we got there, the parking cop was getting near to our car, so Wiff quickly asked her where the meter was to purchase a tag so that she'd realize why we didn't yet have one in our car. The meter was WAY beyond where we were, another 800 m. Wiff was pretty upset that they made it all so difficult to park legally. He checked the bank garage where his car was, but it was full. Too bad, because where we were had a three-hour limit and we'd need to return to buy another tag at 2:30. 

We walked back across the same bridge a third time, and this time got this photo of Janet and Wiff. High on the hill in the background is the famous Hohen Salzburg fortress. Notice all the little padlocks on the fence (as well as in the previous photo). Wiff explained that this is a recent fad, for lovers to inscribe or write their names or initials on the lock and then fasten it to the bridge.

On this particular day, Salzburg was having the final day of a 4-day annual festival to St Rupert, who founded the city in the 8th century. What this meant was: Crowds, vendors, rides, and beer gardens, which therefore looked very similar to Oktoberfest the day before. It also meant the downtown charm of Salzburg was overrun and not as nice as it could have been for us. Oh well. The photo above of Wiff and me shows Mozart's birth place in the background ("Mozart's Geburtshaus").

As we walked through town, we came across some street musicians. These guys were there for donations, and sounded wonderful. Those in the photo below were official festival performers, and they sounded wonderful too:

It isn't your ordinary street performers if they have a harp!

This square in front of the Dom (cathedral) is normally open, but it was filled with rides and vendors on this day. We got to go inside the Dom because Wiff sweet-talked the guard who was preventing tourists due to a private ceremony.

Janet and Wiff are headed toward one of the three archway openings, each of which has a year posted on it: 774, which was when the Dom was first built by St Rupert (who is one of those statues out front); 1628, when it was re-built after a fire; and 1959, when it was re-built following destruction from an aerial bomb in 1944 (on Oct 16, the day I am writing this blog).

It's huge inside, and as you'd expect, incredibly lavish and ornate. It holds 10,000 people, and they note that Mozart played the organ there.

This picture is only to show how many rides and people and vendors there were crowding the squares. At this point, we were headed off for a quiet walk on the hills above the city, where Wiff and Renate love to stroll to get away from the bustle of the city. We started up the hill at the south side of the old town.

Here we are partway up the hill, looking north, and it was spectacular to see all the church steeples. We continued up until we were just below the walls of the fortress. This castle, from the 11th century, is so huge that we could see it easily from the Rossfeld-Ringstrasse lookout point three days earlier (about 13 miles away). It was enlarged to its present size in the 16th century.

Although this isn't a great photo of Janet, it shows the fortress pretty well, and you can see that our quiet walk reached the same level as it. We sat on a bench overlooking the valley that's on the opposite side from the city, and it was a perfect day.

As we continued our walk to the north side of town, Wilfried explained how the Romans had used this spot on the hill as a rock quarry. You can still see the smooth walls where they did their cutting. We then needed to walk down to the city, and this was what normally made Janet's ankle sore.

Can you see how many steps there are down? Ever the trooper, Janet made it down okay, but it looked a bit scary.

Janet and Wiff are headed down. You can see that we are the only ones here, which is why we liked the walk so much in contrast to all the activity and crowds on this particular day in the city.

You can't tell from this picture, but this restaurant is Japanese. It's one that Wiff and Renate like, and we did too! We had sushi in addition to miso soup and beef teriyaki...and of course these fine Austrian beers.

Before hurrying back across the "Love Locks" bridge to buy another parking tag, we got this final photo of Wilfried and me on Getreidegasse, the old town's busy shopping street.

After paying for three more hours for our car, we all walked here to Mirabell Gardens. One reason it's famous is because it was used in the Do Re Mi song in Sound of Music. We had to laugh at the reason Mirabell Palace was originally built - by an Archbishop in 1606 as a home for his mistress who bore him 15 children. Oh those Catholic priests!

Shortly after we left here, Wilfried had to return home. What a fabulous gentleman he is, and what a wonderful time we had with him over the past three days.

Janet and I walked back into the old town to visit the Residenz, said to be the most opulent building in town. It was built as a home for the same Archbishop who fathered the 15 illegitimate children. It demonstrates how powerful the Church was, that archbishops ruled the entire province whether the subjects were Catholic or not, and got to live in such splendor. Janet and I were the last two visitors of the day, and as we walked slowly through the palace listening to our audio phones, the guy in charge who had sold our tickets closed each door behind us and then would sit and wait for us to leave each room. Weird!

After that we purchased Janet's Pizza Pretzel that she'd been coveting ever since she saw one at Königssee four days earlier. We strolled around a bit more and decided it was time to leave and go to our apartment in Bad Reichenhall. We did stop briefly for Mozart Balls (Mozartkugeln) at a grocery store. The famous composer's balls are everywhere in Austria, but nowhere so plentiful as in Salzburg where they originated in 1890. They come packaged in every size and shape as gifts and souvenirs, but we wanted to see if we could find a plain-wrap cheapo version, and we did (a bag of 18 for half the usual price). I just must paste this description that I found on Wikipedia: "Made starting with a ball of green pistachio marzipan covered in a layer of hazelnut nougat. This ball is then placed on a small wooden stick and dunked in dark chocolate, allowed to cool, and wrapped in blue-silver tin foil by hand. According to the Fürst company, their employees produce approximately 1.4 million Mozartkugeln by hand using this technique every year." (But others make them too, not by hand, for a total of about 300 million/year.)

On our final crossing of the "Love Locks" bridge, the sax player we'd seen on every other crossing was no longer there. Janet figured someone paid him just to leave, because he played nothing but Sunrise, Sunset and it sounded pretty bad. 

We managed to get out of town unscathed, and were soon on the road into Germany again. Interestingly, on the way there we passed a Mozartkugeln factory! Turns out it's been there since 1938, and produces about 500,000 balls per day! 

Just as Janet pulled out my written directions to find our apt and read the first turn, we were passing the turn. I did a u-turn, and in only a minute we were at our place, which I had arranged through Air bnb. It was great!! Large, with a big living room, full kitchen, two bathrooms, and a bedroom with a door. Within a few minutes, we decided to stay a second night. This meant a slightly different itinerary, which would involve seeing different things the next day that were closer to us.

We drove off into the countryside to find a restaurant recommended by the proprietor, but could never find it. So we headed into Bad Reichenhall, where we passed a grocery store. We decided to buy some things since we were staying in our apt for two nights, and they had another 1.69 € six-pack of beer in plastic bottles like the one we bought before. Cool! And we bought radishes! But once we continued looking for a restaurant, we couldn't find one. I finally just made a random turn off the highway in the hopes there'd be something, and there was. 

The story here is that I ordered something that I had no idea what it was.  I didn't understand ANY of the words in this long menu description: Gemischter Vorspeisenteller - Entenbrust Pfiffering - Slüze Steinpilze gebacken Kürbisterrine. When it arrived, Janet and I were stumped as to what anything was other than some mushrooms. Two items were gels of some sort. Well, I ate it, but the gels tasted kind of strange. I wrote down the name of the dish so that later I could find out what it was. We later learned it was a mixed appetizer containing smoked duck, head cheese, spiced mushroom gelatin, and baked squash terrine. Arrgghhh. Janet's goulash was so normal and good, and I was lucky she gave me half of it.