Austria Journal 6- Salzburg

Mozart's House

After sleeping through the Melk expedition on our first day here, Alex and I were determined not to make the same mistake for the second school outing: Salzburg. The trip was a one day affair, complete with mass, walking tour, and lunch paid for by the school, so we spent significant time the night before planning out all the things we wanted to do while in that ‘Sound of Music’ city.

I had been to Salzburg once before for a brief visit with my family at Christmas time, but the only memories that visit includes are a lot of images of walking through slush, a Native American street band, the lift up the fortress on the hill, and a story about a cow. It’s amazing what the human brain holds on to.

This trip proved distinctly different in that our day there was sunny and warm and much more action-packed. Following our arrival was the school-group portion of events: mass, tour, and lunch, which proved very helpful in getting an idea of the historical and spiritual significance of the city, not to mention helping us appreciate just how tasty German food is (Mark doesn’t really agree, so we’ve decided he has a strictly American palate).

After lunch, which was served in a huge hunting-lodge style hall on the second floor of a restaurant, we started out the self-planned part of our day with the trek up steeply inclined streets to the town fortress. We had learned in our tour that the fortress had never been taken by force and that the only time they had come close was when the defenders were slowly being starved out by an opposing army (I forget who, unfortunately). They were down to their last cow and things were looking desperate until someone devised the plan of promenading it along the battlements, then painting it a different color and repeating the procedure until the attacking soldiers were convinced there was no hope of ever starving out the fortress and gave up (this was the story I remembered from my previous visit).

The fortress

While climbing the hill to the fortress, it was somewhat hard to envision any army having the lung capacity to survive the charge into battle, let alone take the place, which made the stories of its impregnability seem very realistic. The fortress itself was a mish-mash of visitor-accesible spots, but it seemed that there must have been TONS that we weren’t allowed into, because what we saw was somewhat small and the overall structure was huge!

The Dom cathedral's gorgeous architecture and decor

We are the princesses of the castle!

 After ascending stone steps to one tower that was infested with a swarm of large gnat-like insects and where we hurriedly snapped a few squinty-eyed, closed-mouthed shots with the mountainous background, we made our way through a few museum displays on armor, excavations, and medieval torture. At this point, we were all ready to move on to our next planned stop in Salzburg: Nonnburg Abbey.

Maria Elena Von Trapp and Baby Mark Vontrapp
in the Salzburg fortress

Pious Mother Superior Alex turns away small,
petulant child ElenaVon Trapp

It was about this point that I began to discover my somewhat unexpected enjoyment and ease at reading maps. It turns out that my sense of direction isn’t altogether dreadful, either, so I gleefully led Alex and Mark along a stone path on the side of the fortress mountain that led to the abbey rumored to have been the place where the real Maria Von Trapp was a postulant. This rumor was disputed by some travel websites, and we never really found out if it was true, but we did enjoy the peaceful, darkness of the chapel, and after running into a few of our own TOR sisters who told us that the gate to the abbey was the same one where Mother Superior turns away the Von Trapp children in the movie when Maria is “in seclusion,” Alex and I made sure to snap a few pictures there too.

 Asthetic enjoyment at the Mirabell Gardens

Our unicorn went a little crazy...

The rest of the day included stops at the carefully laid out Mirabell gardens by the Mirabell palace, meeting up with some more of our friends, including Fr. Matt (who is just plain awesome, btw), and making our way to the Augustiner beer garden and brewery. This was an especially interesting experience, because not only did the garden seat close to 1000 people (and it was pretty full), nobody appeared to be obnoxiously intoxicated, despite the customary liter sized beer steins easily available for fairly cheap prices. The Europeans just take drinking differently. It truly seems like a cultural practice of fellowship for them, which makes it an enjoyable experience even to those who aren’t drinking (don’t worry, I was).

The Augustine Beer Garden

To order a beer, I had to go up and buy a ticket, then choose a half-liter or liter mug from the shelves and rinse it out in a fountain. Half liter was enough for me, especially when the beer guy generously filled me up, spilling a great deal of foam and beer in the process and thus ensuring that I got my money’s worth. There were several cheap food market stalls where I got sausage and a big pretzel and ta-da, a pretty typical German dinner. Yum.

A bridge full of love

We finished off the night by strolling along the river between tents set up to display a variety of wares (all overpriced) and buying some Mozart kugel: chocolate balls with several different layers of chocolate crème and marzipan inside, an Austrian thing (the Salzburg variety featuring pistachio flavored marzipan). The bus back was quiet as I wrote letters, looked at pictures, and talked about the day, although I heard one bus watched “Taken”…talk about a traumatic introduction to our stay in Europe. Altogether, it was quite the perfect first expedition, helping us look forward to many more to come.

Salzburg, ladies and gentlemen