One might think that choosing a mid-February weekend to take
a city break in Salzburg might increase the chance of experiencing a
snow-covered, winter wonderland. Such was not the case. But where you can’t
find snow, you go searching for it, especially if you can see it teasing you
from the surrounding Alpine mountains!
It has been the second-warmest winter on record in Austria
in almost 250 years, according to the local news. We can now consider it spring
time it seems. Naturally, one is more likely to find rain than snow during the
spring and our first day in Salzburg delivered just that. Nevertheless, we
managed to find plenty of things to do on a rainy day.
We started with Mozart’s Geburtshaus that was once the
birthplace of the famous composer and now houses a museum depicting the life of
Mozart and his family. I must be honest and admit that I basically knew nothing
about the man beforehand, but now I understand him to be like an older, more
classical-musically orientated Michael Jackson. If MJ was the “king of pop”
then Mozart must be something similar in the world of classical music. My
reasoning behind this, perhaps radical, comparison is drawn from what I learned
about Mozart in this museum: that his father was the driving force behind his
talent and success; that he remained quite child-like throughout his entire
adulthood; and he lacked the ability to manage his own finances. All of these details
could also be used to describe Michael Jackson. Now I hope you see what I mean. 
As the rain continued to fall, we moved on to another museum
on offer in Salzburg: the toy museum. After the traditional,
read-everything-from-the-wall museum of Mozart’s birthplace, it was refreshing
to experience a fun and interactive museum! The toy museum is, admittedly,
probably primarily designed for children, but we can excuse ourselves as big
kids sometimes! We lived up to this by making a pit-stop on the way at a
chocolate shop and trying all the free samples they had. It was a shop
exclusively selling Zotter
chocolate; a relatively young, organic and fair trade Austrian company that has
brought exciting new flavours and combinations to fulfil every chocoholic’s
dream, including chilli and ginger chocolate.
Other eatery delights were also consumed during that day. We
enjoyed lunch at a traditional, Austrian/Bavarian restaurant, named Wilder Mann,
where I know I should order beer but as someone who simply can’t drink beer, I stuck
with the Austrian soft drink, Almdudler. Considering I don’t like beer, I questioned
my decision to join the others (Agnieszka, Laura, Scott & Steffi – the
other Comenius Assistants in Vienna) for a tour around the Stiegl beer factory.
The only attractions for me were the free gift (a bottle of beer or a bottle
opener) and free samples (though I only tried strangely flavoured lemonade and
a grapefruit Radler, of which I only enjoyed the grapefruit taste and not the
beer taste!)
Later in the evening, we walked along the river amid
stunning views of the Alps in search of a restaurant recommended on wiki
travel. We found it, but unfortunately with no reservation, there was no table
available for us. Instead, we carried on walking we were lucky to spot a
lovely, local restaurant hidden away in a courtyard. There I enjoyed Spinatknödeln (which I can only describe as ‘spinach
boobs’ but they were actually very tasty spinach dumplings!) After that we
returned to our hostel, where we could watch The Sound of Music movie. As famous
as this 1960s, Julie Andrews movie is, I really didn’t know anything about it.
Yet, during the 3 hour long film (they could’ve cut quite a bit of it) I got
into the story of the woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a
governess to the children of a Naval officer widower; that leads to a romance
that is overshadowed by the threat of Austria’s new German rulers and the
looming World War II. The movie was set in Salzburg, which explains the relevance of watching it there!
Our second day in Salzburg consisted of climbing higher and
higher above the city while enjoying the lovely sunshine. We started the day searching for a cable railway that
leads up to the Hohensalzburg Castle/Fortress. After getting slightly lost
wandering around the narrow, winding streets, we stopped to ask a local for the
way, just to realize that we were already half way up and we should just
continue climbing! So that’s what we did. And the reward was magnificent as we
reached the fortress and could gaze out over the city and admire the backdrop
of the Alps. We also joined a great tour of castle; the tensest part of which
involved the so-called ‘torture chamber’. I was glad to find out that it was
never actually used to physically torture anyone, but just to store the equipment
that could be used for that purpose (!).
After returning to the old town via the cable railway, we
enjoyed a stroll around before making our way to a proper cable car to reach
Untersberg,1856m high mountain in the Alps. There’s nothing like the breath-taking
Alpine view with stunning, sparkling snow to whisk all your worries away. The
bus ride to the cable car also happened to be somewhat entertaining as we ended
up involving a local stranger in our far-too-detailed conversation about
waxing!
One more pit-stop before catching the train back to Vienna,
where Thomas was patiently waiting for me, couldn’t be resisted at the Mozart Café.
There we decided to indulge in a ‘Salzburger Nockerl’ between the five of us.
It is a bit of an extravagant dessert, priced at 12€ for one, but it is huge.
Needless-to-say, it wasn’t very well received! As a supposedly sweet, soufflé dessert, it tasted more like meringue without the sugar,
plopped on top of a smudge of jam. Maybe it was worth trying once, but I don’t
wish to have such an egg-y-tasting “dessert” again! Despite this
disappointment, Salzburg certainly lived up to its reputation; it’s very easy
to fall in love with the place.
After this trip, I can now sing ‘My Favourite Things’ and
picture the original Sound of Music movie and the actual place it was filmed,
as well as listen to the best of Mozart while I complete my German homework.
Sometimes it’s fun to fulfil the Austrian stereotypes and feel like I could be
even more Austrian than a native Austrian.
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