Salzburg: the hills are alive

Salzburg is beautiful, quaint, small, friendly & totally dedicated to all things Von Trapp.

Salzburg.

Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. In Salzburg the star of the show is 1964 classic film The Sound of Music. Even Mozart’s birth place, a big old fortress, a wide & blue river, beautiful churches & gardens do not compare with the excitement generated by the film. I am happy to say I got caught up in the magic & I didn’t stop singing Do Re Me until long after I left. In fact, after writing it now I’m still humming along.

The Salzach River.

I enjoyed 3 gorgeous spring days in the quaint city. There are only small crowds in the old town wandering the narrow pedestrian streets with their shops with ornate signs & old world charm. Even Maccas has gotten in on the action. With what is most certainly the fanciest Golden Arches I have ever seen.  Around the town there are lovely fresh food markets where you can get everything from bratwurst to fresh fruit. The market at Universitasplatz was the most lively. With lots of stalls & colour. The square itself features the beautiful something church & the house Mozart was born in. As you wander from platz to platz, many with beautiful fountains, columns & decorations, you can’t help but be totally relaxed. Nothing is moving quickly here.

Fancy.

I spent an afternoon taking part in a very Austrian tradition, afternoon drinks in a beer garden. The Augustiner beer garden is in an old monastery. Tables & chairs are set up in a vast space under low hanging trees. The garden is up above the city so the climb to it builds up quite a thirst. Lucky. Waiters come to your table & serve you litres of beer & you can also go inside to one of the many food stalls that line the walkways. The old, the young & the in between, many in traditional dress, all sat to talk loudly & drink impressive amounts under the leafy shade of the beer garden.

Beer!

As I’m travelling around I am trying to test out the foods that are important and celebrated by locals. I have found very little that I haven’t liked so far. I quickly noticed that there was a large number of places selling Mozart chocolates.  They looked pretty good, chocolate balls with a creamy filling. I got a packet from the supermarket, ready to chow down. I bit in and I have to say it was one of the worst things I have ever tasted. My travelling companion identified it as marzipan. I mention it because I think its the first time, besides an unfortunate incident with some chocolate bullets in the late 80s, it is the first time I have disliked a chocolatey snack. I don’t think it was just me, I shared them around at the hostel’s evening screening of the Sound of Music and the consensus was ‘weird’.

Mozart’s birthplace. Better than the chocolates.

But you didn’t come to my Salzburg blog to read about chocolates gone bad. As I mentioned, even the hostel played them Sound of Music every night at 7. It is big business around here and tourists jump on big coaches and tour the spots where the classic film was filmed.  My time on the tour involved a lot of silly photos, sing-a-longs and staring at the beautiful countryside out the window of a bus painted with 5 different images of Julie Andrews. The tour visited the front and back of the Von Trapp house (filmed in two locations about 15 minutes apart), The Mirabell gardens which is the home of the delightful dancing in Do Re Me, The Gazebo where Rolf suppresses Leisl’s feminist (if any) ideas in 16 going on 17, The Abbey, The church where Maria and The Captain are wed and the lake district . The best part of this tour was the people who weren’t afraid to nerd out and take silly photos and sing along loudly. Honourable mentions for best on tour go to the British ladies who were sitting in front of us singing all the different parts of Lonely Goat Herder in 4 part harmony. It was kitsch at its best. I was only disappointed that I didn’t get to do my best pirouettes under the mountain in the opening sequence, which I think is the most iconic scene of the film, but I think I made an idiot of myself (and captured it on film) quite enough.  I had so much fun on this day. It was one of the main reasons I stopped in Salzburg. I’m so glad I did.

The back of The film Vonn Trapp’s villa.

So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight, Internet. If you love the Sound of Music, you’ll love Salzburg. Even if you don’t, it is a charming town with lots of character.

Grunau: paradise found.

Grunau is stunning, quiet, picturesque, colourful and the perfect place to relax.

A sunny day in The Austrian Alps.

The owner of the hostel I stayed at in Grunau said this was the perfect place to escape the ABCs. That is another bloody church or another bloody castle. Having two days in the heart of the Austrian Alps was a wonderful interlude from the big bustling cities I have been travelling to. There is more to Europe than travelling from capital to capital and I think  I found one of my favourite places here in the North West of the country.

A walking trail.

I had two days here. I went hiking to some waterfalls through an old creek bed (and have an amazing bruise on my bum to show for it). I walked for kilometres through the countryside past shaggy cows and friendly locals. I even did the time warp back to school camp to try my best Katniss Everdeen impression on an archery trail through the forest.  I even stumbled across a fairytale garden in the forest that had statues of different fairytale characters. All in German; so the guessing was quite fun.

Katniss destroys a vicious foam bear.

The autumn leaves are beautiful shades of yellow, red and gold. These colours meld in with the deciduous greens to create a wild colour palette. It is a beautiful sight. Australian autumns don’t really compare.

Autumn colours.

The hostel was the heart of the action. The family run accommodation is run by an ex-chef who loves cooking amazing meals for his guests. The environment in this hostel was much like a family home. We sit around chatting over dinner (when the wifi is turned off) and large groups of backpackers gather in a the basement to watch films after dinner, or play pool. Here, we got beyond ‘travel talk’ and activities weren’t done alone. I’ll be honest, the last week or so has been quite lonely. I haven’t found people to spend my days with as easily as I had in previous stops, but here, the atmosphere was so inclusive and positive.  I’m not quite ready to come home, but to have a slice of those feelings of home, to sit around in my trackies, watch films and eat home cooked food was just what I needed to rejuvenate.

Village house.

My trip away from the ABCs was wonderful and I have a beautiful location and just as beautiful people to thank for it.

Vienna: elegance, at a price.

Vienna is grand, extravagant, expensive, elegant and just a little bit posh.

From the wheel.

My trip to the Austrian capital has been a short, but jam-packed one. In Vienna, I feel like I am back in Western Europe. Galleries, palaces, museums and tourist infrastructure, which of course means expensive food, dorms and activities. I am blowing my budget here; so maybe it being a short stop is a good thing.

Plague column.

Almost all of the buildings are beautiful. grand old styles, decorated in gold and in figures and with intricacies that are only noticed on close inspection. Of course the aforementioned palaces are all of these things, but even apartment buildings and shops have this same beauty.

Upper Belvedere.

In Vienna, it is all about the Hapsburgs, the ruling family of the Holy Roman Empire for 600 years before WWI ended. They expanded the emipre through marrying off family members, not fighting wars. The family had a few characters and the people who the tourism people have decided are big draw cards. There is Franz Josef, the work-a-holic dad; Maria Teresia, the bad-arse empress who named all her kids Maria (including Marie Antonia, later Marie Antionette) and Elizabeth, or Sisi as she was affectionately known, who was the Hapsburg Diana/Kate Middleton type. You can learn their stories all over Vienna as you ‘palace-hop’ from one grand imperial residence to another. The Hapsburg Palaces: Hofburg, Schönbrunn and Belvedere are over-the-top, opulent and of course amazing. Hofburg sits in the centre of town, it doesn’t really have grounds, but it has courtyards with huge statues. The complex is huge and houses more grand buildings than many whole cities could boast. Schönbrunn is the main stop, it has a massive garden that now houses the Vienna zoo and the huge yellow palace enjoys swarms of tourists every day. Belvedere was my favourite. The huge white palace is broken up into 2 parts, lower and upper Belvedere with a huge garden in between. The latter is home to a gallery that I spent some time in. It is home to the biggest Gustav Klimt collection in the world, including his most famous work, The Kiss, which I adore. The gallery was great because there was a real focus on Viennese artists and a few names I hadn’t heard of before. Its all so fancy and elegant, everywhere. The Hapsburgs all died out due to horrible inbreeding. Ew. But their gorgeous palaces and opulent lifestyles are still on display to visitors and locals alike.

Schönbrunn.

The locals of this town are something else: talkative, enthusiastic and kind. I did a walking tour with an amazing lady whose knowledge was only matched by her love of Vienna. I met a couple getting wedding portraits who weren’t actually getting wedding portraits. They stopped and talked to me about being amateur models for their friends. A met a local who wants to come and study in Australia, we talked for ages about boring stuff like HECs, studying, working visas and cash-in-hand jobs. An elderly lady on the train started talking to me in German about how hot the weather was for October (maybe my German is improving – or maybe its because the work for October in German is Oktober). There was a group of skaters down near the Danube who said “hi” for no apparent reason. It was quite strange as I am spending most of my time by myself at the moment to have people want to have a chat out of nowhere. It’s not something I am used to, but I like it. Solo travel is fun, but it can be quite lonely, so thanks to the good people of Vienna for being so kind and making me feel so welcome.

Ponies!

One of the highlights of my time in Vienna was being able to go to the Opera and the famous Opera House. A stunning building inside and out. Now, as I mentioned, I am on a tight budget at the moment (that;s what 7 months of travel will do), so I can imagine you’re wondering how I am possibly splurging on tickets to the opera. It’s simple. I got standing room tickets for Strauss’s ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ for 4 Euros. That’s right, the cheapest transaction I have had in Vienna was for Opera tickets. The process is simple, you line up a couple of hours before the show, buy your ticket and get urshered into the standing zone. My feet ached by the end, but it was worth it. The talent of the performers was amazing. They had amazing voices and the opera was quite cute and funny, so that was nice too. Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912. The premise is an opera within an opera where two operas, a comedy and a tragedy, must now be performed together. Hilarity ensues, of course. This was my first trip to the opera and I have to say that although I prefer the ballet or the theatre, it was a great experience.

The Opera.

Unfortunately it wasn’t all highlights in Vienna. I’ve had some disappointments along the way. Firstly, the Freud museum was shut. Which I was really looking forward to. I did some Freud based subjects at uni which were about his theories not his life, so I would have liked to learn more about that. Secondly, The Spanish riding school was a huge disappointment. As you’ve probably noticed, on this trip I’m doing a fair amount of stuff that I’ve “always wanted to do”, and that means tapping into the past and doing some stuff that 8 year old Ali would have wanted to do. I got to the amazing Bolshoi in Moscow, which was 8 year old me’s dream come true and I hoped to continue satisfying my inner-child by seeing the world famous Spanish Riding School’s dancing horses. There was no performances on the nights that I was there (besides, I was at the Opera, darling), so I went a morning session with the horses, which was first sold as a full-dress rehearsal, and then as a rehearsal and then as morning exercise with music. I paid 14 Euro to watch 5 pretty white horses walk, trot and maybe cantor around a rectangle. Not one trick amongst them. For a fair amount of the performance I stood next to a little girl who was about 8 herself. Even she was bored and left before the end of the performance.

Hofburg, home of The Spanish Riding School.

With Vienna, I have finished my Danube capital cities tour. I have now seen the Danube in all 4 of the capitals it flows through, which, although a pointless thing to do, I think is pretty neat. Also pretty neat was riding the 1897 Ferris wheel ‘Wiener Riesenrad’ at the Prater amusement park. The views were great. I also enjoyed hitting the Nachmarkt, Vienna’s oldest market for cheap food and people watching. Bratwurst, Schnitzel and Strudel. There I go again, talking about food. I can’t help myself, everything is so delicious!

Cake!

Vienna is gorgeous to look at, there is lots to do and see and the locals are wacky and friendly. Unfortunately, now there is an unexpected hole in my budget. Like all elegant ladies, Vienna is expensive. So maybe 3 nights was just enough!