Salzburg, Austria
We arrived on the 10 PM train, so we saw little of Salzburg from the cab to our home for the next four days. Haus am Moos is about a 20 minute ride from the city center by bus or cab, nestled on the outskirts of Salzburg up against some towering mountains. I woke up about 7 and gazed out the window at a large snow covered peak on one side and a green open space on the other. Out the back window I noticed two people working in a field. They were scooping up small piles of what appeared to be black dirt and putting it into a small wagon behind a mower. Eventually we wandered over to breakfast where we met Walter and his wife Gouten, owners of am Moos. There I learned that the couple who were picking up the piles in the field were there relatives and the piles were mounds produced by gophers over winter. Each year, for reasons Walter thought were funny, the couple scooped up the piles, carted them to their yard, and had the spread by hired workers. Mystery solved!
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| View from the bus stop |
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| View from the Lover's Lock Bridge |
After a nice European breakfast of coffee, bread, pastries, sliced meats, jelly and the other usual fare provide as continental breakfast, we headed back to our room armed with a Salzburg card. The card provides you with all transportation while the 3 day pass last, entry to most points of interest free and discounts at other events. We boarded bus 21 just a few meters from our lodging, the weather was cool and clear and off to the city center. Salzburg is know as the Rome of Austria and is a beautiful city to visit. The Salza River runs through the city, the old city on one bank and the newer one along the other. Standing on the Lover's Lock bridge (so named for the numerous locks with lovers names written on them and the locked around the links of the chain linked fence) one gets a panoramic view of both the old and new city. If you look the other directions you see the fortress ensconced upon the mountain top above the old town. This was the safe haven of for the rulers of Salzburg first constructed around 1000 AD. It was added to over the centuries by various Archbishops who were the princes that exercised both religious and temporal power during the era of the Holy Roman Empire. The fortress was surrendered only once without a fight and that was to Napoleon.
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| View the other direction with fortress in background |
We wandered around in the Market Platz, a large shopping center in old town, had coffee at a Starbucks which we have found in many places, and then wandered to the building preserved as the birthplace of Mozart.
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| Picture of the young Mozart |
Mozart is big news in Salzburg. The museum was interesting and took but an hour to visit. It held such items as Mozart's first violin, his piano, some facsimiles of his original scores, and many painting of him, his sister and father. Mozart lived a short life, 34 years and died of pneumonia.
After our visit to the Mozart birthplace we found a restaurant to have a late lunch. I ordered something off the menu which I thought would be a pasta in tomato sauce with mushrooms, Ermine a bowl of chicken soup. When mine arrived it turned out to be some kind of dumpling (soft dough balls) in tomato sauce with a few shallots thrown in for good measure. It was ok, but I would not put it down and a great meal. The dumplings were tasty but after eating 10 or so it became rather drab to the taste buds. Oh well! We learn something every day, i.e. not to order this again.
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| Blackbird--a thrush |
Because of our late start and late lunch, we decided to head to a local grocery store, Billa, and pick up some items for our stay. We have an apartment in an old restored farm house complete with bedroom, living area, full kitchen and bath, all for 70 Euros and that includes breakfast. However, we wanted to have a meal in our room and coffee for first thing in the morning. Our evening repast consisted of salami, cheese--both Cheddar and blue--olives, and bread and the local famous cake. After we arrived I took a walk in the neighborhood where I heard the melodious song of a thrush which turned out to be a Blackbird (a member of the Turdus family). The thrush was sitting atop a nearby roof and was a life bird for me. As I continued my walk I came to a nice walking trail which lead to a private castle set atop a high hill.
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| Great Tit |
I had seen this structure from our abode and was shocked to see that down below was a massive structure (almost a village) which I was informed by a local were the servant quarters for the castle owner. Along the trail I found another lifer, Great Tit, which is a rather handsome bird.
On our second day in Salzburg we headed back to the city center where we checked out the larger portion of the old city.
We started in the in the Residenzplatz area, the residence building of the Archbishops and center of political power for Salzburg. It was here that the Nazis staged the famous book burning episode featured in the recent movie The Book. The square also has a large statue of, yes you guessed it, Mozart set in the middle. And nearby is the massive cathedral that had its origin in the 700s. 
It was here that Ermine found the horse drawn carriage tour that she was bent on taking. She spent at least an hour visiting with the carriage drivers before she coerced me into joining her for a 20 ride around the old city. |
| View from the top overlooking the countryside |
After our ride we headed up to the fortress. To reach the top one takes a rail car. Before our assent to the top, we visited the oldest continuous bakery in Salzburg, where we purchased some mill ground bread fresh from the over. The place was crowded with nearby students on lunch break from one of the eleven nearby universities housed in Salzburg. Once reaching the top of the fortress the views of the surrounding area was impressive. Clearly this was a near impregnable fortification. It had store rooms for food storage, battlements to forestall invasion, massively steep terrain and cisterns to collect and store water.
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| View from the uppermost lookout of the city below |
We took the tour offered through a portion of the fortress, reaching a lookout at the very top of the facility. While the view from there was not drastically different from the others, it was inspiring.
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| The Palace and Gardens at Mirabella |
From here we toured the living quarters of the rulers (Archbishops and Kings) on the Residenzplatz square with all the elegance of marble, gold, exquisite furniture and woodwork that you see in all of these palaces. And to arrange for Ermine's Sound of Music tour on the following day, we headed to the Mirabella Palace and Gardens across the river. These were the gardens seen in The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews. Once we had made the arrangements for them to pick her up at Haus am Moos in the morning we headed back as it was getting late in the day.
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| King's Lake |
On our final day in Salzburg Ermine and I parted ways--she to go on the tour and I headed to the train station to have our Eurail Pass validated and confirm our reservation for our trip to Vienna on the following day. On the way from the ticket office I stumbled on some small stairs steps, falling to the floor. Fortunately my only injury was my pride, a broken watch band, and a sore shoulder. From here I headed to the bus stop to catch a bus to Berchtesgaden where I could take another bus to King's Lake. The lake is a beautiful glacial lake with extremely dark blue waters and crystal clear water . Here I found numerous Mallards and Tufted Ducks, Great Tits abundant, a Blue-headed Tit, Chaffinch and a Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) , of which two were life birds to add to my list. I must say this is an incredibly beautiful lake, and the weather was magnificent. After a two hour hike I returned to the bus stop and made my way back to Salzburg then to am Moos. Ermine returned around 5 PM with her story about the tour and a ride up to the top of the mountain seen in the first picture in this blog. To get there one must take a bus, then cable cars to the top. Because I despise heights and cable cars I was not interested in this excursion. From the bus stop by am Moos you would watch the cars suspended in space as the travelled form peak to peak. Not my cup of tea! And this ended our sojourn in Salzburg as we leave in the morning. I must say this is a beautiful city and one I would gladly return to for a visit in the future. The setting is magnificent and the people very friendly. I actually wished we had spent more time here instead of Vienna.
