Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh
I didn’t know what to expect of Salzburg. Vienna had been a little bit of a disappointment as it was surprisingly flat; not something I had typically thought of Austria. To me, when I picture Austria, (other than yodelling) I think of mountain ranges, and valleys. You can imagine my delight as our taxi from the Salzburg hbf (hoff-baun-houff / central train station), rounded the corner towards our hotel smack bang at the end of the street was a mountain. Finally, Austria as I had pictured it.
It is not doing enough justice to say that Salzburg is a beautiful city; it is THE most beautiful city, having practically everything you could want. There is the new town, featuring all your major shopping brands, the old town featuring restaurants, and other tourist inspired venues and then there is the mountain range. Along the top of the first row of mountain ranges are an art gallery with panoramic views of the city as well as a majestic medieval castle.
After checking into our hotel we immediately set out towards the old town. I carried a point and shoot camera on me, as I only took my bulky DSLR out on tours and specific occasions where I knew photo opportunities would present themselves. The point and shoot is merely a safeguard so I do not miss a thing. By the time we made it two thirds into the old town I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the cityscape and the mountain range beyond that I then had to return for my DLSR and tripod.
Since it was already getting well into the evening, evening in Europe being 3.30pm, we took the cog train from the old town up the mountain side to the castle. From the back courtyard of the castle you had a brilliant 180 degree view of the German-Austrian mountain range, in the forward courtyard a panoramic view of Salzburg.
Our first full day in Salzburg we did the Sound of Music tour. I had seen the movie quite some time back and liked it for what it was, though wasn’t all that fussed by Julie Andrews singing practically every line of the script. The tour though was very highly recommended by Michelle and a fellow co-worker of mine, both of them appealing to the photography side of me promising beautiful vistas.
As it turned out the tour was probably one of the best I had ever done. Fortunately there was no singing which was something I feared. The views were spectacular, the location stops that reflected the film were interesting but it was our tour guide that made it spectacular. He was a very animated performer and after what I can only imagine was many years of doing this particular tour, he had transformed it into a slick piece of art.
One of the more interesting tid-bits he mentioned to us was that while the whole world was taken by storm by the Sound of Music, Austria didn’t think anything of it at all, thinking of it as a savaged copy of an original film they made some years earlier (as with the majority of American copies). The tour guide in his near-nasally high toned voice would say ‘but we love it… because it gave me a job’.
A few discrepancies of the film that our tour guide pointed out which any Austrian would pick up straight away; the end sequence where the Von Trap family are escaping the Nazis, over the mountain range into Switzerland, the mountain range they were going through in fact took them straight to the Eagles Nest and then Germany beyond that. The other discrepancy that was quite funny was the time it took Julie Andrews to race down the mountain back to the convent during the scene where the nuns were singing ‘what are we going to do about maria’. As our tour guide pointed out in his typical comical style ‘it takes just over three hours to climb that mountain, but only three seconds to decent from it… if you slip!’
Being well known by the end of the tour for his bad jokes he left us with this final one.. The Hill family had arrived into Salzburg one rainy afternoon and couldn’t find a place to stay. In the distance Hill senior spotted as castle. So he encouraged his wife and kids to walk a little bit further. As they got to the entrance of the castle soaking wet and cold the keeper of the castle welcomed the tired family to stay with him for the night. What the Hills didn’t know was that the keeper was a vampire! That night he drank the blood from each of the Hills, killing them in the process. It had been a while since the vampire had had such a feast, he felt invigorated, full of energy. Feeling inspired he sat at his piano and started playing. As he played who should appear next to the piano but the Hill family. Taken back in astonishment the vampire exclaimed ‘how can this be? I killed you!’. The family replied “The Hill’s are alive.. with the sound of music….”.
The following day, also being Christmas Eve we did a Bavarian Mountain Tour. It turned out to be a great idea to do the tour on the count that in Europe, or at least Salzburg, everything is closed Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, very different to Perth, Australia where everything is open Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. The Bavarian Tour promised to take us closer to the mountain ranges. Catching a coach we took off towards the mountains, unfortunately due to the time of year (the early – unpredictable time of winter) the coach was limited to particular roads. Our first stop took us to the peak of a smaller mountain overlooking it’s larger brothers and sisters. Looking ahead you could see the city of Salzburg and to the left, up at the very top, glimmering like a gem was the Eagles Nest, the only remaining artefact of the Nazi movement in the mountains. On the drive up to the stop the tour guide pointed out where Hitlers holiday home was, and where the homes of several of his advisors were, all of which were bombed by the allied forces during the end of 1945 to ensure that there was no place the Nazi forces could return to. Although it hadn’t snowed in Salzburg for about two weeks, the same time we had been in Berlin in near-blizzard conditions, there was still plenty of snow in the mountains.
We ate at an Italian restaurant that evening, one of the very few places that were open Christmas day. The meal, along with dessert and a few drinks cost us about 40 euros. Out hotel was also putting on dinner for Christmas Eve, charging 70 euro per head!
The meal itself was rather nice, though nothing spectacular, as we all have our preferred way to cook Italian food, and unfortunately it didn’t quite compare to the home cooking I’ve become used to. The dessert menu featured Apple Crumble with hot vanilla sauce, banana splits, Ice Cream with chocolate sauce and a few others. Deciding to be a pain, I took the ‘hot vanilla sauce’ from one dessert and applied it with a few scoops of vanilla ice cream. The waitress gave me a weird look when I placed the request ‘but the sauce is hot?’ she began to explain. I nodded, repeated the order again and she went away.
Unbeknown to them (cos I didn’t let them taste it) but I had just created the signature dessert – vanilla ice cream with hot vanilla sauce. Served in a sundae glass, the two scoops of vanilla ice cream were already beginning to melt in the thick hot vanilla sauce. The sauce itself, to the best that I know was a custard sauce with vanilla essence. The combination was divine. I returned to the restaurant again the following night, just to order my dessert again.
Christmas Day we took a day long tour which comprised of a trek out into the mountain valley where we swapped our bus for a horse drawn sled. We then spent the next two hours dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh! Every other horse drawn sleigh, there were about 10 in our group had two horses pulling the sleigh, except for us, we had a large Bavarian horse which looked like it could out run them all – to which he tried to on a few occasions. This was probably the best tour of them all – the sleigh ride was very picturesque, with mountains on either side, sleighing through small villages and playgrounds, the bells on the horse’s necks jingling all the way.
Children were out playing with toys, dogs were playfully chasing the sleighs and running alongside the horses – which didn’t bother them in the slightest since they do this circuit so often. In fact, one of the dogs jumped up into the sleigh and rode the rest of the way up front alongside the driver.
The chair lifts and ski fields were also a buzz with many people taking the opportunity to hit the slopes.
We were very fortunate with the weather, a week earlier it was forecast to rain Christmas Day and Boxing day, had it been so, the sleigh ride would have been cancelled, as they don’t like taking the sleighs out in anything but fine weather.
I was very sorry to have to leave Salzburg. The only thing keeping my spirits high was that in a few days time we will be in Switzerland with the Alps at our doorstep. The morning we left Salzburg for Munich the skies were dark and grey, looks like we left at just the right time.