More Salzburg Sites

Melinda, admiring the scenery:
"The hills are... I don't know... they're..."
Me, in a dramatic tone:
"Alive? ...with the sound of music?"
Girl, walking past shaking her head:
"Oh wow."

Our day started with a guided tour of the Festival Halls. We really had no idea what to expect, but I knew this was the location of the hall used in the music festival at the end of The Sound of Music so I wanted to see the interior. We discovered that there are several concert halls and I was disappointed that preparations are underway for their huge, annual music festival; the rock window openings so well-known from The Sound of Music were boarded up for the set of an opera to be held in the hall. I could still recognize the area and I've included a photo for fans of the movie.

The music festival hall used in The Sound of Music.

I was fascinated by how carefully they designed this hall. The focus was primarily on the acoustics but also for comfort - the fabric was tested and chosen because it absorbs the least amount of sound and the temperature is controlled through vents at each seat so the temperature in the hall remains consistent no matter where you're seated.

We caught a bus to Hellbrunn Palace, a place most well-known for the trick fountains designed by the Prince-Archbishop Markus Sitticus in the early part of the seventeenth century. I wish I could have met the man - he obviously had a very quirky sense of humour.

Hellbrunn Palace - designed as a day-time summer getaway.

Ponds and well-clipped hedges in the gardens at Hellbrunn.

A video clip showing a mural in a small room inside Hellbrunn Palace.

Guests should consider themselves warned.

This dining table is one of the most well-known of the trick fountains. The bishop ensured that each of his practical jokes was designed with a dry area for him to take refuge while his guests were either sprinkled with water or completely drenched. At this table he hosted lavish suppers and when the guests had enjoyed plenty of food and alcohol, he had the fountains turned on.

The designs on the wall above the table are created from coloured stones.

Water shoots out of holes in the ground all around the table as well as out of each seat. Although the bishop's seat has a hole, no water comes out of it.

If I were one of his guests, I don't think I would find it very amusing.

A strange fountain mounted on the exterior of the palace. There were two of these dripping water off the antlers and tongue. Odd.

Decoration inside one of the rooms holding trick fountains.

As we walked through some of the outbuildings and admired the mosaics on the walls, floors and ceilings, the tour guide turned on fine sprays of water which shot out of tiny nozzles in the walls and floors. The bishop must have had so much fun designing this place!

A bizarre little fountain in a pond - the figure of a deer, dressed in what appears to be a Roman soldier's uniform, is about one foot high. Water sprays out of the spear, the deer's mouth, and the mouths of each of the dogs.

A sample of one of the scenes created using power from a man-made stream. The figures are about six inches high.

This intricate scene showing townspeople engaged in various jobs is musical and all the characters move around. It was created in 1750 and it still works using only the gravitational flow of water - no pumps!

We returned to Salzburg and made our way to the Residenz State Rooms to explore the rooms where the archbishops began entertaining in the sixteenth century and where events are still held today.

Mozart performed in this beautiful room.
The ceiling is a beautiful sculpture with complete cherubs perched around the paintings. Click the photo to enlarge.

The first time a fancy ceiling painting has made me want to laugh. I just think it's hilarious that famous people and powerful politicians attended meetings or concerts here and if they looked up they were met with the view of a cow's huge rear end.

The rooms all had beautiful parque floors - amazing!

In the photo of the concert hall above, or in one of the photos from the Josephinum in Vienna, you may notice what look like massive ceramic urns against the walls. These are heaters and they allowed the fires to be stoked by servants from behind the walls so the residents and guests weren't disturbed. The photo above shows a tiny space in the wall where a servant would have stooped stoke the fire.

Next on our to-do list was taking in a cruise on the Salzach River. The forty-minute cruise was quite boring for the most part, but we still found ways to make it fun. A camera with a "video" feature helps. Our favourite part was when they turned on waltz music and let the boat spin down the river - quite dizzying, but a lot of fun after the slow cruise!

Video clip of the boat "waltzing" on the river.

We caught a bus to save a bit of walking and then climbed a few long staircases to reach Nonnberg Abbey, used in The Sound of Music as the convent where Maria runs in after singing, "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music". As we walked up the stairs, I paused to take a photo and Melinda turned around to ask what I was taking a photo of. I answered, "A leaf."
She asked, "What's on it?"
I laughed and replied, "Nothing... it's just a leaf!"

Just a leaf.

The abbey was closed, but the main doors were worthy of a photo so our treck up the hill wasn't in vain.

We walked back into town, stopping at a bench overlooking the city to eat our picnic supper. As we walked, church bells repeatedly pealed from various areas of the city. I checked the time, but couldn't figure out why the bells were ringing. It was a beautiful sound, even if it didn't make a lot of sense.

Church bells ringing.

We passed a young woman wearing a traditional outfit so I asked her to stop for a photo. She obliged, with the, "You're crazy!" look on her face that has now become so familiar to me. The bow tied on her left indicates that she's single - if it were tied on the right it would indicate that she's married.

The final stop today, and the final site for our time in Salzburg, is the Mönchsberglift, an elevator to the top of one of the hills bordering the city. We saved it for tonight simply because it's open late and we wanted to cover everything else first. We didn't have any idea how fabulous the views would be! Tonight was one of those perfect, warm summer evenings with beautiful light and lots of laughter. An ideal finish to our vacation.

The view from the top.

We agreed that Salzburg was our favourite city during this trip - it seemed laid-back and friendly, there were plenty of sites to explore, none of the streets felt unsafe, and we felt at home here. Salzburg also has the best city skyline of all the places we've visited - we had a great time taking photos of each other.

Melinda called this my "sexy face".
The face I made after her comment could be called my "hysterical laughter face".

The many faces of our vacation together:

Opera and music in Vienna - Papageno!

Adorable panda bears at Schönbrunn Palace.

Yummy chocolates in Belgium.

We don't want to leave Salzburg...
or leave our vacation.

We love Salzburg!

Exploring Salzburg

Today we begin the craziness of packing in as much as we possibly can to take full advantage of all the free site-seeing included in our Salzburg Card. Our first stop is St. Peter's cathedral, cemetery, and catacombs.

St. Peter's cathedral.

One of the ceiling panels at St. Peter's depicting the story of Peter walking on water.

The organ at St. Peter's.

St. Peter's and the attached cemetery.

A view from one of the catacomb windows.

Tourist information says that the cemetery scene at the end of The Sound of Music was shot at St. Peter's but they were actually shot on a sound stage in California. It was still interesting to see the site they used for inspiration for the design.

We caught a ride on the oldest funicular in Austria (built in 1892) to the top of the hill to explore Hohensalzburg Fortress, the fortress museum, and marionette museum.

A collection of marionette shoes - my favourite are the little duck feet in the bottom, right corner.

Marionettes used in a production of Aladdin.

A short video clip recorded on the television screen showing excerpts of various marionette productions held at the Salzburg marionette theatre.

Marionettes used in a production of Mozart's life story.

The fortress museum had my favourite display of old armour.

I love the simplicity of the design, yet it also makes the armour come to life as the figures are placed in the position of an advancing army.

This device was used to force prisoners' mouths open for torture.

One of a small number of royal rooms preserved in the fortress.

A view from a fortress tower.

A view from a fortress tower.

As we walked through town we stumbled upon this shop with hundreds, if not thousands, of painted eggs. We didn't see them anywhere else, but they must have some kind of cultural significance.

We walked through part of Mirabell Palace gardens to reach the Salzburg Baroque Museum. The museum was quite boring, but there was an interesting woman who seemed to be composing something on a grand piano in the middle of the room. She kept rubbing the edge of the piano with two pencils, creating a sound we could hear throughout the room. As we walked past her we could see that she had worn the finish off the piano with all her rubbing, so obviously this wasn't a new thing for her. She played a few chords and then closed her eyes, swayed a bit, and rubbed the side of the pencils furiously on the edge of the piano, varying the speed slightly until she decided to play a few more notes. Quite amusing for both me and Melinda as we both play the piano but have never seen anyone use such a "technique". A couple of people were with the woman at the piano, almost seeming to wait in great anticipation as she worked through her "process".

A view of Hohensalzburg Fortress from a fountain in front of Mirabell Palace.

We visited a couple of Mozart museums. One of the museums was built in a residence where Mozart lived for part of his life - there is a special exhibit of Haydn's life so we were able to learn a bit about both composers. The other museum was built in the home where Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 - it was quite an extensive exhibit with plenty of interesting information about Mozart and his family.

An adorable rain cap I found in a hat shop window.

If I ask Melinda to hold my camera for me for just a minute, I'm guaranteed that she'll snap at least a couple of photos. She fell in love with the solid "click" sound the first time I asked her to take a picture of me and now she jumps at any chance to use my camera.

Climbing on a dumpster full of dirt to see over a fence made of sheets of tarp used to protect the restoration work on the fountain used in The Sound of Music when Maria is singing "I have Confidence in Me".

The famous fountain undergoing restoration.

We ended our day by visiting the Panorama Museum to take a look at the almost two hundred year old painting (the circumference is twenty-six meters or eighty-five feet). Visiting the museum wasn't a big priority for us, but it turned out to be quite beautiful and interesting. The museum has set up a reduced copy of the panorama with a small screen mounted on a bracket that can be moved up and down and side-to-side over the panorama. The screen contains a modern photograph of Salzburg, using the same angle used in the panorama painting. As visitors move the screen over the painting, the view moves to match the panorama behind.

Panorama close-up.

Panorama close-up.

Land of Mozart and Maria

This morning we caught the train from Vienna to Salzburg. After we found seats on the train I realized that by the time we reached Salzburg it would be mid-afternoon so we should pick up some lunch before the train left. We had a little less than twenty minutes before departure and we took turns racing to buy food at the little grocery store in the station. I managed to make it back to my seat with about ninety seconds to spare before the train pulled out.

We travelled to Salzburg with the now-familiar confusion of deciphering signs in different languages and asking for directions from people who speak minimal English. I had the address of our hotel, the bus number to catch, and the name of our stop. Shouldn't be too difficult, right? The woman at the information kiosk at the train station assured me that the buses display the names of each stop. We got on the bus and I kept an eye on the display screen for the first two stops and realized that it was obviously out of order. I had checked the location of our hotel on a map a day or two earlier so I at least had an idea about the area of the city where the hotel was located and I knew it should be about a ten minute drive. We quickly pulled out a map of the city and searched for street signs or landmarks so I could figure out our location. Our frantic conversation went something like this:

Melinda: "There's a sign! It looked like 'arsper-something'!"
Me: "Did you catch any of the spelling?"
Melinda: "Ummm... not really."
Me: "Could it be 'Auerspergstrasse'?"
Melinda: "Yeah!"
Me: "Okay, I've found that road - anything else? I need to figure out where we are on that road."
Melinda: "Nothing yet. Don't they use street signs here?"
Me: "Oh - there's one - Mirabellplatz. Why do they have to use such a crazy font? I can barely read it! Platz... Platz... maybe that's referring to a plaza and not a street. Here it is! Anything else?"
Melinda: "There's another on! I saw 'Schraneng' or something?"
Me: "Maybe 'Schrannengasse'?"
Melinda: "Sure, maybe, I don't know!"
Me: "Aha! I think I know where we are. Okay, we should go around a corner and over a bridge across a river, then turn right, then left, then it looks like we'll go through a tunnel, then we'll be getting off. Keep looking for street signs so we can make sure we're in the right place as we get closer."

We found what I figured would be our stop and got ready to get off the bus. An older couple were ahead of us at the exit at the back of the bus so they stepped off, then Melinda, and the doors began to close just as I reached the bottom step. I knew I couldn't jump off in time with my huge backpack strapped on, so I stuck my hand out, expecting a sensor to make the doors open again, but it didn't work. The hand I stuck out was holding the map and I watched Melinda's eyes open wide in shock as the doors closed over my wrist with the map sticking out in front of her face. I yanked my hand back through the doors, leaned back to smack the button to request a stop, and looked for a button to reopen the doors but it seemed that only the driver had control. I heard myself make some sort of gasping, questioning sound that came out as sort of a loud squeak as I stared desperately at the rear-view mirror, forcing myself to resist the urge to yell something in English, such as, "Let me out! My aunt and uncle will kill me if I leave my cousin on the sidewalk in a foreign city!" As I felt the gears engage to pull ahead, the driver glanced up and saw me staring at him with eyes that were likely the size of dinner plates. Thankfully he clued in and opened the doors.

We left our baggage in our room and headed into town to visit our usual first-stop: the tourism information office. When we leave our hotel and walk into town we walk through a tunnel blasted through a cliff-face, past a massive doorway with impressive sculptures, past and the horse fountain, and alongside the Festspielhause (where the music festival scene at the end of Sound of Music was filmed).

The Horse Fountain.

Massive doorway with sculptures.

Happy Canada Day!
A family proudly wearing t.shirts announcing their nationality.

At the tourism office we each purchased a forty-eight hour Salzburg Card for thirty-two euros and the pass gave us free access to public transportation, free admission to over twenty-five sites, and discounts at numerous shops and further tourism sites. We knew we'd wring as much out of the cards as we possibly could. We each went through the brochure and marked the sites we wanted to see, ending up with about twenty different places to visit... and only forty-eight hours in which to take them all in. Using a map of the city, I marked it with numbers to correspond with the sites where we had free entry, figured out the opening and closing times to maximize our time, and the fun begins tomorrow morning.

This afternoon we explored the old town, visited Salzburg Cathedral, explored the gardens at Mirabell Palace, and listened to one traditional song played by a brass band in the park.

Salzburg Cathedral - one of my favourites.

So many cathedrals are full of gold or somber colours, but I loved the cheerful colours and beautiful details found at the Salzburg Cathedral.

Video of the interior of the cathedral.

Video showing the ceiling in a side room at the cathedral.

We walked along the river to reach Mirabell Palace and took a little detour to walk up a long flight of steps to reach Kapuzinerkloster (a monastery at the top of a hill - the yellow building in the photo below). We weren't in a rush to get anywhere in particular and I figured there would probably be a nice view from the top.





We walked back down the hill and found our way to Mirabell Palace. One of the quirky features of the garden are these dwarf statues, described as "weird" in one tour book.




The grounds are open to the public and they featured prominintly in the last minute of the Do-Re-Mi montage filmed for The Sound of Music (click here to watch the montage - scenes filmed in the Mirabell gardens start at 3:57 in the clip).

During Do-Re-Mi, the kids all tap this statue on the head as they file past.

Another famous Do-Re-Mi site at Mirabell.
(The fountain in the background was also used.)

A little touch of home.

The tunnel we walk through between the old town and our hotel.

We've definitely been enjoying weather which begs for a watermelon snack.