Salzburg

Right now I'm in Vienna, though tomorrow I take a night train to Venice, so I suppose this was my last full day in the German-speaking countries. I can now recognize some amount of German, even if this is limited to things like "exit", "price", and various things having to do with trains. Pretty much the only thing I've consistently been able to actually say is "thank you very much", though.

To catch up from my last post, for some of my last few hours in Munich, Maddy and I went to the Augustiner-Brau brewery for dinner, and we sat in the beer garden, and I had one of those huge liter mugs of (very good) beer. Well, Munich is well-known for its beer and beer gardens -- of course I couldn't leave without properly experiencing that! :p We just sat there for a few hours and talked, which was a nice relaxing way to end what had been a fairly intense day.

On Monday she went back to Hamburg and I left for Salzburg, which I guess is even closer to the border of Germany than Reno is to California. But anyway, I checked into my hostel there, and went to watch The Sound of Music, which I guess they were showing once or twice a day there. XD I did manage to watch that movie most of the way through all three days I was there, but I think I'm gonna be at saturation point for The Sound of Music for awhile after that and the tour I did.

I went for a walk around the city in the afternoon, but by that point I was rather tired and just wanted to spend most of the day relaxing in the hostel, so I did. Of course, that's when my power cord decided to die, so there went the reliability of my favorite relaxation method. Once of my roommates was kind enough to let me charge my computer on her cord, so I could still use it in Salzburg, but once I got to Vienna I had to use the hostel's computers because my computer's dead now. Bother. This means that I can't charge my iPod, can't charge my Nintendo DS, and can't transfer pictures from my camera to my computer. Thankfully, I haven't used my iPod since I last charged it, so hopefully it'll be fine for the plane rides home, and I still have over 300 pictures left before the memory card on my camera is full, but I'm going to have to be careful with all three things now.

For my second day in Salzburg I wanted to do the Sound of Music tour, and there was a deal going on with doing that and a tour of the salt mines close by, so I decided to do that. I would have rather done the Eagle's Nest or Bavarian Lakes tours, but they didn't have the deal with the Sound of Music tour. And it ended up being just as well, because the salt mine tour took me almost to the Eagle's Nest, so I could still have a rather amazing view of the Bavarian Alps, and I saw three different lakes with the Sound of Music tour, so I was very pleased with my choice.

For the salt mine we ended up actually going back into Germany. We were only a few minutes out of Salzburg when the tour guide pointed out where the old border post was, which I guess is gone now because of the EU. He dropped the salt mines group off at the mine, and we had to get dressed up in miner's coveralls; I got someone to take a picture of me in mine. We went into the mines, which were fairly cool. Whenever we had to get to a lower level we took a miner's slide, which I enjoyed, and at one point we took a barge across a small lake and they did light shows across the water. The mine is still a working mine, but they've really figured out how to appeal to tourists, I guess.

After the salt mines the bus picked us up again and we went to go pick up the people at the Eagle's Nest and stopped at the parking lot below it for about ten minutes, which is where I got some amazing pictures of the Bavarian Alps. Then we went for lunch in Brechtresgaden, a small, picturesque town, and then went back to Salzburg just in time for the Sound of Music tour in the afternoon.

One of the first things our tour guide there mentioned was that there was actually a bar (of sorts) on board the bus. Then he asked us a trivia question, saying that the first person who got the answer right would get a free beer, soft drink, or bottle of water. And of course I only mention this because I was the one who won. The question was what was the name of the mountain Maria is on in the beginning of the movie, when she only mentions the name once, also in the beginning. I haven't actually seen the very beginning of the movie in a long time, but I knew the answer because it was the main big mountain in Salzburg and my salt mines tour guide told us the name, so I only had to remember from the morning, not from the movie.

It was a pretty cool tour. We stopped by the lake that was supposed to be near the von Trapp villa, except that apparently the lake and the house where it was filmed are not in the same location, so filming scenes that involved both the back of the house and the lake must have been fun. We saw the gazebo, where our tour guide told us that people aren't allowed inside it anymore after an 82-year-old woman broke her hip trying to dance like Liesl and Rolf did. We also headed out of town to Mondsee, which is where the cathedral where Maria and Captain von Trapp got married is, and on our way there is where we passed all the lakes. We had some free time in Mondsee, so I saw the cathedral and then went down by the lake and stuck my feet in for a while. That was so nice, because my feet are starting to form blisters, even though I've only been wearing my most comfortable shoes.

The tour was over when we got back to Salzburg, and I went to the Mirabel gardens for a picnic dinner of stuff I bought at the local supermarket. The Mirabel gardens are very pretty, and also where they filmed most of the scenes for the Do-Re-Mi song, so I got lots of pictures of places I recognized from that.

I'm getting pretty tired now, so I'll finish up Salzburg and talk about Vienna either tomorrow or in Venice.