Salzburg's hills are alive part 1

A Few of our Favorite Things!

We arrived in Salzburg early and checked into our hotel. The rooms were charming – attic spaces with pretty wood floors. The bathtubs were tucked under the slanting angles of the roof in each bathroom, making the spaces light and warm. Window air units had also been installed, much to our relief! As a general rule, Europeans don’t do air conditioning. One Italian friend claims it makes her sick, and therefore is unhealthy. They don’t usually do ice in the water for the same reason!

Unfortunately, our rooms only had space for 5 to sleep. Upon inquiring, we were told that it is assumed children under 10 just sleep with the adults – even though the reservation clearly showed sleeping space for 7. The manager/owner didn’t handle the situation very well, but we did end up with a large pak-n-play for Rosa. (Thankfully, she was thrilled to sleep in a “baby bed.”) He told us we could drag an extra mattress out of an upstairs closet for Deep Thinker. Our friends kindly shared a blanket with us. If not for the poor way this blunder was handled, I would recommend this hotel whole-heartedly, but as it was, I think we’ll look for a new location when we visit next time.

Our next stress was procuring tickets for our Mozart evening. The tickets had been purchased several weeks prior, but for some reason, would not come through as an e-mail attachment. We were told that without actual printed tickets, we wouldn’t be able to go on the tour. Thank goodness for a kind young man who knew his business and worked the system for us! We boarded the boat for our river cruise and enjoyed a leisurely hour working our way up the Salzach River.

View of the Austrian Alps from the restaurant in Salzburg's fortress

Beautiful old town Salzburg

Salzburg, which means “salt fortress,” sits around the banks of the Salzach River. The old town architecture is mainly baroque (according to Wikipedia…I don’t have enough knowledge to identify much more than Gothic architecture at this point!) and although a lot of the town (46%) was destroyed in bombings during WWII, a lot of the historic center was left untouched. Some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen rise up to the South of it. (See the Linguist’s untouched photos of the Alps near Salzburg below). There’s a huge fortress called Festung Hohensalzburg that overlooks the city. Built in 1077, it was used to shelter the citizens during desperate times. We later learned that the fort was never taken. In fact, during one siege, the desperate citizens had only one bull left for food and in an attempt to trick their enemies, they paraded it on top of the wall each morning, painted a different color. After a few days of this, their enemies gave up and went home, figuring they had so much food a siege would never be effective! Salzburg-ians(?) are often referred to as “bull painters” for this reason.

The city was ruled by the Archbishop of Salzburg and we saw numerous residences built for different religious leaders who lived in the area. They looked like small palaces! We were particularly enchanted with the copper rooftops on many of the churches and homes.

Following our river expedition, we walked through a lot of the Old Town area on our way to the funicular. I’d describe this as a cross between a train, an elevator and a ski lift. After showing your ticket, you pass through a turnstile and crowd into small elevators with rails and handholds coming from the ceiling. We were packed in with a ton of Asian tourists who were headed up the mountain, as well. The track ahead is so steep that it looks almost impassable, but the cars adjust to keep you standing mostly upright (at least after the initial jerk!)

There wasn't really space to breathe let alone take a photo...
this shot is going back down

Our restaurant was at the top of the mountain and is the source of the incredible pictures the Linguist took (see first shot above). We started with breads and two different cream cheese spreads – one that had dill in it and another that was more tomato based. This was followed by tomato soup with croutons, then a main dish that was either spinach-stuffed chicken, vegetable strudel or salmon. I didn’t taste the salmon, but both the chicken and the strudel were delicious! Both had a creamy mushroom sauce that was wonderful. We finished up with the dessert plate pictured below.

Lovely presentation, no?

I was a little nervous about how the kids would do with a meal that took an hour and a half, but there was enough to see outside and the food was interesting and tasty enough that they were all well entertained.

After dinner, we headed into the fortress for our Mozart concert. I think the correct term is a chamber stringed orchestra? It was comprised of about 12 string players, and they were joined for one number by a pianist. Of course the room was nearly full when we got there and were escorted to our front side row seats. We were quite the object of attention since we had the only young children in the room. Many of the glares were undisguised, and C. and I had a good laugh about that! I’m not sure where some people think grownups come from, but they look at children as though they are aliens from a different planet!

The concert was fantastic! The kids loved it and were so well behaved (whew!) Three different women came over to tell me how well behaved they were and to compliment us for exposing our children to culture! It’s always nice to get those compliments after being glared into a room.

The Mozart concert in the fortress provides a lovely view of Salzburg

Rosa was especially excited when they played Beethoven's fifth symphony.  We have a CD called Beethoven’s wig that sets funny lyrics to classical pieces. This particular one is sung in two parts by Mozart, who wants to play his violin late at night, and his wife, who would really like to get some sleep. Apparently this was truly a source of contention between the couple – which just makes the song funnier! Rosa listened carefully and afterward told me that it was “The Music of the Night” repeated 3 times. I didn’t realize she was listening that closely.

We enjoyed the interplay between the musicians that we could see with such close seats. We could see the violists laughing with their eyes at the drama with which the cellist attacked his instrument. We also audibly heard the bass player snort when the first violinist made a minute mistake in a solo run. In reply, the violinist locked eyes and played the next repeat kind of as an in-your-face at the bass player. These were all really subtle things that we could never have noticed from further back, but it was fun for us to see how much fun they were having at a concert that for them I’m sure is just routine. When the piano player walked in for her piece, we immediately noticed her loud tread.  It sounded like she was stomping in to attract attention. She left the concert at intermission the same way…not sure if it was the shoes or if she just likes to make the grand entrances and exits. Either way, her playing was superb!

The Linguist and I have determined that we need to attend more concerts in the future…I’m sure they must have concerts like that at our smaller theater in Ferrara. Whether I can drag him to the opera again is another matter entirely…