Fun with German!

Salzburg, Austria

There are places that you visit in this world that just speak to you. For us, Salzburg was one of those places. We arrived in Salzburg at around 11AM on Friday, the 26th of August. Because it was high season, we had to book hotels and trains in advance, so we had pre-determined that we would stay in Salzburg for only two nights. When we got off the train, my brother John left us to fend for ourselves while he took another train to the countryside. He had booked one of his crazy "thrill seeker" adventures. He was going to Zip Line down a mountainside face down, traveling at around 60 Mph for a distance of just over a mile. Not for the faint of heart, like me! So John was off to find adventure and Shaun and I were left to find out whether our few words of German were enough to get us around for the day.

When we came out of the train station, there was a little info/ticket booth with a friendly man in the booth waiting for a customer. We asked if he could speak English ("Sprechen Sie Englisch?"), and he said he could speak a little. We explained that we were only there for about 48 hours and we wanted to explore as much of the city as we could. The Salzburg card was his suggestion. I am always wary of these kinds of cards- sometimes they are a great deal, other times they get you entrance to a bunch of stuff you wouldn't want to do. The Salzburg card was a great deal. For 34 Euro a person you had unlimited public transportation throughout the city, plus free entrance to practically everything you could want to do in Salzburg for 48 hours. Considering the fact that our hostel was on the outskirts of town, we knew this card would save us boatloads of money.

And yes, I meant to type Hostel, not Hotel. Austria and Switzerland in high season are extremely expensive so we needed to find a way to do this on the cheap. There was a Meininger hostel in Salzburg that had just opened in the last year and got good reviews on Trip Advisor. Unlike some hostels which only have dormitory-style rooms, Meininger has single, double and triple rooms as well. Once we knew my brother was joining us, we decided to book a triple room, which basically brought the cost down to 30 Euro a night per person. When we checked in they mentioned that we had a handicapped room, which always means a large bathroom (for wheelchair accessibility). In this case the whole room was huge, the largest room I've ever had in Europe. Shaun and I took the pushed together twin beds that constituted the double and John, always a sport, was happy to take the top bunk of the bunk beds when he arrived. The room was spotless and the beds were comfy. All things considered, it was a great find.

Here is Shaun by the "Double", John by the bunks and me in the giant bathroom!

Meanwhile, John was barreling down the side of a mountain, and Shaun and I were falling in love with Salzburg. Using our Salzburg card, we jumped on the bus back into the city and set out to explore the city and find some lunch. You can usually tell by the subway map where to get dropped off. We hopped off at Mirabellplatz and started exploring. Salzburg is my favorite kind of city. Lots of narrow winding cobblestone streets between old beautiful buildings and a pretty green river splitting the "old town" from the new. The public transportation here is the bus system, which is well laid out and easy to understand. The German language not as easy to understand, but I'll get to that later.

I should preface this by mentioning the weather. It has been unseasonably hot here since we arrived and the first day in Salzburg was no exception. It was 93 degrees and humid as could be. I normally don't mind the heat but when you are sightseeing, it gets to be a bit much. We looked on the list of free sights on the Salzburg card and found we were right by the Museum of Modern art. The museum hovered above the city and had a beautiful shaded scenic overlook. It was the perfect place to hang out.

The view from the top of the Museum

We took the elevator up and took some photos from the overlook, then meandered back in to check out the art. I'm not a huge Modern Art fan, but one of the exhibits was really neat. It was described as "video portraits". There were people like Johnny Depp, Marianne Faithful and even Xioa Xzing posed in these crazy pictures and it was only if you stood there long enough and saw them blink or breathe that you could tell it was a video, not a painting. We checked those out for a while and made our way through some other exhibits, happy to be in the cool of the museum, when we turned a corner and came upon a Karaoke Room in the middle of the museum with a sign urging patrons to go in and have a go!

You may not know this, but I am a closet Karaoke fan and have been for years. Shaun was a novice until about a year ago when we went to Jamaica on a trip with college friends. It was Karaoke night at Sandals and I was up asking what songs they had when all of a sudden I heard a familiar voice belting out Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me". When I turned around, there was Shaun, mic in hand, shirt unbuttoned, doing his best impression of a sweaty 80's hairband singer. The crowd loved it, especially when he pulled off his shirt and started swinging it wildly above his head and doing high kicks along with the singing. I only wish he wasn't so shy.

So there we were in the Museum, singing Aerosmith's "Dream on" together in the privacy of the Karaoke booth and having a great time. Next I attempted Miley Cyrus, "Party in the USA" (because I am a very mature, serious woman) but it was going very badly. Who knew Miley could hit some difficult notes? So all of a sudden these two older Austrian women come in, and we offer them the microphones but they say they just want to watch. Well, I was done at that point but Shaun was now taking requests! So they asked him to do Bob Dylan, "Knockin on Heaven's Door", and he starts doing his best Dylan and I convince them to take the mike on the chorus. So there is Shaun, in the middle of the Museum of Modern art in Salzburg singing Knockin on Heaven's Door with two Austrian Women with thick German accents. I'm convinced that someday this will end up on a German TV show or as an exhibit in the museum...

After the Karaoke extravaganza, we were back out on the steamy streets and needed a pick me up so we stopped at a cafe and ordered Eiskaffe, which we assumed was iced coffee. We forgot that my brother had told us that ice and ice cream are the same words so we were quite surprised when the waitress brought us two coffees with a big scoop of ice cream in the middle and some kind of cookie across the top.

Enjoying our Eiskaffe

That should have been a sign about our lack of understanding of German, but we missed it. So when we decided to walk to the Hauptbahnhof (Central Train Station) to meet John, we started following signs that said Einbahn and had an arrow on them. It made perfect sense to me that since the central trains stations in every city are called Hauptbahnhof, and the German rail service is Deutche Bahn, that Einbahn with an arrow must mean "To Trains" Right???

Well we followed those Einbahn signs for about 15-20 minutes. They were everywhere! It wasn't until we came across two in the same area pointing in different directions that we realized I may have made a bad assumption. At that point we were already late to meet John and had no way to contact him, so when a pretty college student from Iceland stopped and offered us a deal to take us to Hauptbahnhof on her pedi cab, we jumped at the chance. We later found out from John that the Einbahn signs we had been following really said "One Way", something that seems fairly obvious in retrospect.

Einbahn- Just follow the arrows, right??

That evening we had a traditional Austrian meal, meat with mushroom gravy for John and I, goulash for Shaun and some Austrian wine. We headed back to the hostel pretty early. We knew it would rain the following afternoon and we were going to try to fit in as much as we could in the morning. We were also quite tired from the heat and the travel.

The next day the we woke up a little later than we had wanted and it was already raining by the time we left the hostel. It had also turned much colder- only about 50 degrees. I had really wanted to do a Sound of Music tour, but the one we wanted was a bike tour so we scrapped the idea. We headed into town to the market square and ate some yummy ham sandwiches for breakfast with fresh raspberries we bought at one of the fruit stands. Some coffees at a cafe and we were ready to go!

Shaun buying raspberries at one of the fruit and vegetable stands at the Marketplace

We took the number 25 bus way out of town to a Village called Grodig, home of the Untersburg mountain and the cable car that takes you to the top of said mountain. It should be said that I am afraid of heights so I was not exactly looking forward to this. But it was pouring rain, it was free (the Salzburg card) and Shaun and John thought it would be cool so I just tried not to think about it too much. Well let me tell you, that is easy to do on the ground, but not when are you going up 1776 meters in a cable car and you pass beyond the cloud cover! I thought I was going to Sheisse my Leiderhosen if you know what I'm saying! Once you arrive at the summit, they let you out at the top where they have a little cafe. We had a quick cup of coffee before making the descent and then attempted to find lunch, but no luck. It was that crazy time between 2 and 5 that many restaurants in Europe close down. We will have to keep a better eye on that it the future. All we could find at that hour were coffee and sweets. So it was one more cup of coffee and a piece of Sacher Torte and we were back on Bus 25 heading to the Hellebrun Palace.

The clouds were dense but that is another cable car making it's descent next to us!

The Hellebrun Palace was nice, but the big draw is the "trick fountains" and the gimmick on the tour is that they actually try to get people wet. Most folks were enjoying this, but we were pretty cold and soaked already, so we left the tour a little early and headed back to the hostel to change into dry clothes. By now we were pretty hungry so we said we would go directly to dinner, but first we had to stop at Mirabelle Gardens so I could pay homage to Julie Andrews. I found the passage that Maria comes through when she first goes to meet the Von Trapps and made Shaun and John video tape me as I twirled and whirled and sang the chorus of "I have confidence in me!" It was awesomely cheesy and embarrassing and I would do it again in a heartbeat!!

All of us in Mirabelle Gardens and a photo of my Ode to Maria Von Trapp

Once again we set out for dinner, and once again we were waylaid. As we were walking along on a main street, we passed a small archway on our left. Beyond the archway we could see there was a steep little street that had stairs built into the sidewalk. We had no idea where it led, but we had to investigate. The street and sidewalk stairs went up about a half mile and led to some absolutely stunning overlooks. By now, the weather had completely cleared up so we took some great pictures before heading back down. After so many detours we were ravenous, so we settled in at a little restaurant for "Schnitzel with Noodles" and a few beers before heading back to the Hostel for our last sleep in Salzburg.

Views from the scenic overlook

Shaun and I have already decided that we want to come back.

Auf Weidersein Maria! Bless your homeland forever.