Ok so fair warning, Gang. The hotel we were in in Salzburg was a dump with no climate control and very bad beds so I haven’t slept in three days. We spent six hours on a train today and just had dinner (at which I had wine) and the lavishly amazing Hotel Kempinski Corvinus sent a bottle of sparkling wine up to our room (when they heard they were the last stop on our four year delayed honeymoon tour) which I am now drinking.
Don’t expect high poetry. Hell, don’t even expect punctuation.
So I was trying to decide which picture to use for my “headline” that best expresses Salzburg and our last day there and it came down to these two:
There you go, Salzburg in a nutshell.
I wanted to like Salzburg more than I did. In the interests of complete honesty, this may have had something to do with the lousy weather (the sun never shone on Salzburg, not once) and the horrible hotel (that probably would have been less horrible if all the other places we stayed weren’t so wonderfully un-horrible) than it did the charms of Salzburg itself but looking back over the whole trip so far, I just can’t recommend the city. The Salzkammergut? Heck yeah. The Tirol? Of course, if you promise to stay at Gasthof Badl. The rest of Austria? Probably so. But unless you really like Mozart, really like the Sound of Music (and the local Salzburgers don’t get the hype. The VonTrapp family didn’t escape Salzburg in the night, they took a train to Italy like most rich folks did to escape the Nazis) or have some form of Salzheimers (credit to Jim for that one) maybe you give it a wide berth.
Or do what we did, and have some Schnapps.
Mirabell Gardens. The attached palace is used for Mozart concerts.
We walked around Salzburg in the rain most of the day, taking another one of Rick Steves audio walking tours that we downloaded to our phones. It gave another good overview of the city and it’s political and historical heritage, and as with all Rick Steves tours, was heavy on the churches. Or as Jim put it “Kirche, Kirche, Kirche, Kirche, Biergarten, Kirche.” He’s pretty funny after two beers and a glass of Schnapps.
That was pretty cool. The statue in front of the church is situated so that if you stand in the center of the archway leading into the square it looks like Mary is being crowned by the two cherubs on the facade of the Cathedral. Thanks Rick Steves!
It was Jim who noticed that the stumbling stones we learned about in Berlin were here in Salzburg too (we also saw some in Munich, and in Hall in Tirol). These were outside St Peters church and indicate the deportation and murder of a priest and a monk. (The monk, Jakob’s, stone says he was “in resistance” working against the Nazis when he was deported to KZ-Ravensbruck.)
But if you ask Jim, the best thing about Salzburg was this:
Those are OBB employees linking up the parts of Railjet 63, or as Jim put it “the Salzburg Escape Express.” The Railjet service from Salzburg is actually made up of a train from Munich and one from Zurich which are linked up in Salzburg and then travel together as far as Vienna. Then they are split again and the second train continues on to Budapest.
It was really cool to watch the two trains link up together, and the whole Railjet trip was the nicest high speed rail experience we had. The first class cabin was comfortable, and the service attentive, we had free internet for the Austrian legs, and the food was really good.
Jim’s tikka masala and another Zugbier! I had a sandwich that was not as photogenic.
We are in Budapest now, enjoying the luxury of what is by far the nicest hotel we have stayed at (this was intentional as Budapest is our last stop.). Tomorrow we have an eight hour private tour with a local guide that should take us through most of the city highlights. We are looking forward to getting out and seeing this beautiful, historic city.
More tomorrow, live from Budapest!
Posted with Blogsy
Recent Comments