Salzburg

the town of mozart and the sound of music. on our way on eurobus, leaving venice and crossing the boarder to austria and going back to the german language. peter, our bus driver, popped in the sound of music, which we all (well...not all) enjoyed. let's just say there was some singing along.

it was hot in salzburg. i had pants on on the bus and immediatly changed to shorts and was out the door in about 15 minutes. dennis and i decided to take a walk towards the city center and i tried to track down a bank that would let me use my credit card and 2 forms of id to take money out, since i didn't have my pin code for the atm. no luck. jaime and carly m. eventually met up with us and we walked until we found shops and the city center. we stumbled upon a magnificent water fountain and sat next to it, waiting for the wind to pick up and sent drops of water our way. from there we hit up the post office for phone cards and post cards and then we made our way to a square with a small market and lots of people playing chess. there were huge lifesize chess boards and people playing small ones. we even had a piano player over to the side who did requests. jaime and dennis played a huge game of chess and many people came over to watch, which was really neat. i think jaime won...i don't remember. after some more window shopping we made our way back to our hotel for supper. after some food, a group of us got together to "go up the mountain," as there is a big mountain fortress pretty much right in the middle of the city. so dennis, jaime, jill, steph, silus and myself take off and eventually find a funicular up to the mountain, where they happen to be having a mozart concert going on in the castle. it was pretty empty up at the castle, which made it more enjoyable for searching around and enjoying the fantastic views from uptop. it was amazing. eventually steph and i got lost from the group uptop and after about 20 minutes ran into them again. there was a restaurant up there also, so some of the group got drinks and we sat by ourselves, except one other group of 3 guys, looking out over the city, enjoying each others company. eventually the other group looks up at us and asks where we were from. "minnesota" we tell them. "no way! we're from minnesota, too!" what a coincidence that the only other people up there were from minnesota! apparently these 3 guys were playing american football over here (well, really in germany) and 1 of them was coaching young kids too. we ended the night walking down the mountain, instead of taking the funicular, and jaime with his aviator sunglasses, singing top gun songs to us the whole way down. it was so much fun. we also got scared by this statue that looked strickingly real as it sat over in the shadows until jaime threw a coin at it and we were all much better after we heard the coin clank against the metal of the statue. steph also ended up giving jaime a piggy back ride for much of our walk. all in all...it was a pretty fun night.

the next day we woke up and loaded the bus with luggage and then were on our way for our salzburg tour. we saw sights from the sound of music, which causes many re-enactment pictures and we also saw mozarts gebertshaus (birth house) and did a little bit of shopping. some people bought mozart balls but my big buy was my music box that plays edleweiss and has edleweiss on the front of it. i played it a couple of times straight, it's such a pretty song. after a tour of mozart's church, where he was baptised and were he and his father played these magnificent organs (there was 5 organs in the church and the tour guide explained how the back organ, mozarts organ, was so hard to play as it takes 3 seconds for the sound from that organ to reach the other 4 at the front of the church and how the other 4 players had mirrors set up by their music so they could see the rest of the organ players) we were back on the bus. we watched salzburg fade away, drove past the huge abbey where maria got married on the sound of music, and then were on our way to vienna.