Salzburgers

Another day, another city, another blog post yakking on about my recent travel in Europe. Today's city of focus is Salzburg, known by tourists (as judged by the tours and souvenirs available) only for two things: Mozart and The Sound of Music. However, in addition to this, it is just a fun, little town with lovely scenery and some of the best pretzels I have yet eaten. Before we got to Salzburg however, we had to take a 5 hour train ride through Switzerland and western Austria. Needless to say the scenery was stunning.

This is somewhere in Switzerland. Or possibly Austria. I was more interested in studying the scenery than understanding the in-train electronic map.

This was definitely in Switzerland. The scenery just outside of Zurich is breathtaking. Believe it or not, I have many more of these train photos (it was the most interesting thing to do for 5 hours), but I'm sparing you some of the more blurry, obviously-shot-from-a-high-speed-vehicle shots. On to Salzburg!

The obligatory group shot. The issue with taking these is that now our faces are obscuring the beautiful thing we were trying to photograph ourselves in front of. Oh well, at least we all look good. You can see what was behind us in the shot below.

We declined to go on an official Sound of Music tour because members of our party were either apathetic toward the movie or not wholly convinced they had ever seen it. Instead we just wandered around on our own. We did visit this stop that would have been on the tour though. Apparently the Mirabell Gardens were where Maria and the kids sang "Do Re Mi." Didn't seem familiar to me, but they sure were lovely gardens.

After our jaunt through film history, we arrived at our real destination: Brau Mulln, the largest beer garden in Austria. Astorian readers will note that, other than obviously being larger and having more individual tables, it bares a resemblance to our own Bohemian Beer Hall and Garden. The difference is they only had one kind of beer which they served you out of giant casques. You got a mug and were supposed to rinse it in this well fountain before handing it to the beer guy. 

While at the beer garden, we also feasted. Salzburg had some excellent pretzels. We also got a sausage that oozed with cheese. I'm not sure what it's called because we were operating under the point-at-what-looks-good method or ordering, but it sure was tasty.

A large cathedral in Salzburg (it's actually called the Salzburg Cathedral or, in German, Salzburger Dom). It didn't seem like a proper trip to Europe post unless I had a least one cathedral interior shot.

This fountain is clearly a step up from my fountain of choice in Zurich. 

We took a funicular up to that fortress on the hill. It's called Hohensalzburg Fortress and it is apparently one of the largest medieval castles in Europe.

Naturally, from the fortress there were some excellent views of the city. Instead of showing one of my overdone "views of Salzburg" shots, I chose this one of the countryside because for some reason the tiny houses look fake to me. Is that a camera setting? How can I replicate that? 

The fortress interior. We walked around for a bit. Saw the museum. Some of us got ice cream. Others shot crossbows. It was a lovely day for all. 

You might think this is just a terrible picture of Mozart's birthplace, but I have my reasons. Mostly I just wanted to document the fact that his boyhood home now lies next to an H&M.

That's about it for Salzburg (we were really only there one night). Tomorrow, I will return with photos of the final leg of our trip: Vienna!