What a Beautiful City

The Bear Store!

Arriving in Salzburg was wonderful. The train ride was pretty and the transportation to our hotel went smoothly. It was snowing when we got there, and we were surrounded by mountains. I had missed mountains a lot more than I thought. Our ~~hostel~~ hotel was very very nice. also, that's right, it was a hotel and not a hostel! I greatly enjoyed the various differences between the two, although having to share one large bed with my roommate was a little awkward at first. After we got to our hotel, we all ventured into the city center to go exploring. It was beautiful; the snow was falling so slowly and the mountains were in view the whole time. I was perplexed by the giant castle-looking fortress atop the hill in the center of town. I had no idea what it was about and I wanted to go there. Luckily enough, we had a scheduled tour there just the next day. I knew before coming to Salzburg that it is the home of the Mozart family, but I did not know that it is also where The Sound Of Music takes place. More on all that later. At the end of our first day, we attended a dinner at a local winery that the Mozart family went to all the time. In between courses, live music was performed by people in classical costumes, all Mozart's works of course. It was a new and interesting experience.

Spire time

Clock Tower

The Cathedral Illuminating the snow :)

Dinner + Concert

Bell Tower

A Mighty Fortress is our God

Original building view from up top

Aaaaah, the fortress. My favorite parts of my free time on the trip have been when I have opportunities to go somewhere up high and look down at the city and surrounding landscape. I got that chance at the fortress. It was really cool being there, not just because of the nice views. It was a genuine fortress. It realized my dreams of feeling like I'm in the Princess Bride, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or even Shrek. A fortress. It has a lot of interesting history too, and it even plays music daily. It has a "barrel organ" that works kind of like a cross between a music box and a clock tower. The barrel organ plays a few times a day over the town as it did in the past to tell the people when it was time to work, eat, sleep, or go to church. It works automatically, as notches on a big spinning barrel control the tune similarly to how music boxes work. Additionally, trumpet duets play over the town at various times every day. I was lucky enough to hear one of the trumpet duets from down below, standing right outside of Nonnberg Abbey. The fortress was a really awesome experience, and something that I didn't know is that Nonnberg Abbey, which is on the same hill but lower, is the Abbey that Mari von Trapp is from in The Sound of Music and real life. I also took the opportunity to go there and check it out.

Panorama from a view point

The Abbey from above

The Cathedral from above

Nice View

The city from above

Another nice view
View from the Abbey

Iconic Doorway @Abbey

A Mighty Mountain

The next day, after going to Mass in the huge cathedral at the city center, we had this amazing experience. Untersberg, a huge and magnificent mountain always in the background of Salzburg. We were fortunate enough to have gondola tickets that took us right to the top of the mountain. It was insanely beautiful, and it completely blew my "going up high to see the sights" expectations out of the water. Definitely a highlight of the entire trip. It was indescribable. So I'm going to stop trying to use words to describe it:

A Mighty Mozart Mozart Mozart Mozart!

Mozart's birthday happened to be the very day we arrived in town. Everywhere had something to do with Mozart, although I suspect that is a year round occurrence and wasn't all just for his birthday. Anyhow, all of the music we heard in Salzburg was written by W.A Mozart. I was excited at first, all though to be perfectly honest, Mozart got old really quickly. We began with the Vienna Symphony, moved on to Mass at the huge Cathedral called "Domusik," then saw the last three concerts all at the same venue: Camerata Salzburg, Hagen Quartet, and the Mozarteum Orchestra. I hadn't listened to much Mozart before, but now that I have listened to so very much of him, I'd say he's actually not my favorite. He certainly has a particular style that's all his own, but frankly, almost all of the music I heard this week sounded the same. I didn't hear much that sounded super different, fresh, or new. And the music was about things I couldn't relate to that much. After all, it is music written by rich people for rich people about rich people events. I couldn't discern much emotion in the music besides posh and wealthy. I know I must sound really bad saying these things, but that's just truthfully how I feel about the music. That isn't to say that it's bad music, or that the ensembles didn't perform it well (they performed extremely well), I am just saying that I don't particularly care for it.