Salzburg

Last weekend I decided to take a trip to Salzburg with a few of my friends from the program. It was to be our first free weekend (and only free weekend in the foreseeable future) so we leapt at the chance. 

Bavaria has this fantastic travel deal called the Bayern Ticket. It allows up to five people to take any regional train anywhere within the state of Bayern (and, as it so happens, to one city in Austria) in any twenty-four hour period. Thus, total cost of travel ended up being somewhere around 12 EUR per person. The Youth Hostel we found online ended up being a great choice. Since there were five of us, we opted for the cost-efficient eight-person room. And, lucky us! we only ended up with one person we didn't know sharing the room with us. We dubbed him "Hobbit Man" because he appears to have spent much of his time in Salzburg laying on his bed in the hostel reading Tolkein's The Hobbit. And he also had hairy feet. 

The train ride from Regensburg to Salzburg was a short two and a half hours, with only one changeover. The scenery was breathtaking - I was glad to be on a slower train so that I could take it all in. There was snow blanketing the ground the entire way, and we would come across quaint little villages every time we dipped into a valley or climbed a hill. Centuries-old churches stood wise and proud as we passed by, their deep bells inaudible over the rumbling of the train engine.

We arrived in Salzburg around 5 that evening and managed to get from the train to the correct bus to the hostel without any side adventures. After settling in, we decided to explore the area around the hostel for a bit, grab dinner and then head back to the lobby for the evening's showing of The Sound of Music. Erwin, Heather and Anya were planning to go on the "Sound of Music Tour" the next day, and they wanted to be up to speed on the locations in the movie so they could compare them to the tour sites the next day. 

Deciding that our $40 could be better spent elsewhere (giant chocolate pretzel!), Leigh and I chose to do some exploring in the Altstadt on Saturday morning while we waited for the others to finish their four-hour tour. We started out at 9 am, trudging out of the hostel and into a heavy snowfall. The city was hushed; a thick sheet of snow on the ground from the night before muffled the sound of our walking. No snow had been cleared, and we found ourselves trespassing in a crystal white world. 

The first place we stumbled upon in the Altstadt was the open air market. Vendors were just throwing open shutters on their trailers and setting out the goods for the day as we arrived. Because it was the off-season for travel, Leigh and I had the feeling that we were the only tourists nearby, so we did our best to blend in among the people of Salzburg and get a taste for the everyday life of the city.

We spent the rest of the morning wandering around crooked streets and exploring every alleyway that aroused our curiosity. We discovered a cemetery with graves dating back to the early 1700s and catacombs looming high above us, carved into the side of a massive cliff. We went into the Salzburg cathedral, a baroque wonder with gilded ceilings and mosaic tiled floors. We sat and thawed our feet in a tiny café, and were given a Baumkuchen to sample from an Austrian man excited to practice his English on us.  That evening (Valentine's Day), we went to a Mozart concert performed in a baroque palace by just two violins, a viola, and a cello. 

Sunday morning we got up early, checked out of the hostel, and headed up to the fortress of Salzburg, which is perched high above the city and visible from almost any street corner. We took a cable car to the top and were free to wander the snowy grounds and peek into the alternating stark and opulent rooms of the castle. That afternoon we caught the train back to Regensburg, feeling like accomplished travelers who had just seen a little bit more of the world.