Salzburg, Austria

I’ve finally done it— instead of sitting in Klagenfurt all weekend, I traveled to Salzburg, Austria! Audrey, Amy, Sam, Joe, and Tommy went by train to Salzburg for 2 days. The forecast looked great, so we were all very excited but when we got there, we were greated with a constant rain! Only Joe had thought to bring an umbrella, so that was fun…. I got to buy an umbrella but, I suppose, there are worst things to have to buy. It was definitely worth it, as both days were a mixture of drizzle followed by constant downpour! There were only a few times that we were able to walk without an umbrella! So sad….but we still had a great time!

I think we all assumed we’d be able to pick up maps of the city at the train station but none of were able to find any… so we started our adventures randomly. We walked in whatever direction we were drawn to, I guess…but luckily, ended up pretty much exactly where we wanted to be! (Love that!!) We had lunch in a cute little café, and then as we were trying to find out how to go about getting to our Pension (guesthouse), we came upon a place that offers tours, which Amy, Audrey and I really wanted to do. We thought we had enough time before the tour to run to our Pension and put our bags down and get back for the tour, but after we got to the Pension and found a bus back into town, we missed the correct stop and were LITERALLY running through town and managed to get back to the meeting point for the tour with 3 minutes to spare. WHEW! The guys thought €24 was expensive for the tour, but it lasted an hour and a half and pointed out so many things that I would have had no idea about otherwise: Christian Doppler, who is credited with the Doppler Effect, was born in Salzburg; Albert Einstein presented on the theory of relativity at a congress meeting and it was one of the first times that Einstein received good reviews; etc. etc. The tour was also really nice because it was in a van—no walking around aimlessly in the rain!! Along with our tickets, we were able to go to the Mozart Wohnhaus Museum. Salzburg PROUDLY is home to both the birth house and residence of the Mozart family. There are museums in both houses, but we only went to the Wohnhaus. All of the family’s furniture has been lost over the years, but it was still soo incredible to read about W.A. Mozart, Leopold Mozart, and W.A.’s sister, Nannerl, who was also incredibly talented. The relationship between Wolgang Amadé Mozart and Franz Joseph Haydn was also really interesting to read about. I definitely wish I had kept studying piano over the years!!

All in all, I was really impressed with our trip. Some things didn’t go as smoothly as we would have liked, but what is a trip without a bit of that?! Our Pension was soo cheap (€28/person/night including breakfast!), and was actually really nice and cozy. We had a nice Chinese dinner, walked through the city and got to see some cool things, and to Amy’s joy, a lot of Sound of Music spots throughout the city! So, I think our trip was a total success and I cannot wait to go to Vienna, Venice, Berlin, etc. etc. etc.

Sorry that a lot of pictures don’t have explanations—the tour went so quickly that I cannot remember everything but… they’re still neat to see, I hope J