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My train to Salzburg left Jena at 6am this morning... which meant that I needed to leave my flat at 5:10ish to catch the Strassenbahn to the station. It's a good thing I am used to getting up early for practice, but I still couldn't believe it when my alarm went off at 4:20. I'm sure it probably had something to do with the fact that I didn't get to bed until after 1...
The trip on the train went fairly smoothly with stops in Nürnberg and München. The time to get from my arrival track to my departure track in München was pretty short, so I was relieved that I had been to the München Hauptbahnhof before and knew the layout of the place. The ride from München to Salzburg was absolutely gorgeous; the Alps really are breathtaking, especially to a girl who grew up in flat Michigan. I was meeting my cousin's colleague Austin at the train station. He is working in Poland right now, so my cousin Lisa put us in touch via email and we planned a long weekend trip to the Alps. I had no idea what he looked like, but somehow we managed to find each other without a problem =]
We're staying at the YoHo Hostel, and let me just say that it is a HUGE improvement from the one Kate, Susanna, and I stayed at in Paris. They have an elevator, we're staying in the same room both nights, we have our own key, there are lockers, the bathrooms are inside, everything is clean, there is free WiFi, and I could go on and on but I think you get the point... It was getting close to 1, so after we dropped off our stuff in our room we decided to go look for a place for lunch. Believe it or not, I hadn't had coffee yet this morning, and man was I dragging...
We found a nice outside café in Universitätsplatz. I got my much-needed coffee and a salad and we chit chatted for a while. It's funny, I don't think it really dawned on me that I was meeting someone for a long weekend who I had never met and had never talked to before (aside from emails) until I got off the train in Salzburg and thought to myself "crap. What does he look like?" But Lisa was right, he is very nice and friendly and I am extremely jealous of his job. Getting paid to travel and work in Europe sounds like a pretty good deal to me...
After lunch, we decided to follow the Rick Steves' self guided tour of Salzburg that I had brought along. It was actually quite good, informative and easy to follow. It made me really regret not purchasing more Rick Steves' guidebooks before I left the States. I didn't realize it until I got to Germany and tried to purchase a guidebook for Florence, but you can't purchase Nookbooks outside of the US. Such a pain.
Rick took us to all the major sites in the Altstadt of Salzburg. We started with Mozartplatz, which has a statue of Mozart (of course) in the center. From there we walked through Residenzplatz, which is where one finds the Neue Residenz and Glockenspeil, Alte Residenz, and Salzburger Dom. We went it the cathedral first. It was a hot and sunny day outside, but cool inside the cathedral and that was definitely a relief. After checking out the main part of the cathedral and the crypt, we walked back to the Neue Residenz, which now houses the Salzburg Museum and Salzburg Panorama 1829 exhibit. We opted to just visit the panorama exhibit. In the 19th century, panorama paintings of great cities were quite popular. Salzburg's panorama was painted by Johann Micael Sattler and it is so realistic that it could pass for a photograph. After the exhibit we headed back past the cathedral and to Kapitelplatz with this golden orb thing and a little statue man standing on top. There was another levitating guy in this square, just like the one I saw in Krakow. I still have absolutely no idea how they manage to do it, but I am convinced there must be something attached from their knee to the ground. I think the next time I see one I'm going to get a kid to test out my theory. Euro bet? ;]
From Kapitelplatz we headed to St. Peter's cemetery. To the left of a cemetery is St. Peter's Bakerei, the oldest and best bakery in Salzburg. It smelled delicious, but I was still full from lunch so we didn't get anything. The film crew of the Sound of Music wanted to film the scenes where the Van Trapp family is hiding from the Nazis in this cemetery, but they couldn't get permission to do so, so they built a set modeled after the cemetery in Hollywood instead. Even though it wasn't where they actually shot the scenes, it still looked familiar from the movie. We walked past St. Peter's Church to Toscanini Hof, which is home to the 1925 Festival Hall where the von Trapp family performed, and then finished the tour at Universitätsplatz. After only getting a couple hours of sleep the night before and not having been able to sleep very well on the trains (still trying to master that one, but it has been proving difficult to tackle), I was pretty darn tired. Austin agreed that he could use a nap as well, so we headed back to the hostel for a quick catnap.
I made the mistake of not setting an alarm, so my cat nap turned into a 3 hour nap, but when I did wake up I felt a million times better. We were both rather hungry, so we found one of Rick's recommended restaurants on the map and headed in that direction. Unfortunately when we got there the kitchen was closed, but we found another outdoor Biergarten with meat, sauerkraut, and knodeln a couple blocks away. Even though I am living in Germany, I don't eat "German" food on a regular basis—in fact, it's more or less Italian food—so it was kind of nice to have a typical Austrian/German meal. After dinner we walked past Rick's recommended ice cream shop, and of course we couldn't resist getting a scoop. We were just kind of meandering and enjoying our ice cream cones when we stumbled upon Café Republic , one of the trendier bars Rick had recommended, so we decided to check it out.
It turns out that there is some sort of festival going on in Salzburg right now. I would say that we lucked out, but I'm fairly certain there is always some sort of festival going on in Salzburg. Anyway, Café Republic was hosting part of the festival, and there was DJ scheduled to play later that night. They were fun to listen to... of course there was the normal DJ, but he was also accompanied by a saxophone player. Later in the night, he swapped his saxophone for some sort of electronic clarinet/ alto clarinet thing, and it was really fun to listen to and watch. There really wasn't much of a dance floor, though, and both Austin and I thought it was kind of weird that they would have a DJ without dancing. About ten minutes after we said that we realized how it worked. As soon as a group left their table, one of the workers would swoop in and remove the table and chairs before anyone else could sit down. This process continued until there was enough room for dancing.
We didn't dance, but it was just as entertaining to watch. There was an older guy completely going crazy with the music, and his dance partner was almost as fun to watch, too. Along with normal remixes and mashups, they also did a dubstep version of the song in the Sound of Music that the Captain and Fraulein Maria dance to. It was awesome.
We didn't stay out too late. Even with the nap, we were both pretty tired. Plus we have a Sound of Music bike tour planned for tomorrow morning that I am really looking forward to. =]
Guten Nacht.
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