The Hills Are Alive! Spring Break Stop #2: Salzburg/Salzbourg

It took about 6 ½ hours by train to get to Salzburg, during which I spent a lot of time listening to folk-y music and doodling in my journal. I actually really enjoy taking trains in Europe because I tend to listen to Mumford and Sons songs (or something along those lines) and they just fit so perfectly with the European countryside passing by through the window. <3

Sitting on the train.

We got into Salzburg and got a bit lost with the busses so it took us a while to find the hostel. Once we did we were starving but thank goodness there was a MacDo nearby for us to eat a ton of food from.

The next day we took a Sound of Music Tour, which was one of the biggest highlights of the time we spent there. But instead of just taking us around to the Mirabelle Gardens and the steps from the movie, they told us where we could find them on our own, and then drove us out into the mountains where a lot of the opening shots for the movie were filmed. My goodness was it GORGEOUS. On top of that they actually played music from the movie during the drive and we all sang along which was pretty great. We ended up getting some time to check out this tiny little town called “Mondsee” where we all got some apple strudel at this place our tour guide recommended. I got mine with half vanilla sauce and half ice cream. Plus we made a stop at the famous gazebo, which was the photo in the second to last post.

View from Mondsee!

The Gazebo from the Sound of Music!

After that we decided to wander around on foot. We found the Mirabelle Gardens and pretty much had no other option but to sprint and dance around and be incredibly tourist-y. But it was super worth it.

We then made our way to the fortress which is actually the oldest medieval fortress in Europe (if not the world?). We took this funny elevator thing up to it and then wandered around and checked out the museums.

I got to try “Bosna” which is a super popular snack. It’s made of two sausages with onions, mustard, and curry powder on top! For dinner we had schnitzel and fries at the biggest beer-hall in the town which was a fun experience. We were pretty tired from all of the travel so we called it a night after that.

Bosna!

The next day we awoke and got some pastries at a random “bakerie” which we then proceeded to eat with some coffee at a café outside of Starbucks! Which was actually really cool and I wish the Starbucks in the U.S. were more like that. We literally had a waiter come take our Starbucks order and we sat outside of Mozart’s birth-house and drank our coffee. Also mine was about the size of my face and was loaded with whipped cream soo I could get used to that.

My Starbucks with Mozart's house in the background...
And my friend Melinda.

We used our Salzburg passes (cost about 24 euros for 24 hours of transportation and entry into pretty much anything you wanted) to check out Mozart’s birth-house which was significantly more interesting to me than I expected it to be. We got to go in the actual room he was born in and see his childhood violin on display. Also, my favorite part was reading a letter from him to his wife. I loved it because he sounded like such a normal guy dealing with a lot of the same things we do today. He opened the letter by apologizing for not writing earlier but they had had problems on the road and got there (wherever it was) later than expected. He asked how the kids were and hoped they were behaving. And on top of that he wrote about half a page about how much he loved and missed her—it was pretty adorable.

Bretzels!

We pretty much spent the afternoon doing some shopping before getting a real Austrian dinner at an Augustiner. We all got different dishes and ended up passing our plates so we could try everything! I had ordered this “Farmer’s Plate” that had sausage, smoked pork neck, some other kind of pork, dumplings, potatoes, and sauerkraut (which was actually pretty decent!). Oh and they brought us pretzels instead of bread which was pretty great.

My dinner. Soo good.

We walked around and checked out the city that night, but didn’t stay out too late since the next day at 12h00 we had to be on a train headed to our final stop: Munich! And since there wasn’t a ton of time to head into town in the morning, we just took our time getting ready so we’d have lots of energy once we landed in Germany! We got MacDo for breakfast—don’t judge us too harshly, fast food is very non-existent in Cannes, and the MacDos are different in every country so it’s kind of fun. Anyways, I had spent more time learning Czech phrases than German and ended up accidentally ordering 2 breakfasts with a cappuccino and a tea when I thought I had ordered orange juice. Oops. So that was a funny note to end on. Then we said “our feet are the same” to Salzburg, as our tour guide has taught us, and were on our way to Munich.

The river that runs through the middle of Salzburg.