So what is there to see in Salzburg? Mozart and The Sound of Music. Salzburg is the birthplace of music composer and pianist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and is where the classic movie The Sound of Music was filmed at.
Since we only had a day there, we skipped The Sound of Music part and went in pursuit of Mozart's heritage... Mainly his residence and birthplace - modern and tradition, and the Mozartplatz, where you'll find the tourist information. The Mozartplatz is near the Salzburg Cathedral and the Salzburg Musuem, where there's a huge compound holding yet another Xmas market.
While I'm not a fan of his, my dearie is. But I have I say I did enjoy seeing my over zealous wifey being wowed by almost everything on display - like his personal piano (reverse keys, the flats and sharps are white in color instead) and violin. What I didn't like was how difficult it was to steal a shot of the exhibition pieces (since no photos were allowed).
Till this day, I still don't understand why some of these tourists attractions don't allow photography. Most places don't allow flash photography, which I understand why... Something to do with "flashing off the quality", but why charge tourists to enter museums where you don't allow them to take any photos? We all know it's inevitable, in this modern day and age, a photo is just a snap away from an innocent looking iPhone or Samsung. And taking photos is a way of publicizing the place is it not? Ah... I think I got the answer. Because some money leeches who owns the place know that the postcard photos are of extremely bad quality and color so they leave u no option of producing better ones... And the only way to keep a physical memory of it is to purchase those poorly taken and mass produced postcards... Yes, I'm sore about it. It wasn't just Mozart's museums, the Neuschwanstein, the Uffizi and even the Sistine Chapel. I mean if they wanna prevent any photo taking, at least produce more decent postcards for christ's sake! Not 150 dpi-like over contrasted photos?! High res! High res! Geeeezzeeeee!!
Nuff with my rattling. Lemme take a breather... Ok, where was I? Anyways, what I liked about Salzburg is that the city centre is next to a cliff. Some of the buildings are even embedded into them, and yes, they lead into the cliffs. Even though we didn't enter any of them, we did enter a pedestrian tunnel which runs through it. And surprisingly, there were retail shops and even a huge carpark in the cliff! After ending up on the other side of the cliff, we realised there was nothing much to see anyways and headed back. It was more "rural" in a sense.
There was also a castle at the top of the cliff, Festung Hohensalzburg, which we could take a domestic tram up, but because we didnt have much time to explore it the next morning, we decided to walk up instead. Along the way, there were many scenic spots overlooking parts of the city and we caught a view of Salzburg Cathedral, even managed to get a good look at some unknown majestic mountains not too far away. The castle requires tickets as well, so we reached the highest foc (free-of-charge) point (another entrance into the castle, the other being the one which is led up by the tram I think) and bailed.
It was at the base of the castle, where St. Peter's Abbey (and Cemetary) was located that I tried the best bread in Europe. Soft, aromatic, freshly made from this old school bakery that even had a watermill just outside of it. The door was made of solid heavy wood, and the interior was reminiscence of old school bakery, ovens, bread trays, huge machinery.
It was so sedap that we went back to get more bread after walking like 20 steps onwards... And when I first sunk my teeth in, I knew... I've found the one, the one "Mian Bao" no Singapore bakery can top.
We also visited the Mirabell Gardens, both in the night, and day. It was one of the shot locations of The Sound of Music. It was nice, no doubt, but not fantastic. However, there's a scenic spot which frames both the Gardens and Hohensalzburg in the background, a shot worth making a trip down for.
At night, the fountain over there, the one with the statue of what looked like the Pegasus was frozen. Wanting to know how thick the ice was, my dear threw her first coin of our Honeymoon into the fountain... hilariously with much force. She must have thought the frozen water could have fossilized fishes but it seemed only the surface was frozen. Thankfully it wasn't an expensive "discovery" with the 1 cent coin I passed her...
While there didn't seem much to see or do in Salzburg, a couple of interesting sights was the Makartsteg Bridge, Salzburg's very own lover's bridge, which crosses a river called the Salzach (plays an important role in Salt transportation up to the late 18th century). It allows its pedestrians to witness a beautiful view of the city on one side and Prague Monastery (sitting on a hill) on the other. Also, another interesting sight was that we saw many young beggars there. Very young ones, like mid 20s or so. Not sure why this is so, because Salzburg didn't feel like such a poor city...
We even came across a restaurant which claims to be Europe's oldest restaurant! The Mozart family supposedly used to dine there quite often and the restaurant offered a special Mozart dinner concert that night which we were terribly tempted to splurge on. However, we managed to walk it off after our visit to his birthplace and residence.
What I liked about Salzburg is that it's a small cosy city set in a beautiful backdrop of mountains. Despite the lack of numerous attractions, there was something poetic about that place... perhaps ironically thanks to the locals over-milking Mozart so much so that despite seeing him in all shapes, sizes, forms and distortions, we never got sick of it and it felt like Mozart was there with us every step along the way.
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| One of the many small streets |
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| Statue sighted in the compounds of Prague University |
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