When we left Zurich we headed straight for Munich, but we visited Berlin after traveling through Austria and the Czech Republic, so I'll lump all of Germany into one post later. For now, let's talk about AUSTRIA. It has been our dream for a long time to travel to all the Sound of Music sites in Salzburg and listen to classical music in the streets of Vienna, and we made. it. happen.
I've mentioned a couple of times that budget traveling is not luxury traveling, and never was that sentiment more true than when we visited Salzburg. When our train pulled into the station, it was POURING rain, and our CouchSurfing host met us at the station and WALKED us back to his place, which was like 3 miles away. Upon arriving, he handed us a couple of floor mats, pillows, and blankets and sent us to his second apartment in the same building, which was COMPLETELY empty. He was so generous to allow us to stay at his place, but because he was packing up to leave on a two-week biking trip the next morning, he needed all the space in his studio apartment to pack. So there we were, soaking wet, sleeping on the hardwood floor of a random apartment in Austria, listening to the pouring rain and wondering how in the world we got there.
To make matters a little worse, the next day was Hayden's 25th birthday! It's pretty unfortunate to wake up on a hardwood floor on your birthday, but we tried to make the most of the rainy Salzburg day. We started the morning with a nice rainy run into town where we rented a couple of bikes and followed our own Sound of Music tour around the beautiful city.
Obviously, we stopped at this pretzel stand. How do you just pass this kind of thing up? Soooo many pretzels of all different types...
Our first stop was the Mirabell Gardens. This is the location where most of the "Do Re Mi" song was filmed. On the right below those hedges is that fun little tunnel they all run through. And check out the view of the castle behind us! Sooo pretty.
Next up, we rode to the Schloss Leopoldskron, the Von Trapp mansion. Even on a dark and rainy day, how pretty is this?? The children all fall out of the canoe while in this little pond. It is now a hotel, and a different building from the one where Maria arrives during her "I Have Confidence" song, which was our next destination...
Rest assured we were singing ALL. DAY. LONG.
And then there was the famous gazebo! Obviously, this one is much smaller than the one they actually danced around inside, but the outside is actually pictured in the movie. And how appropriate that Hayden was going on 25 that day!
We did some more biking around that day until the rain started coming down HARD. Honestly, it was kind of a nice excuse to spend the evening back at the apartment (at this point our host had left and allowed us to stay in his fully-furnished apartment...what a nice guy!). When dinner time rolled around, Hayden chose the most American restaurant in town, a 50's themed diner with burgers and fries and milkshakes.
Not pictured: a slice of the most famous (and maybe the most expensive) cake in the world, the 7 euro slice of Sachertorte. Sort of just a dry chocolate cake, but hey, it's all about the novelty, right?
The next day we continued our little tour. Salzburg is amazingly beautiful, wow. I didn't know it rained there like allll the time, but it gave me a better appreciation for "My Favorite Things."
Here's the cemetery where the Von Trapps hid.
And I believe this is the view from the abbey.
This one isn't in the film, although it definitely should be.
For the rest of the day, we just explored the pretty little town and had a wonderful time sampling cheeses and pastries. We even got to tour Mozart's house, and it was so fun to listen to the music and take the audio tour. I think I gained a whole new appreciation for classical music, especially after visiting Vienna, which was our next destination!
Since our FlixBus canceled on us, we had to scramble to find a ride to Vienna. Luckily we found a BlaBla car, but the 2.5-hour car ride turned into about 5 because we hit traffic from an accident that put us at a standstill for sooooo long.
When we finally got to Vienna, we headed right for downtown to start exploring!
WOW, Vienna is a beautiful city. So neat and clean and FILLED with music. It's easy to picture the early musical geniuses coming to this city on the banks of the Danube to write such timeless pieces. We didn't get many pictures of the city itself (shame on us) but we did try to take full advantage of the musical concerts that were going on. On that first night there, we stumbled into the crypt of a church and asked if we could watch the second half of a concert that had already started. The guy taking tickets was so chill, and honestly probably so pleased to see two young people so interested in opera music, so he led us into one of the most masterful opera concerts either of us had ever attended. Seriously so beautiful.
After the concert, we wandered around the beautifully lit streets until we heard what sounded like Indiana Jones music blaring from somewhere nearby. We followed the sound to the town hall where they had their summer music festival going on. We were lucky enough to be there on the night they broadcast a live concert by John Williams. We got to sit and eat Wiener schnitzel (which is just basically fried pork...I had no idea) and listen to music from Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Schindler's List, and so many others with sound quality that was just as good as actually being in the concert hall. It was truly an unforgettable night.
And here's us with that Wiener schnitzel.
The next day we went to mass to listen to the church's choir (not that we didn't go for the spiritual messages, it's just that everything was in German sooo). Here is the interior of St. Stephen's...nothing new here. I feel bad saying it, but most of the cathedrals we saw are kind of just blurred together in my head...whoops. But the music! It was so beautiful, so peaceful, and it had been so long since we'd been to a choral concert so it was really refreshing.
Every time Hayden sees this picture he just says, "Uhhhh that was so good." This is a famous Viennese apple strudel in a famous Viennese café, the only apple pastry that can rival my grandma's apple pie. What I'd give for one of THESE right now!
Also, note how fancy it is in there...cafés like this are on every corner in Vienna. The Viennese are obviously known for being over-the-top fancy.
Speaking of over-the-top fancy, I added: "Attend a Viennese Ball" to my bucket list after touring the Opera house and hearing about how extravagant the annual ball celebrations are. Doesn't that sound so fun?! It's actually not terribly expensive to attend one, and they're all over the city at different times during the year. What a fun excuse to fly to Austria and get really fancy.
And here's the interior of the Vienna Opera House. The building was pretty badly destroyed in WWII, but it's been rebuilt and it's just so, so beautiful.
And speaking of WWII, this was pretty interesting. Our hotel was in the Jewish Quarter of the city, so as we were leaving one day we saw a huge crowd of Jewish people who were probably just finishing their worship services. It hit me how strange it would be to be a Jew walking the streets of a city whose Jews were once almost completely exterminated. There are little plaques like this one all over the place marking the homes where Jews lived before they were taken to concentration camps, and they're slightly raised up purposely to trip people and remind them of the horrors of the Holocaust. We saw the same plaques in Munich, Berlin, and Amsterdam as well, and I'm sure they're all over the place reminding passersby to never forget the victims and to never let what happened during WWII happen ever again.
That second night we went to yet another concert in the same crypt as the night before, this time a Clair de Lune concert by a pianist and violinist. That did my heart so much good. I don't think I'd ever heard the piece performed live, and it was extra special after learning the piece myself a few years ago. Amazing.
On our last day just before we caught our train to Prague, we visited the second of the three great Palaces of Europe: The Schönbrunn Palace. Again, I'm really glad we had an audio tour to give us a little more context. It was especially interesting learning about the Habsburgs because they also ruled in Spain for so long. And of course, the grounds were really beautiful. Austria really knows how to keep their grass really beautifully manicured.
I'm so glad we decided to visit Vienna. Originally, we were either going to skip it for Venice or Budapest, but it lined up better than Venice and Budapest was out of the question. Since Americans were barred from entering Europe, Hungary took that as an excuse to not allow ANY Americans to cross their borders, even the ones who had been in Europe for the whole pandemic (I guess they really hate Americans). Our friends the Deans had flown there from Madrid and were forced to buy a rental car and drive out of the country...yiiiikes. We'll go another time though, for sure!
Just before we left, we got one more Italian pizza (since we were finally leaving the proximity of Italy and figured we had one last chance to have real Italian pizza) and headed to the train station! Originally we planned to visit Budapest, but since Hungary wouldn't let Americans in regardless of their European visa status (our friends made that mistake...yikes) we had to forego that dream and visit the next beautiful city down the road: PRAGUE.
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