The European Extravaganza!

Raindrops on Roses... No longer one of our favourite things

The train to Salzburg was pretty uneventful, except that we had some weird Asians sitting next to us. One girl had the most annoying voice known to mankind (a breathy, baby, cryptkeeper type voice) and was a human bottle opener as she used her teeth to open a bottle that should not even be a twist off. Scary! Also, the woman across the aisle ate an entire package of coldcuts in like, 2 minutes, all before 7 am. Impressive!

We had absolutely no difficulty finding YoHo Hostel from the trainstation. Maybe it was the mountains rising up as we walked, but Salzburg immediately seemed far better than Vienna. We pretty much dropped our bags on the bed after checking in and then hauled ourselves back to the train station so that we could get on a train to Werfen to visit the Ice Caves. We verified with 2 different rail officials that we were on the right train, and they even announced the station in English when we arrived (which we believe was entirely for our benefit).

With little difficulty, we found the stop for the bus that would take us up the mountain to parking lot from where there was a 20 minute walk to the cable car. What neither of us knew was that the walk was almost entirely vertical... Thanks for neglecting to share that bit of information with us, Fil. Perhaps luckily, an Australian guy named Andrew had befriended us at the bus stop (note: we don't seek these people out. Rather, friends just seem to gravitate towards us), and neither Laura nor I wanted to look like wimps or seem whiny, so we sucked it up and continued to drag ourselves, keeled over, up the mountain while fit Austrian children skipped along merrily. Weezing and red faced, we reached the cable car (amazingly in about 20 minutes... all thanks to Andrew). The trip was short but fun.... except when we looked up and found we were not at the cave entrance, but had another 20 minute hike ahead of us. What the hell? They don't tell you about that walk until you have paid your €17, or else we would have turned around and lied about going into the caves since you can't take pictures anyway. Also: Andrew. When we finally reached the caves, we had to fight our way past some German kids who were blocking the entrance, and then waited for our tour to start. Our guide had previously been rude to us when we had mistakenly attempted to enter through the entrance, so we were a bit wary of what was to come.

Before entering the cave, they handed out lanterns (real ones! with fire!), that every few people were supposed to carry. Thankfully, they ran out right after they gave one to Andrew who was in front of us, meaning he carried it so we could use our hands for the railings. Another cruel trick they played, was informing us that we would continue to climb upward, but this time in the dark and the cold. Thanks for mentioning that part Fil.... oh wait. You did not. Also, all the pictures on the website only show the flat parts of the cave... not the 1400 stairs you travel over. Clearly that is misrepresentation or something we could sue them for!

Anyway, the ice caves were really neat, and potentially worth the hike up to them. It really was quite cool (ha!) to see ice formations that were 45,000 years old. Plus, it was all glittery! Pretty! Like we said, you can't take photos in the caves, but we both bought some postcards as momentos, so we will have those to show when we return. We do, however, have some gorgeous panoramic shots from the top of the mountain we climbed, so you will have that proof that we did it.

We were completely exhausted when we got back to Salzburg (we were not made for that kind of exertion, but hopefully we will now be sporting Climbers' Legs), but you know us. Got to stick to the schedule. So we walked over to Mirabell Gardens to take some photos of one of the fountains and the steps seen in The Sound of Music (It's featured in the Doe a Deer song). As we walked over, a marching band in full regalia also joined us on the street. They ended up putting on this awesome concert in the park, that I took many many pictures of. The girl band members danced, and used tamborines as props (like they were a gang from West Side Story). It was the cheesiest thing I have ever seen, and have no idea how I will pare down the photos since I have about 15...

One of the really nice things about Salzburg is that it is really quite small so you can easily walk the city in little time. However, we had climbed a mountain (Take that, Mother Superior! We climbed one mountain.. YOU can climb every mountain yourself!) earlier that day (did we mention that?), and done so on a pastry and a quarter bag of chips... so we were starving. We couldn't really find a place that served food good enough to pique our interest for the prices they were asking, so we ended up returning to a place we had seen about a 2 minute walk from our hostel. They had an English menu and locals were eating there so we figured it had to be good. Of course, there was only one man running the place who did all the cooking right there behind the bar, and he spoke very little (read: no) English (I ended up ordering mineral water, when I really only wanted tap... ah well). However, the portions were large and good! Our schnitzel took up almost the entire plate, and we got potatoes and salad (NOT potatoe salad). The man next to us did not want his salad (he scoffed when the owner asked him if he wanted salad. We gobbled ours down, as it is not often that you see vegetables in restaurants here. Sure it had potentially tinned beans, and a strange pickled dressing on the carrots, but I don't know if I've ever eaten anything more delicious.

We then stumbled home, determined to go to bed, even though it was only 8:30 pm. However, the girls in our room ended up wanting to chat, and since they are all nice enough girls, we ended up staying up until the ungodly hour of 11. Only one girl kept to herself, and she is strangely high-maintenance, what with wearing a face mask to bed, and packing the largest bag of marshmallows known to mankind.

Day 2:

Rain, rain, and more rain. This has been the first time on the trip that the weather really has not been on our side. But, the schedule will not denide (or made a fool of!), so we got up, put on our rain jackets, and headed to Hellbrunn. By the time we got there, we decided that rather than doing the trick fountain tour first, we would go into the castle to warm up. The castle was really interestingly decorated, and it was just a lot of fun. Really pretty views of the fountains, and we had it all to ourselves.

The tour of the trick fountain was partly annoying because of the American highschool group we were paired with. Our annoyance soon turned to amusement, when we realized that none of them knew that the trick fountains are all about tricking you into getting wet AND they all seemed to fear this despite it being a torrential downpour. Stupid. At the first fountain, we knew the trick because we had heard about it up in the castle, so we delighted from afar when a girl (wearing her ill-fitting lingerie outside of her clothing) got hit in the face with a powerful jet of water. We then enjoyed watching the sissy boys act like fools as they pranced about attempting to keep out of the fountains' trajectory despite wearing no coats or carring umbrellas. Hurrah for our German tour guide, who made sure they got the most wet from thereon in. Laura and I just took the water in passing, since we were well-protected by our coats anyway. The fountains themselves were so cool that they kind of made up for the dismal weather, although it is a bit sad that we didn't have a nice hot, sunny day to appreciate them.

After the tour we went looking for the gazebo featured in Sound of Music (you know the one). It took us a few tries to find it, but we eventually did and being the only tourists around, got in a quite a few good shots.

Then we went on a bit of a walking tour of the countryside as we made our way to the street where we could take a bus to Frohnburg, which was the front of the Von Trapp house in the movie. The girls in our room had told us to walk around the building, but buildings move for us, not the other way around, so we went through the building instead. If we weren't supposed to, then they should have locked the gates and the doors and had security.

We stopped at the supermarket to get some food for the trains tomorrow and put something in our stomachs as it was now 3 pm, and we had not eaten anything all day except a meager bad Czech cake that morning at 8. Then we took the bus to Leopoldskron, which is the back of the house (seen from across the lake). Think of the pink lemonade scene or the falling in the water with the Baronness. Then we headed back into the city center where we saw the Catacombs at St. Peters (where the family hides from the Nazis... think 'Rolf, please.'), and walked up to Nonnberg Abbey (I think we have reached our mountain quota... which doesn't bode well for tomorrow in Garmisch) where we befriended a little wiener dog! As we walked back down through the city, we went to several fountains featured in the movie scattered about town, and witnessed the most frightening case of domestic abuse in a public venue ever. The man was shouting at his (in)significant other like she was a 2 year-old, and then embracing her tightly for photos. We name him Captain Creep.

Keep in mind, that we set out from the hostel today at 9 in the morning and returned around 6 pm. It rained the ENTIRE time we were in the city, and is still raining now. That said, it is still incredibly beautiful here, and we both agreed that this is the first place that we wish we had a little more time to visit and would definitely want to come back to. We wanted to go up to the mountain that Maria runs down at the beginning of the film, but because it was so rainy and foggy, we didn't think the view would be that great.

We ran to the train station to try and get a reservation for our 6:11 am train tomorrow morning, but the jerk at the ticket booth closed it just as we arrived. Dick! We'll just have to chance it and get there early and hope no one else is crazy enough to leave for Münich at such an ungodly hour. If the train is full, we'll just sleep on our feet for the 2 hour journey.

Oh, and for all the people placing bets on when we'll crash and burn, the odds just got higher in our favour of never doing so. We climbed a frickin' mountain people (do you know who else did that? The Von Trapps... when they were fleeing the Nazis. We did it for fun.) and saw every Sound of Music site possible without a train in a day and a half. We braved the rain and the cold, we lost our feet somewhere around noon today, and yet we never called it a day. As long as we have a schedule to keep, you're going to be paying us in spades (make up for the time we have spent on the internet rubbing this in your faces!).

We probably won't write again until we get to Rome, because there just won't be time. So, hopefully you'll be hearing from us in about 2 days.

So long. Farewell. Aufwiedesehen, goodnight!

P.S. Happy Canada Day. Andrew reminded us that that was today.

posted by Steph @ 7:46 pm