Munich to Salzburg to Munich

In Munich the street musicians play the accordion and yodel. In Salzburg they play the violin, viola, and clarinet in classical trios.

This is Mozart’s city and he is prominently displayed in statue form in the center of Mozartplatz.

Musical performance is significant here. The Salzburg Festival runs for 5 weeks every summer, this year hosting 280 performances at 14 different venues with over 200,000 people in attendance. We arrive just as the festival is closing. Lucky timing for Jim.

We do a little walk around, checking out the funicular that climbs a steep cliff to the imposing fortress on top. The fortress, by the way, built in 1064, kept Salzburg free of invasion, that is, until Napoleon came along. He was pretty persuasive and the city acquiesced to his demands.

Salzburg Fortress

Tucked into the cliff base is the old monastery bakery still turning out a variety of rolls. The aroma finds us and we follow our noses down some cracked granite stairs to a diminutive cave where people are standing in line for just out of the oven bread. We do too.

Monastery Bakery

Nearby is a sizeable water wheel that is part of a water system that has brought fresh water to the city since the 13^th century. It’s said that the flow of fresh water kept the plague out of Salzburg. The wheel is still turning after all these years.

Really Old Water Wheel

Also on the cliffside are some ancient dwellings of medieval hermit monks and beneath them another park-like cemetery sandwiched between St Peter’s Church and the massive overhang.

Ancient Hermit Monks Lived Here

We find some stairs leading up the cliff and climb to a walkway mid-crag. Great view of Old Salzburg looking down and the underpinnings of the fortress looking up.

In the tower of a former palace, which now serves as a post office, is another glockenspiel. This one plays the distinctive high-pitched music but that’s all. Munich wins the glockenspiel competition.

Jim in Residenzplatz

Salzburg Skyline

We’ve booked a tour for the afternoon.

What is the highest-grossing film of all time? A hint: Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer filmed it on location in Salzburg. And just like that we are sucked into a minivan tour of all the "Sound of Music" movie locations.

We see the palace which represented the Trapp family residence. It's owned by Harvard and is now off limits to tourists because people kept sticking there heads into seminars looking for the spot where the children lined up in ascending (or was it descending) order. 

Then there is the gazebo where “I am 16 going on 17” was filmed. It’s on the grounds of Hellbrunn Palace. 

We are driven out to the lake country to Mondsee to see the church where the wedding ceremony took place and to St Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang, (yes, that Wolfgang) where the hills are alive.

Lake Wolfgang and the Meadow Where The Hills Came Alive

Maria's Wedding Church

Church Interior

The Altar

Incidentally, along the way we see the Red Bull headquarters. Had no idea Red Bull was an Austrian company.

Red Bull Headquarters

Another stop has absolutely nothing to do with Maria and company. It’s a luge course and Jim bravely gets towed up the mountainside backwards on a sled and is then released to shoot down the silver chute like an Olympian. Not as thrilling as the autobahn, but kinda cool.

Gold Medalist

The tour ends at Mirabell Gardens, you remember them, of course, from “doe a deer”

Do-Re-Mi

So long, farewell to Salzburg.

Several months ago I clipped an article from the Spokesman-Review written by Jim Kershner about a small Bavarian town he had visited with his family. He mentioned the Ayinger Brewery in Aying and the adjoining restaurant saying the restaurant was one of the best in Germany. Since Aying is on our way back to Munich we make a small detour and enjoy the food and ambience. I give the hostess the newspaper article and she is thrilled to see the full-page article complete with pictures all the way from the USA. “This is us” she says. Yes it is.

Dinner in Aying