Her View 

Austria - Caywood's perspective

Salzburg

Salzburg: the city I was most anticipating since I went seven years ago and fell in love in a day. We arrived bright and early in the morning, and decided to get a Salzburg Card since we planned to do many of the city’s paid attractions. This really was the first time that we were doing more than one or two paid things in a city, and the card was a great deal for us. We paid 31 euros each to have unlimited access to nearly all of the city’s paid attractions for 48 hours, as well as free public transportation for that time period. After our trip to Salzburg I added it up, and we would have paid over 77 euros per person if we had done all of the attractions we did with the card and paid regular price.

Our first stop in Salzburg was the one place I and been to before: the Meribell Gardens. A lot of Americans will recognize various parts of these gardens from the movie The Sound of Music, 90% of which was filmed in Salzburg. Meribell Gardens is home to the Pegasus fountain, the dwarf garden, and the stairs used in Do-Re-Mi in the movie. Although the fountain wasn’t on and a lot of the garden wasn’t blooming, this area was still beautiful. And don’t worry, we watched the movie while in Salzburg. Our next two stops were Mozart’s Residence and Mozart’s Birthplace. Now, if we didn’t have the Salzburg Card I probably wouldn’t have chosen to do either of these attractions. Having said that, I really enjoyed the Residence. It came with an audio guide so I learned a lot about Mozart’s family and upbringing. For anyone who goes to Salzburg and likes Mozart, I would recommend the Residence and would not recommend the Birthplace. Sure, it was neat to be in the actual room that Mozart was born in. But the information was not as good there, there was no audio tour, and I just found it boring. 

After walking around some and enjoying some of Salzburg’s markets (we went to the Alter Market and the Christmas Market), we did a guided tour of the Festival halls. We got to see five festival halls that are used for Salzburg’s festival season, which I learned is a massive event for the city. My favorite was the last concert hall we were in, which is built directly into the mountain, and was used in the Sound of Music while the Captain is singing Eidelweiss in the talent show. This tour was really great because we got to learn a lot about the importance of music, historically and still today, in the city of Salzburg. I also learned something very interesting here in reference to Salzburg. Over 90% of the movie has been confirmed that it was filmed in Salzburg. It is a huge hit in America and Asia specifically. It is the top grossing movie per capita in the world today. Yet the majority of Austrians (and really all Europeans) have never heard of it. I was shocked to hear this! 

After the festival hall tour we took the Monchsberglift up to the Panorama Terrace and the Museum of Modern Art Monchsberg. The terrace gave us a beautiful view of Salzburg, both the city and the mountains. The modern art museum was another thing that we wouldn’t have done if we didn’t have the Salzburg Card. It was….interesting, although I wouldn’t call most of the stuff that was in there actual art. After the art museum we decided we should be kids for a while and visited the Toy Museum. I’ve definitely found the man I can be a kid with, when the time is appropriate! We had a blast in this three story building playing with legos, making shadow puppets, seeing some really cool old toys… Oh, and I won in Jenga! It was plenty dark out by now, so we made our last stop for the night the Christmas Market. A huge square outside the DomQuartier area was full of Christmas vendors, hot wine sales, and delicious food. Feliks got one of his favorite new things, which basically was a sausage turned into a burger with a LOT of sauerkraut on top. And I got the best potato I have had in my life: a massive baked potato cooked perfectly, with a warm herb-sour cream-sauce, corn, cheese, and bacon. A-MA-ZING. End of story.

We stayed with a great couchsurfing host named Inga just outside of Salzburg in Hallein. A quick train ride and we were there, and exhausted. We were tired and Inga was not feeling well, so we chatted for a bit and went to sleep. The next morning we started our day with the Hohensalzburg Fortress, which we got to via the Hohensalzburg Fortress Cable Railway. This is the oldest funicular in Austria, built in 1892, and used to be run by horsepower. Once we got up to the Fortress, we walked around the outside. We really enjoyed this because it was the first castle we’ve been to, versus many palaces. It had the typical look of a castle like you would imagine on Game of Thrones. After touring the outside on our own, we did a free audio tour of the inside of the castle. This was nice because we learned about the castle’s history, and also got to go up to the top of one of the towers that had a spectacular view. 

Next, the fortress had two museums to check out. The first was a small museum dedicated to the world of marionettes, which is a big part of Salzburg’s culture. I was hoping to see a marionette show while we were there, but they only play during the weekends. So the museum was the next best thing. It was neat to see a lot of marionettes, in both good and bad conditions, including the ones that were used in the Sound of Music. The second museum we checked out was dedicated to everyday life in the fortress. It was nice to get this aspect since the Hohensalzburg Fortress is the largest in Central Europe, and is completely preserved from the 11th century.

After the Fortress we walked around the city some and headed to DomQuartier, where we toured the state rooms at the Residence, the Salzburg Cathedral and Museum, St. Peter’s Cathedral and Museum, and the Northern Oratorio. Here we saw a lot of art, some beautiful churches and organs, and some spectacular rooms that were the former official apartments of the Salzburg prince archbishops. Next we walked across the square to quickly check out the Panorama Museum, in which you go in a room and get a full 360 degree view of all of Salzburg. Even though this only took about ten minutes to go through, it was really neat. 

Our last stop in Salzburg was the Stiegl-Brauwelt. We did a nice tour of the brewery and got to try the six most popular Stiegl beers. Be proud - I tried them all! They all tasted like regular beer to me so I did not really enjoy any of them except for one. They had one “beer” (I would not call it a beer) that was only 2% alcohol and was grapefruit and lemon flavored. This was delicious. I would compare it to the apple cider I occasionally drink, a bit sweeter, but really really good. Feliks tried one beer here that he felt was smokey, and said it was the best beer he’s ever had! I’ll have to remember that one.

In essence, Salzburg was fantastic. I loved every minute of it. I will say that I wish we had one more day here. Most cities we enjoy just spending time going random places and walking about the city, and since we had the Salzburg Card we didn’t really do that as much here. Also, we were less than an hour away from the Eagle’s Nest in Germany, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Unfortunately it was closed due to the season, so I’m already ready to start planning a longer trip to see the Eagle’s Nest and Salzburg again.

Vienna

On the day we went to Vienna, we stayed an hour away in Bratislava to save money, so our day in Vienna began around 10:30 am. We originally planned for two days in Vienna, but after we learned of Bratislava we decided to give Slovakia one of Vienna’s days. We walked around Vienna most of the day, seeing random buildings, five Christmas markets (four of which we went through), and more. Fun fact: Vienna is the world’s largest wine growing capital city. 

My first impression was that Vienna seemed much more like a big city than Salzburg did. It didn’t feel as “Austrian” to me. My favorite part of walking around the city were the Christmas markets. We stopped in a few to walk around, admire the handmade gifts, and have some hot wine. We went to the Naschmarkt for lunch, which is their year round flea market. It had a great variety of handmade items, meats and cheese to cook at home, and meals ready to eat. There were a lot of actual restaurants within the market as well, which was different than most markets we visit. From one of the other markets, we got a souvenir mug to add to my collection - the first one of our trip (which is extremely impressive for me).

One thing I was really excited to do in Vienna was visit the zoo. I wanted to see how it compared to the others I’ve been to since I learned that it is the oldest zoo in the world. Unfortunately, we chose not to go. With changing Vienna to only a day we could use our time more wisely, and Feliks made the good point that since it was winter a lot of the animals I’d want to see probably wouldn’t be out. I was fine that we didn’t go since it saved us over 16 euros per person. In between the markets we walked through Stadtpark, which is known for its large amount of random music performers, but I guess since it was a cold and gloomy winter day we missed all of the acts.

For me, the highlights of Vienna were the food. One thing I researched in advance was an Austrian soft drink that is almost only sold in stores in Vienna, and made from grape and apple juices. This was the first thing I did in Vienna, at 10:30 in the morning, only to find out that the company Almdudler also makes beer and that’s what I accidentally purchased. Before leaving Vienna that night, I got some of the soft drink and it was delicious! It tasted similar to ginger ale, but better. I recommend trying it if you can ever find it. For dinner, I had a deliciously massive baked potato covered in an herb sauce, corn, bacon, and cheese. I discovered these in Salzburg and fell in love. Best potato ever. Feliks for dinner got a traditional Austrian dish, pork schnitzel, in sandwich form. This was delicious too; we got them from another market that was right outside the train station.