Day Trip To The Zugspitze

On October 14, 2013May 30, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany7 Comments

The Alps are just a few hours away from Regensburg by car or train. Nestled within the Alps is the Zugspitze, Germany’s tallest mountain. The Zugspitze is 2962 meters (9718 feet) high. From the summit on a clear day, you can see mountain peaks in four countries.

Since I love tall places, of course I had to go and see it. There are trains between Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen almost once an hour, so getting there is pretty easy. As you approach the mountain from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, you can see a ski jump. The 1936 Winter Olympics were held here, opened by Adolf Hitler.

Once you arrive in G-P, you walk from the Bahnhof to the Zugspitzbahnhof right next door, to pay for your ticket up the mountain and back. The first part of the journey is by cogwheel train, until you get to Eibsee. From there, you take the Eibsee Seilbahn cable car up the side of the mountain.

When you reach the peak, the views are amazing. On one side, you have a separate cable car that goes to and from the Schneeferner glacier below.

There’s an observation deck at the very top, with the highest beer garden in Germany.

This weather monitoring and research station helps to monitor climate change.

There are cable cars coming up from both Germany and Austria, since the mountain sits on the border. Part of the summit faciliites is on the Austrian side- I walked in and out of Austria twice before I realized it was a border crossing.

Despite it being t-shirt weather at the base of the mountain, there was snow and ice at the top.

The wind at the summit does very interesting things to the ice formations. This is on a bit of metal stairs.

The actual peak is accessible to people who want to climb up to it. It’s set aside from the main facilities and does involve some climbing up in snow.

At an altitude of 2952 meters (9685 feet), the Gipfelalm is the tallest restaurant in Germany. Their food was not over-expensive, but it was kind of mediocre in flavor and quality.

The lake on the left is the Eibsee, and the little town to the right of it is Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

After you take the cable car from the summit down to the glacier, you can also choose to eat at Sonn Alpin, at 2600 meters. We stopped here for dessert.

…and shared our dessert with the aggressively snackish birds. One of them actually stole some of our kaiserschmarrn right out of the bowl when we didn’t offer it to them. Cheeky little bastards.

While we were at the Sonn Alpin, I got to see a small avalanche first-hand. The snow falling down the mountain here was tremendously loud.

Where there is snow, there are snow-people.

Have you ever been to the Zugspitze? What’s your favorite mountain?

Paris In Less Than Four Days

On September 2, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe17 Comments

It took me almost two years to get around to seeing Paris, but I spent a few days there in the month of August. I lost pretty much my entire first day to a stomach bug of some sort. I did about 60% of a Louvre tour before I went back to the hotel to sweat out a fever or three. I skipped a tour I’d booked for the Eiffel Tower that afternoon, and started over on the second day.

I have a few thoughts about visiting Paris that I’d like to share with you before we go on to the photographs.

Don’t go to Paris in August. Seriously, it’s not an ideal time. For one thing, July and August are the hottest months to visit and that’s just… sticky. For another, that’s when the tourist levels are at their highest. If you’ve ever walked into a restaurant immediately after an entire Japanese tour bus was seated, you know what I’m talking about. Wait times for big draws like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre can go up to several hours in August. Just pick another month. You’ll be glad you did. I’ve said this about other cities as well, because it holds true in any city that gets a lot of tourism: Skip-the-Line tours are worth their weight in gold. Book them wisely.

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport is not as confusing and horrible as people say. CDG, sometimes called Roissy Airport, has a reputation for being an awful, terrible, very bad airport. People say it’s confusing and lacks good signs. I didn’t find this to be the case. I found the airport to be logical and simple. The big problem with Roissy Airport is the sheer size of the place. Charles de Gaulle is roughly the seventh busiest airport in the world, and the place is improbably huge. A walk from terminal 2C to terminal 2F can take you fifteen or twenty minutes, although there’s a free shuttle at regular intervals. In other words, you need to figure out what terminal you’re going to ahead of time, or you need to allow yourself enough time to move between terminals. If you plan ahead and give yourself plenty of time, CDG is easy as pie. Pie with lots of walking.

Parisian waiters are not rude to tourists. Not exactly. I found them to be friendly and polite. I think a lot of this misconception is because Americans aren’t used to European dining mores. In Europe, wait staff will not hurry you along. To an American used to dining in restaurants where they bring you the check before you finish and check on you every ten minutes, this can seem like you’ve been forgotten. That’s not the case, however, and you simply need to get your waiter’s attention to call him or her back over. So no, Parisian waiters aren’t rude. However, I did find that I was shortchanged no less than three times in a four day span. I could chalk it up to a language barrier if I was feeling charitable, but I suspect that they heard my English and assumed I was just another dumb American tourist who could be easily fooled because he isn’t used to the Euro.

On a side note, Paris is officially the most expensive city I’ve ever visited. More expensive than London or New York City by an order of magnitude. At one dinner, I asked for a large Sprite. The dude brought me an entire liter in a giant mug, then charged me €16. The entree was only €9, so you can imagine my surprise at the beverage costing almost twice the food. That was the first full meal I ordered in Paris. It was also the last full meal I ordered in Paris.

I also took pictures! I took about four hundred shots, most of which are not in this post. If you really want to look at the rest of the pics not in this post, there’s an entire gallery over here.

Let’s move on, shall we?

This is the front entrance of the Louvre. Or rather, it’s the archway in front of the glass pyramid in front of the doors to the Louvre.

The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum. It’s also one of the world’s largest museums- a collection of enormous buildings full of antiquities and master works. If you stopped to view each item in the Louvre for three minutes, you’d be there for roughly three months. Here’s a Sphinx.

Here’s the Venus de Milo, one of the best known pieces in the museum.

This one is called The Nike of Samothrace. It’s considered a symbol of triumph, despite the fact that the head and arms have never been found.

This hallway contains a lot of things from the French nobility. Crowns, swords, tables, and so forth.

Last but certainly not least is the Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece from the early 1500s is situated behind an enormous pane of bulletproof glass. I took this picture from a good distance and didn’t get to spend any time looking at her up close because this was the point at which I abandoned my guided tour and ran for the exit before shuttering myself into the hotel for the next eighteen hours.

The next day, after I was done with the worst of my sick time, I had a tour booked that I’d been looking forward to for a while- a Segway tour of Paris with Ellie from Fat Tire Bike Tours. This proved to be fortuitous- I wasn’t really up to a walking tour yet after being sick the day before; my energy levels were still pretty wrecked. Riding a Segway was a fun, less strenuous way to see large swathes of the city. (Except the parts that were closed while they were shooting scenes for a movie. I wish I’d actually seen some filming- I heard there were people in period costumes with old cars from the early 1900s.)

But anyway- Segways! They’re fun! They’re also pretty easy to ride- the hardest part is in the first two minutes, including your first mount and dismount. I was comfortable enough for basic movement in about five minutes, and I felt like an experienced rider after twenty minutes. The weather was absolutely perfect for this tour.

What visit to Paris would be complete without seeing Notre Dame de Paris? I didn’t actually get to hear the famous bells of Notre Dame, but I think I’ll live.

The Eiffel Tower is not the only super tall place in Paris. There’s also Montparnasse 56, which is this building here. The top floor is an attraction called Tour Montparnasse, which is an indoor observation level with a stair up to a rooftop observation level. Since I have a tendency to love tall places, of course I went there.

This is the view of the Eiffel Tower from Montparnasse 56.

The Paris Metro is kind of strange. Most of the cars are an older type where you have to lift a little metal handle to get off at your stop, and some of them use rubber wheels like this instead of train style all-metal rail wheels. It’s very odd. It’s also the second busiest metro in the world, and it’s pretty much all Art Nouveu inside the stations. Charming, yet disconcerting.

On my third day, I tried to go to the Cinémathèque Française, a museum of cinema. They have a lot of very interesting exhibits that I was curious to see, but it turns out that the museum was closed for a few weeks. My timing astounds.

Instead, I went to Père Lachaise, perhaps the most visited cemetery in the world. I initially misread the map near the entrance, and so I wound up walking around a bit less efficiently than I would have liked. That’s ok, though, because this little fuzzball totally made my day when she walked over, sniffed my hand, then sat with me for a few minutes.

Let’s talk famous people. Père Lachaise has a bunch of ’em. After I figured out that I’d misread the map, I was easily able to find Abelard & Heloise and Oscar Wilde. I was unable to locate Balzac‘s grave. And I got turned around looking for Jim Morrison, but I don’t feel badly about that because that’s when I stumbled across Frederic Chopin’s grave.

There are many non-famous graves in Père Lachaise also, and it’s possible to walk around for hours without becoming bored. I took fifty or sixty photographs inside the walls of the cemetery. I particularly liked this symbol, on one of the tombs, because I like the symbolism of time slipping away on feathered wings.

Speaking of angel wings, this gravestone was positively gorgeous.

So was this one.

After a few hours walking around Père Lachaise, I decided it was time for a break. I went back onto the Metro, to the area near Montmartre, where I had a nice crepe with butter and sugar for lunch. I was still recovering my strength from being sick, and so that sugar was entirely necessary. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

After lunch, I took the Funicular up the hill to see Sacre Coeur Basilica.

There were a ton of people hanging out around the Basilica. This guy was practicing antigravity with his soccer ball on the steps. He was talented enough to catch my attention for a while.

A short distance from the Basilica is Espace Dali, a substantial and amazing Salvador Dali museum. Again, I took a metric pantload of pictures, but I’m only including one here- one of Dali’s famous melting clocks.

The Espace Dali had a photo booth that would superimpose your picture into Dali imagery. I got this one. If I’d had another €3 in coins, I would also have gotten the one that puts Salvador’s mustache on you.

Walking back down the hill from Montmartre, I saw this graffiti on a building. Come to think of it, I saw a lot of cat-centric graffiti on buildings on this trip.

Meanwhile, back on the other side of town, there’s a little known archway called the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile. It’s much larger than I thought it was. Also, you can climb it. I didn’t realize at first that there were people on the top, looking down. I’ll come back to this.

I spotted this building on my walk back to the hotel, and I thought it was kind of interesting. It certainly didn’t match its neighbors.

This is the dome of L’Hôtel national des Invalides, which is also the tomb of Napoleon. Yes, that’s real gold.

This is the Musée d’Orsay, an old train station which has been converted into a gallery full of the world’s finest Impressionist painters, including Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh. I didn’t actually have time to go into this one, but it’s a lovely building.

This is just a street. There’s nothing particularly special about this street, except that it’s in Paris and it looks kind of nice.

This is some of the bouquinistes, or permanent used book stores attached to the side of the River Seine near Notre Dame. Apparently, the wait list to acquire one of the 250 locations along the Seine is about eight years.

This was along the river also. I just thought it was neat.

This tower marks the location of the Bastille, but the prison itself is long gone. After the prison was torn down, the bricks from the Bastille were used to make one of the bridges across the Seine.

I mentioned I’d get back to the Arc d’Triomphe. When I finally went back, I stumbled across a nightly ceremony to relight the flame on the grave of the Unknown Soldier from the Great War.

Next, I climbed the Arc, because it was tall and because that’s what I do. This is what the famous shopping stretch of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées looks like from the top.

Last but not least is the Eiffel Tower. I had blown my pre-booked tour (and lost about eighty bucks) by getting horribly sick at the start of the trip, but I gave it another shot on my last day, before I flew back to Germany. The first elevators to the summit opened at 9am, so I got in line at 8:30. Good thing I did, because I was definitely not the only one who decided to get an early start. By 9:30 I was in the structure, and by 10:30 I was back down. I took pictures from the summit, but they don’t look that different than my pictures from Tour Montparnasse or the Arc d’Triomphe, so I won’t put them in this post.

I will, however, put a picture of the counterweights here. The gargantuan elevators that go up and down the corner pillars of the Eiffel have these huge counterweights that were just amazing to see. According to Old Man Wiki, the counterweights are 200 tons each, and sit atop hydraulic rams for the lift system. I’ve read a description of the hydraulic lift system four times in a row now, and I still don’t quite understand it, but it’s amazing to see in action. I wish there was something in this picture to give you a sense of scale- the counterweights were easily three times my height.

One final picture, looking up from near the center of the Tower. They’re building new stuff. There’s also a cafe on that first elevated level that I didn’t have time to check out.

What’s your favorite part of Paris?

The Untersberg

On July 29, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe5 Comments

Sixteen kilometers (ten miles) south of Salzburg is a mountain called the Untersberg. From the city center, bus line 25 will take you all the way to the cable car station at the base of the mountain.

The cable car that runs up the Untersberg is called the Untersbergbahn. Naturally.

Some examples of the cables in use for cable cars.

Today’s weather on the Untersberg. From top to bottom, it’s “sun, bright, cloudy/overcast, rain, fog, snowfall, light wind, strong wind.” I should have known before I went up that nebel meant fog…

The height of things. The cable car covers 2.5 Kilometers across ground, and brings you to a station at 1,776 meters up the mountain.

This is what the cables look like from the station at the base.

Because of the fog, it looked like it was just sort of going up into nothingness.

The mountain looked fascinating from the cable car- at least the bits I could see before we ducked into the fog and cloud cover.

…and this was the view from the top.

Seriously, there could have been an alien civilization just past that low rise, and I would never have seen it. I did catch this picture just as the snowball thrown by man-in-red hit man-in-grey. Snowballs in late May when it’s raining on the ground are kind of comical, but that’s mountains for you.

I’m sure on a clear day, this is a beautiful place to have a drink. The bus stop sign (the H in the circle) cracks me up.

And finally, the view back down the mountain, looking out from where the cable car leaves the station at the top. This builds confidence, wouldn’t you say?

Have you ever been up to the top of a mountain? How was the view?

London Again

On July 18, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - The United Kingdom9 Comments

In keeping with my tradition of going to London every July, I went there last weekend. This was a short trip- I flew in on Friday night and out on Sunday evening. However, I ran into some issues with Heathrow.

It seems that a 787 DreamLiner from an Ethiopian carrier caught fire, and the airport had to close for a few hours while this was being dealt with. The delays snowballed from there, and my evening went like this:

My 9pm flight got into Heathrow an hour and ten minutes late. I’m lucky it wasn’t cancelled entirely.
We waited twenty minutes for Heathrow staff to find someone to drive the jet bridge out to the plane.
We waited another twenty minutes for the little people mover that takes you from the gate to the arrivals area.
Lots and lots of people had no luggage, or had to go back throughout the weekend to try to get their luggage back. I’m grateful I’ve taken to flying without checking a bag for short trips.
We got to the main arrivals area of the terminal after the last Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station had already left. Luckily, they added two additional trains when they saw the delays stacking up. One departed at 12:45, and one at 1:30. I waited another 50 minutes for the 12:45 train.
If you’re doing the math from the bolded text above, you’ll spot that we got to Paddington after 1am, which means the London Underground was shut down for the night. The picture below was the line at the taxi stand at Paddington. I considered walking to my hotel, but that would have involved cutting through Hyde Park at night, and I wasn’t feeling up to that particular challenge.
After my first experience with a legendary London Black Cab, I reached my hotel and made it into bed by around three in the morning. My weekend was off to a rollicking start.

Saturday morning, I went to The Shard. The newly constructed tallest building in the European Union was not open to the public yet when I was in London last July, and I couldn’t resist a climb to the top. Tall stuff!

The lobby has an entire wall covered in quotes about London; this was my favorite one:

The climb was actually one elevator to the 33rd floor, then another elevator to the 68th floor. From there, a short stair takes you to the first observation level at the 69th floor, and another set of stairs takes you to the open observation on level 72. There’s more above that, but only for private functions.

The elevators inside the Shard have video screens in their ceilings. This is a picture of an elevator ceiling:

Stairs to 72:

This is the mostly-open observation level at the top.

…and three pictures of the View from the Shard, which is coincidentally the name of the tourist attraction portion of the building. The first picture includes the London Eye, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament.

The second picture includes St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The third includes the Tower Bridge and part of the Thames River.

After I left the Shard, I went on the Tube to meet a friend for lunch. My weekend of rough travel continued, as parts of the Tube were shut down for maintenance work and I had to go in a very roundabout way.

I made it, eventually, to the British Library to meet Neo for Lunch. That’s not code for anything, it’s just where we met before grabbing a bite to eat. Hanging out with friends is always a delight, and I love lunching with people.

After lunch, I made my way to the DLR trains from Tower Bridge to go over to Greenwich. When I was there last July, I couldn’t reach the Royal Observatory because of the Olympic Games, and I really wanted to check that out. On a nice warm day like this, so did a lot of other people- the lawns of Greenwich Park were littered with sunbathers and picnickers. The Observatory is waaaay up that hill to the right It was a nice walk.

The Royal Observatory is great for people who like to geek out about time, clocks, telescopes, astronomy, and so forth. There are a lot of nifty clocks about, like this one.

The museum section also had a lot of amazing telescopes and spyglasses and so forth. I took a lot of pictures, but I’m not going to put all of them up here. Instead, I chose this spyglass to represent the coolest of the cool: It’s a walking stick/sword/spyglass. So cool!

Of course the reason that most tourists go to the Royal Observatory is to stand on the Prime Meridian, with one foot in the East and one in the West. There is also a monster laser in the Observatory that they light up at night- a bright green laser beam shows the path of the Prime Meridian for roughly fifteen miles on a clear dark night. I’d like to see that some time.

The line to stand on the Meridian was quite long, but only for the picturesque part with the extra markings and a staff member nearby. Right on the other side of that huge line of people, it was still the Prime Meridian, so I just did my thing off to one side:

After I was done at the Observatory, I doubled back to the hotel to change clothes for the evening. When I got out of the Tube at Earl’s Court, I found this right outside the station. The “Bad Wolf” and Clara Oswald notes were already scrawled into the dust; I didn’t put them there.

Finally, Saturday evening had arrived, and this is what brought me to London for this trip: BBC Prom #2. The 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Prom.

For those who are unfamiliar with the BBC Proms, a Prom (or Promenade Concert) is part of a yearly series of summer concerts. Most are held in the Royal Albert Hall, and there are dozens of different shows. There’s an entire culture built up around going to the Proms, and some fans like to go Promming: That is, they wait in the morning for the final tickets to be released, pay five pounds for a ticket, and then stand in the center section of the Royal Albert Hall for the entirety of the show. In the 2013 season, there are 74 separate Proms. The Doctor Who events were Prom #2 (Saturday evening) and Prom #3 (Sunday afternoon.)

Doctor Who At The Proms has occurred twice before, in 2008 and 2010 respectively. I had been waiting for it to come up again since I got to Germany, and I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. The Proms were recorded live, and will be aired on the BBC during the 50th Anniversary celebrations later this year.

In any case, here’s the Royal Albert Hall.

The walk between my hotel and the Royal Albert Hall went up a long street filled with various embassies. At one point, I saw some guys taking a picture of a doorway, and I got a little curious. This is what they were taking a picture of- cue Yakety Sax!

But I digress… this is what the Royal Albert Hall looked like from my seat.

You can see that the stage is large enough to hold the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Ben Foster. There were racks of seats behind the orchestra for the London Philharmonic Choir. I cannot begin to describe how amazing they sounded together live. The acoustics in the Royal Albert are absolutely brilliant.

Matt Smith, the 11th (and current) Doctor appeared at this event, along with Jenna Coleman, the Doctor’s current companion. Some of the introductions were handled by Madame Vastra and Strax, in character, along with lots of other people from the show. The music was mostly from the current era of the show (2005 to the present), but some pieces of music performed were from the “Classic” Doctor Who, which is what they now call all of the Doctor Who between 1963 and 1996. Plus, since this is a Doctor Who Prom, there were Silurians, Silence, Ice Warriors, Whisper Men, Cybermen, and a few others. Here’s a Weeping Angel:

Here’s a Judoon:

…and here’s the conductor being harassed by a pair of Daleks.

The Proms were amazing, and if I lived in London, I would go to a lot more of them. Some of the other Proms this year sounded really nifty. After the show, I headed back to the hotel and had a nice room service sandwich to wind down. On Sunday morning, I met Neo again, this time at Hyde Park, because there was a giant horse head statue I wanted to check out. I had seen it from the window of the taxi two evenings before. In the darkness, it looked like a giant glowing horse head, and I was pleased to find that it wasn’t that difficult to find in the daylight either. This 35 foot tall horse head statue was sculpted by Nic Fiddian-Green, and it’s been there since around 2009.

Another set of statues, a wander past the Speaker’s Corner of the park, a quick lunch, and then it was already time to head back to Paddington for my trip out of London. On the walk to Paddington station, we passed a hospital, and there were a bunch of photographers and television crews setting up. I didn’t know until we’d walked past it what it was all about… there were ranks of ladders for photographers to stand on…

…and just past the already set up tv crews, there were squares of tape which dictated where other camera crews from different media outlets could set up.

We had stumbled onto the journalist area for the media crews covering the birth of Kate Middleton’s royal baby at St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. I didn’t even know this was going on, but there it is.

Tell me your favorite thing to do in London. Have you ever been to a BBC Prom? Have you ever accidentally stumbled across a major media event? Have you ever stood on the Prime Meridian?

Mozart’s Balls Are Delicious

On July 15, 2013January 26, 2020 By StevenIn International Travel - Europe17 Comments

So far in the crazy travel-heavy month of May, I’d already visited Venice, Rome, Vatican City, and Dublin. For my last trick in May, I also spent a couple of days in Salzburg. I took hundreds of pictures, of course, and I’ve whittled this post down to thirty-eight images that tell the story of my weekend.

Before I get into the pictures, though, I wanted to say this: My first few hours in Salzburg made me despise the city. After I got to the hotel and had a brief nap, I felt a lot better and I started to really enjoy things. Those first few hours were really shaky though, and here’s why:

The public transportation didn’t work. The city’s famed bus system seemed to be using the posted schedule as a vague suggestion rather than an actual schedule. The city also has a very small underground train system which didn’t appear to be running at all. One of the bus lines I tried to use seemed to have a “next bus” time that was about eight hours in the future. There were no easily readable line maps, so when I did try a bus, I wound up in a part of the city that I was unfamiliar with, and I never reached anything even remotely recognizable. I found out later that a lot of this is because there were major streets closed for some sort of vintage car rally. I eventually snagged another bus back to the Hauptbahnhof, and just took a taxi to my hotel.

My hotel was amusing to me. It had upside-down cows painted in the room. The lamp said “Moo!” (Although it said it in German.) And in between the thermostat and the slot for your room card, there was an inspirational message. I’m not sure if there was beer hidden in my room. If there was, I never spotted it.

After I checked in and had a brief nap, I felt much better. I went out to try to grab the bus into the heart of the city for my first evening in Salzburg, and I wound up waiting another 45 minutes for the bus that was supposed to be there in five. I did eventually make it to the old part of town though:

While walking through the town, I spotted this sign. It made me giggle because I am apparently eight years old.

Giant statue of Mozart? Check. This must be Salzburg!

While I was waiting for my dinner to start on that first evening, I saw some people coming out of a church with cameras. I’m always curious about what other people find interesting, so I ducked inside. I’m glad I did; this is what I saw inside of St. Peter’s.

I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but I made a donation and lit one of these remembrance candles. Something about this church moved me to do so. Perhaps it was because of all the musical history in Salzburg. I’m not sure. People who have known me for a long time can probably guess who I was thinking about when I lit the candle.

After I spent a little bit of time in the church, it was time for dinner. As a treat for myself, I booked a seat at the Mozart Dinner Concert in the Barocksaal, the wonderful baroque room of Stiftskeller St. Peter, which is the oldest restaurant in Europe. It’s referenced in a document from the year 803, which is kind of staggering to think about. This is what the Baroquehall looks like:

The Mozart dinner concert is this: Drinks and bread rolls, followed by music. Then a soup course, then a second set of music. Then a main dinner course, and a third and final set of music. Finally, a dessert course. The photo below was my program, both musically and food-wise. The food was amazing.

The performers were talented, personable, and quite funny. This was a wonderful way to course-correct after the public transportation cock-ups earlier in the day. By the end of the evening, even though I still had to wait for the bus back to my hotel, I was feeling much better about Salzburg.

For day two, I started with a nice walking tour of the city. This is the part at which I mention that it was raining the entire time I was in Salzburg. The entire time. From my arrival to my departure, it never stopped. Not once. It did get lighter at times though, and it was a little bit lighter during the walking tour.

Part of the tour was in the gardens at Schloss Mirabell, Mirabell Palace. If you’ve ever seen The Sound Of Music, then these shots will look a little bit familiar. Julie Andrews and the kids went through here during the “Do Re Mi” bit.

The guy in the hat was our tour guide. He was very good. And yeah, it was an umbrella-laden tour. Lots of rain.

I should mention that the “I Heart London” umbrella I bought last summer finally bit the dust on this trip, and I replaced it with an appropriately musical Salzburg umbrella.

Seen on the walking tour: The house that Mozart lived in. I came back to this later.

The house where Christian Doppler was born. I think of him every time I hear “Sailing” by Christopher Cross. He’s a one-man Doppler Effect demonstration.

Another nice view of the old city.

So I’d never heard of Urban Knitting before this trip. Apparently, there’s a lot of people who go around knitting hats and whatnot for statues. I’m not at all sure how I feel about this hobby. It’s strangely entertaining, though.

There’s a fun (but completely fictional) story behind the “Stierwascher” image below. I’ll borrow text from visit-salzburg.net to tell the story, because they can tell it way better than I can.

During the period of the peasant′s riots of 1525, the city of Salzburg was under a siege. Soon the city′s population was running short of food, and fear spread when only a single bull was left within the mighty city walls.

Then the commander of the defending troops is said to have had an idea: he ordered to paint the naturally brown bull with white stain and lead it up and down the city walls on display to the enemy. The next day, they would wash the bull, paint it in black and do the same thing again. The next day, they would paint the bull red, then spotted, and so on.

In the end, the enemy thought that the people of Salzburg were slaughtering a bull every day, expecting that the live stocks were still large enough to feed the troops and people in the city for a very long time. Eventually, the troops that kept Salzburg under siege withdrew, leaving Salzburg to freedom. Under cheer and laughter, the bull was led to the Salzach river and washed until he appeared again in his natural brown. Ever since then, people from Salzburg are called “Stierwascher” – bull washers.

In fact, bull-shitters would be more appropriate with respect to this story. The whole legend is nothing but fiction, the real reason for the name “Stierwascher” are the butchers of Salzburg that were committed to slaughter bulls in public spaces to allow the authorities to control the quality of the meat. The slaughtering was done by the shore of the Salzach River to allow the blood being washed off quick and easily. This is the less romantic, but apparently more authentic root of the “Stierwascher”.

This is a view down the Getreidegasse, a popular shopping street. The close up shot is the detail on the classiest McDonald’s sign I’ve ever seen. McDonald’s was not allowed to put up their traditional supertacky sign here- they had to adjust their sign to conform with the rules of Getreidegasse.

Mozart’s birth house. A museum and gift shop. Kind of interesting, if you’re into musical history.

The walking tour went through a very populated old cemetery near St. Peter’s, and I took a few shots of interesting headstones while we were inside. I think these two shots came out particularly well.

It’s Europe, so of course there are giant cathedrals.

…and big courtyards. The tower in this shot is full of carillon bells that ring three times a day. I was never close enough to hear them at any of those times. Oh well.

The walking tour concluded back at Mozartplatz. My earlier shot didn’t really give you a good sense of just how big Amadeus is here. Both literally and figuratively.

Street musicians. Street musicians in costume. I didn’t stop long, but they sounded good.

This cool statue is in the alcove behind where the last group of guys was singing. The graffiti on the wall behind the statue totally makes it, don’t you think?

I know this is random, but I passed a snack shop at one point, and I have to say that this is perhaps the creepiest advertising image I have ever seen. It’s all kinky and weird with his four-fingered hands and weird stripey knee socks.

Not far from the creepy hot dog figure is a funicular that will take you up to Hohensalzburg Castle. We have already established in this blog that I like high places, so of course I’m going to go up. You can get there on foot- it’s about a 25 minute climb- but it was rainy and wet, so I elected for the funicular instead.

A quick Salzburg travel tip- I paid for the Salzburg Card on this trip. Not only does it give you entrance to a lot of the museums in the city, but it also includes unlimited bus usage for your stay, as well as a ride on the funicular up to this awesome view:

The Salzburg Card also included entrance to the Salzburger Spielzeug Museum. I can’t pass up a Toy Museum! We’ve already established that I’m basically eight years old.

There’s one small problem, though. The toy museum won’t allow you to go through in your normal street shoes. You have two choices. Option one: You can use some of the communal Crocs in the lobby. While these are slightly more stylish than most Crocs, I have sworn never to wear Crocs.

Option two is to put these little plastic booties over your shoes and just wear them around the museum. While this looks infinitely sillier, the choice was a no-brainer. Besides, now I have something to put over my bicycle seat when it’s wet.

The toy museum was indeed full of toys. There was a rather fantastic race car track, for example.

This was the find that got me the most excited. It was in a section of the museum where very small toys were suspended in clear cylinders and there were magnifying glasses nearby to look at the detail.

I didn’t need the magnifying glass though. I’d know this car anywhere, because I used to play with one just like it when I was a kid. This is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the slip of red plastic along the running board is a fold out plastic wing. There’s a matching wing on the other side. One of my siblings had this Matchbox flying car when I was a kid, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Last but not least, I have two pictures from Mozart’s residence house. The first picture is of some of his musical instruments. I took this right before a woman told me I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. I’m a rebel!

Just before you leave the museum (and exit through a gift shop, naturally,) there’s a place where you can “Mozart yourself.” I thought this was too fantastically silly not to share.

Other than the umbrella, there was one other thing that I brought back with me from Salzburg, and it’s what I was talking about in the title of this post- Mozart Balls. Mozartkugeln, actually. Words cannot describe how delicious this candy is. I’m glad I only got a very small box of them.

Have you ever been to Salzburg? What was your favorite part? Did you take the “Sound Of Music” tour that seems to annoy the locals quite a bit?

Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV.

Tag: tall stuff