The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 12: The Sound of Music (Austria--Salzburg)

My plan of finishing the eurotrip posts before school probably won't happen. Yes, I'm half way through, but the rest of places have tons of backgrounds and stories that I want to share. This means I'm going to break each country's trip down to different parts. Well, we'll see how long this will get......

After Innsbruck, we visited Salzburg. This place is best known for two reasons: Mozart's hometown, and the Sound of Music. I also took a trip up the hill by myself (I told myself I wouldn't climb anything after Cologne......not happening.)

Our beautiful tour guide

Let's start with the tour guide. She's been a local tour guide for over 20 years, and she knows pretty every bit about this town--a great person to ask questions for. She even wore the traditional clothes for this town. Oh, the jacket is not included.

The trip went like this: we went to Mirabel's Garden first, where the Sound of Music took many scenes here. Many famous songs are filmed here as well. It was a nice day when we visited, so we got a good view of the garden. Well, too bad we didn't take "the Sound of Music tour," which they take you to almost every single place they filmed. it's okay, we still got a good share of it.

The Mirabel's Garden, with the Hohensalzburg Castle in the back.
Oh, and it's this fountain at the middle

I don't think I need to express how great the movie was. Everyone should have seen it already. If you haven't, shame on you. Even a person who doesn't watch old movies like me watched it. You have no excuse not to. Now, if you haven't watched it, go rent the movie or Netflex it or just stream it online before continuing, or else this post probably wouldn't make much sense to you.

You know what? I think it would be a better idea if I just post pictures and see how much you can recognize. It'll save me a lot of typing time and effort. Yes, I'm getting lazy.

The stairs. Don't remember? How about now?

The green tunnel. No clue? Check again.

Another view of the Garden.

Heck, I'll just show this entire song. Youtube doesn't have the complete video, and this one has bad quality..... oh well, at least it's a complete song.

There are actually more places that showed up in the movie, but they are not as recognizable as these ones, so I'm going to skip. Last thing before we move on: go watch that movie.

Mirabel's Garden is located here, and we moved across bridge after seeing the garden and moved here. It's Mozart's house!! Now, you might wonder why there are two locations for Mozart's house. The truth is he had two mouses back then before he moved to Vienna eventually. A little bit about this guy. He was a music genius! Like, GENIUS!!! He learned violin and piano the age I learned how to use chopsticks, and he PERFORMED!! I would love to perform my skill of using chopsticks, but probably no one would care. Not only did he perform, he also composed music at young age. You can listen to this while reading the rest of the post.

It's painted yellow, very easy to spot.

So this is Mozart's old house. He lived on third floor. This place has become a museum, and you have to pay to get it. Screw that, I'm not THAT interested in his life to pay 10 euros to get in. You can't really see the streets, but this place has become a center of the town, and there are many restaurants here (thanks to the tourists. I wonder how Mozart would think if he knows that his house has been a tourists attraction all these years......) Therefore, the streets are pretty clean (oh there's a 肉夾模 place here. Chinese are really everywhere.) Salzburg, thanks to Mozart and the Sound of Music, has attracted so many tourists that this town now lives on tourists. Their income mainly comes from tourism, and the percentage is only growing now that rich people come here from China, thousands of them.

Tourism aside, the rest of income just comes from daily services. They also have industries, but those are located outside of the city. People normally would choose being a tour guide over a blue collar worker.

Deeper into the town, you'll see the church established by St. Rupert, the tour guide even showed us the graveyard next to the church. Paying some respect to the dead, I didn't take any photo. I don't think people should, but people do. Flashes were going off everywhere. Fucking tourists......

I think show place showed up in Sound of Music as well, but this one is not the famous church in the movie. No, this one is not in this town. Okay, there are just several pictures I want to show you, along with some cool stories. Then we can end this post. The next one is still in Salzburg, but it's not about tourist attraction but more of my personal adventure. It's pretty cool, trust me.

A calsh of modern art and ancient buildings.

This picture shows the plaza in front of the Cathedral. This art piece is made by some guy who thinks he's so awesome. He decided to add some flavor to this town, so he made this. Art people, I don't get you. There are more than just this giant globe. It's not visible in the picture, but there are some giant chess pieces next to the globe as well. Apparently there are many other art projects around this town. Again, art people, I don't get you. Also, there was a farmers' market around here, pretty much right behind Mozart's house. Oh oh oh, totally forgot to finish the story. The streets around Mozart's house are not clean, but back then this place was a fish market. So basically Mozart was smelling stinky fish smell while composing music. I'd like to know if there's any study on the correlation of good music and fish smell......probably not.

A little bit more about Sound of Music. Remember this fountain? Now try again. Wait, sorry, wrong clip. It should be this one.....stupid Youtube doesn't have a clip. Well, a picture will do. It's so nice to be able to do what the characters in the movie have done. I played with water here as well. Although kinda embarrassing, I had fun. I mean, I wasn't the only one doing it anyway! Some......little kid was doing it, too. I just followed his example. No foul here, no foul. Since there's no clip, I can only link you to the music. There was a woman in our group who's an opera singer. We made her sing bunch of Sound of Music songs. She was really good! We thoroughly enjoyed this day's trip......until later. Some crazy thing happened later in this day. I'll get to that part in next post. This fountain is near the smallest house in Salzburg. It's really small. Check the picture.

Smallest house in Salzburg

There's a story behind this. Again, no one knows if it's true, but it's quite interesting. So there was a guy who wanted to marry a girl he loved, but the girl's dad didn't like this guy. He told the guy: "If you want to marry my daughter, you have to have a house. Without even a place to live, how can I trust you with my girl." Being very poor, the guy had no chance buying a normal house in the town. He, however, refused to give up, so he came up with a way. Yes! He built this place and showed to the dad! I can imagine how pissed the dad was, if this story was true. As many good stories, the prince and princess have to live happily ever after. Same goes to this story. The guy eventually married the girl and lived here. Today, this place is transformed into a store. To be honest, this place is a lot bigger than....say shops in Taiwan. Those shops are tiny, and they sometimes don't even have a door. It's almost illegal. They pretty much sell stuff in a little alley where it's supposed to be used when there's fire.

The Cathedral.

Backtrack a bit. The Cathedral, being called the Cathedral of Salzburg anywhere else, doesn't really have a name like "St. Peter's Cathedral" or "St. James' Cathedral." Being the one and only, the name is just the Cathedral. The importance of this place? See the 3 doors? There are 3 dates on the 3 gates. The first one on the left shows 774, the middle one shows 1628, and the right now shows 1959. These are the three years that this cathedral was rebuilt. Because of wars and natural disaster (mostly war), this church was destroyed multiple times and rebuilt. It went through many bishops and kings. It's a standing piece of history. Feel free to research more if you're interested. Oh, did I mention that Mozart was baptized here?

Mozart was baptized here.

 There!

Okay, back to the smallest house. There's a coffee shop located next to this house, and it's Mozart's favorite cafe. Apparently Mozart used to drink coffee here everyday, and he would write notes on the napkins. To this day, this old cafe is still operating, and it's like a bar--you grab a seat when you see one. They don't take you to the table. The inside is smoke-free, but the outside is not. Being a tourist, I chose to sit outside and endured the smoke. I got some nice espresso and enjoyed a good 20 minutes here. They also serve dessert like ice cream or cake. I didn't grab any. I was expecting to eat lunch at the next spot. Well, then the crazy story happened and I didn't get lunch. Good thing is that I grabbed a sandwich on the way back to the bus. A very wise decision.

They serve water alongside the espresso.
You're supposed to rinse your mouth before drinking
the espresso to fully enjoy the flavor.

 You know what? I felt like a genius when I was drinking this cup of espresso. Like Mozart, I was drinking coffee at this spot. Alright guys, it's confirmed. I'm a genius. Thank you! Thank you!

Jonathan Chao, the musical genius. XDDDDD

Okay, let's see......one more post for Salzburg. Probably 1 to 2 for Vienna, 1 to 2 for Venice, 1 to 2 for Florence, 1 to 2 for Rome,1 for Pisa, 1 for Monaco, 1 for Avignon, 1 for Lyon, 2 for Paris......fuck me.......