Salzburg

…was one of the best trips I’ve had this whole semester. Despite the fact I was feeling super traveled-out after Leipzig. I spent four days there with Christy, and we went from being cultural-y to exploring nature to going into full-on shameless tourist mode. It was amazing. Here’s a breakdown:

I arrived Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening we were classy-touristy. After changing into appropriate theater-going clothes, we hit up the art museum in the Altstadt, had dinner, and then saw a production of “Jugend ohne Gott” (Youth without God). I was simultaneously impressed by how much I actually did understand and frustrated by how that still wasn’t enough for me to totally grasp everything that was going on. Fun nonetheless, though.

Monday we took a “Sound of Music” Tour which was incredibly cheesy and amazingly fun – they took us to a bunch of places where the movie had been filmed, and it was crazy to see how the filmmakers pieced together different areas of the city to create the film. After that we went up to Hohensalzburg, a castle/fortress up on a hill to the west of the river, where the view over the city is absolutely stunning.

Tuesday we hopped back over the border into Germany to visit a Salt Mine, which was totally cracked out and incredibly cool – I totally wished the brothers could have been with me to see it! Unfortunately, I didn’t understand a lot of the German they were using to explain the mining process (definitely not the type of vocabulary I’ve ever learned) but it was amazing to be in the mine and walk through the tunnels.

After that we continued on to the Königssee – truly the most beautiful place I’ve seen in Europe this far. It’s a long, skinny lake, incredibly clean and a beautiful aqua color and bordered by huge mountains – sort of Canandaigua-esque…but on steroids. We took a boat ride out to a little point further down the lake and just walked around the paths for a bit. It was drizzling the entire time but the rain and mist really didn’t detract from the experience at all.

Wednesday, then, before we left in the afternoon, we went to the “Trick Fountains” at Hellbrunn Palace, and were decently soaked by the end of the tour – our tour guide was realllly enjoying catching everyone by surprise and turning on random unnoticed fountains the whole time. There were also tons of little kids on the tour, who were mostly adorable and completely enjoying the ridiculousness, aside from the one poor German kid who sobbed the entire tour.

Salzburg as a city was also extremely touristy, but so wonderful/beautiful it didn’t even bother me – I can see why it gets so so many tourists each year!

I’ve spent the past two weekends in Tübingen and plan on being here the next two weekends as well – sort of a record! But totally necessary, as I need to prepare two Referats (oral presentations) as well as write my Hausarbeit (final-term-paper)…I’ve become great friends with the library recently.