This weekend I had the privilege of traveling to the scenery of one of my favorite movie's of all time: The Sound of Music! Jennifer, Jessica, and I departed from Regensburg at 9:45 and arrived in Salzburg, Austria at 1 p.m. We switched trains at Munich and I had time to get a Starbucks coffee. This is where my weekend of good fortune began: Starbucks was having a free tall coffee day.? I had never heard of such a thing, but I gladly took my free coffee without debating. When we got to Salzburg, we bought a one day bus pass to save some time finding the hostel. The hostel upgraded us to a four person room with our own bathroom. We had a roommate Friday night, but the room to ourselves on Saturday night. We met up with Toby and Kelsey at Mozart's House for a guided tour. I learned many interesting facts about Mozart and his house was beautiful.
The five of us hiked to the castle next. We thought we could walk around it without going in for free, but they wanted us to pay. Instead, we climbed on the rock wall and took some amazing pictures of Salzburg. The weather was sunny and 70 degrees all day. Another piece of luck came when a Salzburg festival happened to be going on all weekend. We walked around the open markets and I bought myself a birthday present, since I turn 20 in less than 2 weeks. I got a pink paisley scarf from an outdoor vendor. After that we wandered the downtown streets and stopped for Gelato. I got peanut butter & nutella flavored ice cream!
Jennifer, Jessica and I were on a time schedule because we had to get back to the hostel in time to watch the free viewing of The Sound of Music. We changed into our pajamas and brought our bread, peanut butter, and jelly with us to the projector room. The audience consisted of 2 girls we met who are studying abroad in Switzerland and they go to Pepperdine in Malibu, California. There were also 2 boys who were backpacking Europe. The girls and I sat and ate pb&j's and pretzels while we sang along to the movie. The movie got us very excited for the tour the next day!
We woke up and got ready, then went downstairs for a wonderful continental breakfast. The word 'free' while traveling abroad is even better than in the States. The breakfast had the typical Europe menu items: bread, cheeses, cold cuts, jelly, eggs, cereal, and coffee. After breakfast, we got on the big tour bus for a 4 hour ride around Salzburg. The tour guide was a precious old man who really did a great job telling all the secrets to the movie. We saw: Liesel's gazebo where she danced 16 going on 17, the wall of the house where Maria sang 'I have Confidence', the nunnery, the back of one of the Von Trap houses where they fell in the water, the church where Maria married, the famous foot bridge for Do-Re-Mi, and the Rosegarten. The guide said it would take 20 hours to see every scenery in the movie, so we just hit the highlights. We had an hour to roam the church, but the girls and I went to a cafe for 30 minutes and split an apfel strudel and coffee. The tour was worth the opportunity to just drive around and look at Austria. And, there is nothing like being able to watch a movie and say "I've been there!" Had it not been for the rainy weather, it would have been an absolutely perfect day!
The rest of the day we roamed downtown and the markets again. We were exhausted from a day of constantly moving. In the morning, we woke up to the breakfast again, checked out of the hostel, and were on our way by 9 a.m. Our last stop before leaving Salzburg was the Nature Museum. Although most of the information was in German, we spent about 2 hours walking around the museum looking at everything from dinosaurs, aquariums, space exploration, and more. We got on a train around noon and were home by 4 p.m.! I love being able to conquer a country in a 3 day weekend.
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