Salzburg, Austria

On 1 July we drove over the Alps up to Salzburg, where we stayed in the upper storey of a farmhouse just outside the city for 2 days. The apartment was lovely, and also meant that we got to know the family, with whom we had drinks on our first night. They had alcoholic drinks, unlike the beer that Dad managed to buy in a supermarket – who’s ever heard of non-alcoholic beer?! We saw lots of Salzburg in one day, including the beautiful Old Town, the Hohensalzburg fortress, Hellbrun palace with its trick fountains and the Mirabell Gardens with some people doing traditional dancing in old-style costumes. We saw a couple of places used in the Sound of Music: the cemetery where the Von Trapps fled the Nazis and the pavilion where the boy and girl sing ‘I am 16 going on 17’! We made sure we ate savoury and sweet pretzels (the big bread kind, not the small snack kind) and bosna (an Austrian hotdog). The other day we spent just over the border in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, with some friends of friends who we’d never met before. They were amazingly generous: we meant to go just for breakfast, but they ended up showing us around in the arvo and we stayed for dinner. Brekky was amazing – a range of meats, cheeses and patés with pretzels and rye bread. Then lunch was rolls with liver cheese and mustard from a supermarket, pretty standard apparently. Dinner was a delicious home made pasta with Emmental cheese and ham. They showed us some deer right near their house (which we fed), old-style town squares, a beautiful canyon, a couple of huge lakes with snow-capped mountains in the background, Hitler’s house, mountains that make the outline of a sleeping witch, and a bird sanctuary with eagles, a vulture, owls, and a cute marmot. It was great doing some touristy things, and getting some local knowledge, as well as seeing some of Austria as well ass some of Germany. It was kinda unsettling, not knowing any German, except the small amount Em has learnt in high school – and it’s harder to guess what signs are saying when the language is more different to English than Italian. But Dad and I did love the order of Austria compared to the chaos of Italy!