Vienna

Retracing our path to Bratislava, we catch a train back to Vienna. Surprisingly the train ticket on the way back is 50% cheaper. We have booked two nights in Vienna, however we end up staying for a third. Three nights in Vienna:

• The first night we arrive at the hostel at 7pm. There is a Christmas market and pub crawl advertised to start at 7, so we quickly drop the bags and join the crawl. On the crawl we have 3 Americans, 6 Aussies, 1 Italian and 1 Austrian, who organised it. It was a long night but we had a good time.
• The second night we go to the Volksoper to see an opera of Hansel and Gretel. Volksoper is a nice opera hall and the opera is enjoyable. We booked 5 euro tickets at the back of the balcony boxes, which were really quite terrible seats. Fortunately the people who booked the seats at the front of the balcony didn't show up, so we sat in the good seats for the whole show!
• We enjoyed our first opera in Vienna and decided to see a second one at the Staatsoper (State Opera). For this we lined up to get standing tickets which were only 3.50 euros and we had a really good view. The only downside is that you stand up for the whole 3.5 hour show. It is a more professional production and there are a lot more stage props.

During the days we walked around the city looking at the architecture and sights of Vienna. The Spanish Riding School is in the centre of the city and they have exercise sessions everyday. We snuck in to get a look at one of the exercise sessions. Vienna was a relaxing, laid-back couple of days for us.

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Vienna

Central Austria

Salzburg to Vienna. Originally we were thinking of catching a train west to east from Salzburg to Vienna. Upon learning the price of two tickets however we decided to hire a car and drive, which ends up being the same price, including petrol.

We get off the A1 at Mondsee, where we saw the Sound of Music wedding church the other day. The road winds around Mondsee and over the mountains between there and Traunsee. There is a heavy frost on much of the road and on the southern sides of the lakes. Basically anywhere that doesn't get sun has a very heavy frost. It is a very cool sight. The lakes and mountains district of Austria is beautiful. There are large mountains that drop straight into the lakes, which are crystal clear and cold.

The drive takes us through Ebensee, Traunkirchen and Gmunden. Ebensee doesn't have much except spectacular views of the lake, mountains and valley. There was an outpost of the Mauthausen concentration camp here. Traunkirchen has a church and a perfectly placed chapel on top of a rocky outcrop into the lake. Gmunden has a castle built on a rocky island, accessible by a traditional wooden bridge.

It was a really great detour off the A1 with spectacular views of the mountains and lakes.

Back on the A1 we drive through to St Florian. Just before Linz we hit very thick fog and the temperature drops from 3 degrees to -1.0 in one kilometer. St Florian has a large abbey, Augustiner Chorherrenstift, which we look at in the dense fog.

Just north is the Mauthausen concentration camp. In this camp over 100,000 prisoners died from 1938 to 1945. Some of the original barracks and buildings still remain. It is very eerie looking around the camp with the fog as you can see from the photos. The woman at the ticket desk was just amazed that anyone wanted to walk around in -3 degrees, heavy fog and light drizzle to see the camp. To add to her amazement was the fact that we were from Australia, in Austria for a week and wanted to dedicate such an awful afternoon to this camp. We topped it off by mentioning that we saw Dachau camp just a few days earlier. (Sometimes it is easier to not straighten out some details with the language barrier!)

We spend the night in St. Polten, which has Christmas markets and a nice B&B. On the way to St Polten we are pulled over by a nice policemen who wanted to check all of our car papers, passport etc! Our first encounter with the police since we left Australia!

Sunday

Continuing on our trip to Vienna we drive through the Danube Valley. This is one of the prettier areas of the Danube, with the river being flanked by vineyards and cliffs. It is quite similar to the Moselle Valley in Luxembourg. Of note in the valley is Stift Melk, the Benedictine abbey of Melk. This is a massive building looms over the town of Melk. The church inside has a magnificently painted dome and all of the walls are dripping with gold.

Fantastic find of the drive - Schloss Schallaburg, a Renaissance castle set away from any large towns. The castle is supposed to be shut so we want a look at the outside. When we arrive the first, second and third car parks are overflowing with cars. There is a Christmas Advent market on this weekend. Despite the number of markets seen already it provides a nice place to get some lunch.

Sights in the Danube Valley include castle ruins where Richard the Lionheart was incarcerated for a year and the site where a 25,000 year old sandstone statuette of Venus was discovered.

Our final stop is Krems an der Donau which is a nice town to walk around. From there we head straight for Vienna, to find a train to Bratislava in Slovakia.

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Central Austria

Salzburg

Wednesday

We arrived in Salzburg after a one hour train trip from Munich. After dropping our bags at the hostel we head for (surprise!) the Christmas markets. Much like the markets from Ulm or Munich these have Christmas gifts and decorations with food and mulled wine. Here we find dinner of corn on a cob, baked potato and Gluhwein.

Thursday

Waking up in Salzburg. The breakfast for the hostel is quite good - standard fare of cereal, bread, jam, ham, egg, cheese and coffee. There is a frost outside, and in the daylight we can look at the view from the hostel, which is the Fortung Hohensalzburg perched on the cliffs. Today we have booked a tour for the Sound of Music film sites.

For the afternoon we look through the Mozart museum. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born and lived in Salzburg. The museum is interesting, but doesn't get many points for coherency in the presentation.

Salzburg is nestled in between two cliffs, the Monchsburg and Kapuzinberg. At dusk we ascend the Kapuzinberg cliffs to get a good view of the city. We go back to the old town and peek inside the cathedral. For dinner we have a quick, but good curry meal, no frills and cheap. By accident we stumble across two stores, Easter in Salzburg and Christmas in Salzburg. They sell painted eggs and Christmas baubles of all kinds.

Tonight we spend some time planning the next few days. Once again the Sound of Music movie is on at 8pm, and we are sitting in the common room of the hostel planning our trip, but half watching the movie. Now that we have the inside information and have visited the movies sites the movie takes on a different appearance.

Friday

Another glorious day in Salzburg. Today the plan is to ascend the cliff on the other side of Salzburg, the one with the fortress and abbey. 144 stairs and halfway up the Monchsburg cliffs is the abbey that was used in the filming of the Sound of Music. It is also in its own right a very nice chapel. The haze has lifted a bit today and we are offered great views of the mountains around Salzburg.

From the abbey it is a steep walk up to the fortress. The fortress was not set out as a normal castle re-creation, it is mostly a museum. The views from the ramparts were stunning. The fortress is well known for being impenetrable, it has never been taken by force in all of its time.

After the castle we walked along the ridge that castle is on where we found a nice cafe for lunch - beer, hot chocolate, pork schnitzel and views. Down the other side of the ridge is the Augustiner beer hall. This beer hall brews its own beers and serves them in stone mugs. We nip in of course for a quick one before wandering back through the old town for dinner.

Our original plan was to only be in Salzburg for two nights, but we loved the city so much that we decided to stay for a third. Unfortunately the room we had was booked and we had to move to a shared dorm. For travellers like us this made for quite an experience.

Saturday

Our night in a shared dorm in Salzburg. There were a couple of guys that could really snore. It was not much fun having to be quiet when moving around the room.

Today we leave Salzburg, which is a city that we really enjoyed. The scenery is just so beautiful and the town is peaceful and easy to get around. We pick up a car today to drive from Salzburg to Vienna.

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Salzburg

The Sound of Music

The hills were alive... every night at 8pm in the hostel we stayed in. For the three nights and days that we spent in Salzburg I think that both Kelly and I were humming, singing or playing in our head the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. It didn't help that everywhere we looked in town there was a scene from the movie to be spotted. Movie repetitions aside, it was interesting to grit the teeth and watch bits of the movie each night to point out more of the movie scenes that we had found that day.

On our first day in Salzburg we signed up for one of the three 'official' Sound of Music tours that bus you between the sights and scenes from the movie. Of course it had the obligatory stops and a souvenir shop or two. The tour covered

• Mirabell Gardens where the Do-re-mi smash-hit video clip was filmed,
• Frohnburg Castle, the front of the movie house,
• Garden Gazebo for Sixteen Going on Seventeen,
• Leopoldskron Castle, the back of the movie house and the lake the kids fall off the boat into,
• Untersberg, the mountain peak that the family escapes to Switzerland over. Ironically, on the other side of the peak is actually Germany, the Switzerland border is 300km to the south,
• Mondsee which has the church that the movie wedding was filmed in,
• Tree lined street where the kids hang out of the trees,
• The real Von Trapp family house

In addition there are numerous sights around Salzburg that we found on foot. If you keep your eyes open around Salzberg you will likely see every outdoor scene from the movie

• Nonnberg Abbey, which was the abbey for the movie
• Mozart Bridge and the path along the river, again for Do-re-mi
• Scenes in the old town

It was really interesting seeing the places from the movie. Most are still in the same condition as when shot, however a lot are now private residences so tours of the ground or getting too close to the buildings is not possible. Most of the inside scenes were shot in the studios anyway.

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(Audio not available... Sorry!)

The Sound of Music