Germany trip #7: Salzburg!

 OK, Salzburg isn't in Germany at all; it's in Austria.  We zipped over the border to tour this amazingly scenic city.  I'm telling you, everywhere you turn there's an incredible view.  Salzburg is right in the mountains and there are several fortresses/walls/other buildings (many of the fortifications date from the Thirty Years' War, which I'm really going to have to read about) looming over you at all times, and quite a few buildings are backed by cliffs.

But before we got to the city itself, we toured Hellbrunn, another palace just on the edge of town -- but a little different.  Hellbrunn was a day palace, a place to enjoy in summer and bring visitors to, but not to stay in.  It doesn't have a bedroom.  Hellbrunn was built by one Marcus Sittakus in the early 1600s, and Sittakus was the prince-archbishop of Salzburg.  Salzburg (and environs) was once an ecclesiastical principality in the Holy Roman Empire; the whole place belonged to the Church and the archbishop of the diocese  got to run it.  There were six of these little states run by prince-archbishops, and it's all extremely confusing.  This state of affairs lasted until 1803.

weird sculpture garden

one of many cute little grottoes

Anyway, Marcus Sittakus had quite a robust sense of humor.  He had a whole lot of wasserspielen -- water tricks -- installed at his palace with which to startle his guests.  There's a picnic table that shoots water at every seat (except the prince's!), grottos that spray water all over the place, and several others.  Thinking about the clothes that people wore back then to visit a prince, I kind of thought that guests can't have been all that thrilled, but presumably word got out and everyone knew to wear their oldest clothes, find it all most amusing, and keep their feelings to themselves.

Watch out!  Wasserspiele in progress!

Be careful where you sit

Tunnel of sprinklers

There are also quite a few tricks that really are interesting or charming.  A golden crown rises and falls on the fountain of Fortune, a goblin makes a rude face, and little animated dioramas show everyday life or scenes from mythology.  In a later addition, there is a large musical diorama of a town with dozens of figures that move around.  All of these tricks are run by water power from the streams all around.

Cute little grotto with sea monsters

Hard to see, but a little golden cap rises 

Cute little dioramas of life

Massive moving musical diorama

Rolf and Liesl's gazebo

For all of this, we had an Austrian day guide, Andreas, a very tall fellow in lederhosen and Tyrolean hat.  He took us through the whole day.  We drove into the center of Salzburg, and walked around quite a bit through the main plaza and cathedral yard, which, like Central Park, held lots of horses and carriages to give tourists a ride around town.  There was a building that was once an Augustinian monastery until the Gestapo took it over after the Anschluss.  There was Mozart's birthplace, now a museum, lots of narrow streets filled with shops, and much more.  We didn't have nearly enough time to explore the city, and I would love to go back there someday and spend a few days.  It's an absolutely lovely town.

Your average view on a Salzburg street

Just outside the cathedral square

Residenzplatz

Lots of horse and carriage outfits

A cute trick: if you stand in the right place,
 the angels on the cathedral crown the statue of Mary

These 'stumbling stones' commemorate victims
of the Nazis.  They are installed in front of
houses from which people were taken.

Our very Austrian guide

Mozart was born here

Shops have fancy signs

Even McDonalds

Painted cow statues are surprisingly common

Andreas led us across the river to the Mirabell Palace, which is a large formal garden area surrounded by important buildings -- some university-related, or belonging to the government.  It's a nice sunny place with pretty curlicues of flowers on the grass.  Andreas pointed out a statue/fountain of a flying horse near a staircase, and told us that it features in The Sound of Music.  The film musical is set in Salzburg, and some of it was filmed on location, and all Austrians are convinced (on strong evidence) that all Americans are huge fans.  Certainly many of our group were, and we had many, many spots pointed out to us.*  

Sound of Music fans will recognize these steps and the Pegasus fountain

Another place that Americans like to go is the village where the carol "Silent Night" was written by a priest and a teacher.  It's right on the river that forms the border between Austria and Germany, so we could look across the river and see a Bavarian village.  There is a tiny little chapel devoted to the carol, built on the spot where the actual church used to stand; that was demolished because it was often flooded.  Now there's a levy and no more flooding.

View from Austria into Bavaria

View from the levy

Last remaining stones of the original chuch

Silent Night chapel

Then it was back to Salzburg for some free time before dinner.  Mom and I decided to explore a famous cemetery, Petersfriedhof, a triangle of land between two churches and a cliff.  We really liked that, and then we went looking for some shopping, but almost everything was closed except cafes.  We did find a shop dedicated to Christmas and Easter, so we went in to get some gifts for the friends back home.  Eggs are the thing right now in Salzburg, and this shop had thousands of decorated eggs.

An old city gate

This broken plaster is supposed to be a relic
 of some overly happy GIs trying to fit a tank
down this teeny street.

Fun mystery staircase off the street

This cliff has a building perched up there

Random street with random cliff jutting out into it

Shed with cliff

Peterfriedshof churchyard

Nice church detail

Hundreds of eggs, thousands of eggs,
millions and billions and trillions of eggs!

After that, we walked back to the main square, the Residenzplatz, to meet the group for dinner.  We found a plaque on a wall, commemorating a Nazi book burning that was held at the square soon after the Anschluss.  The square is a huge open area, perfect for a giant bonfire.  I found a short NYT article reporting it.

Fun arches in a corner

Entering the bishop's palace

Dinner was at the bishop's palace of St. Peter, an 18th century palace near the cathedral.  It says 'established 803' because that's when the bishopric was established.  This was a Mozart-themed dinner, and it turned out to be really neat.  There was a string quintet and two opera singers (a bass and a soprano), and they performed between courses.  So before we started, there were several songs from Don Giovanni; then after the soup, songs from The Marriage of Figaro, and so on.  Pieces from The Magic Flute finished off the program.  The bass was a real ham, and well-suited to getting the audience involved.  By the time we were done and got back to our pension, it was very late indeed!

*One thing I realized is that the movie shows them escaping from Salzburg and hiking across the border into Switzerland, which is impossible; the only border you can hike to from Salzburg is right into Germany.  Switzerland is nowhere nearby.  But in real life, the von Trapps saw which way the wind was blowing and moved to Italy before anything happened.  Captain von Trapp had been born in a little Italian bit of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so he could do that.