Travelogue :  Backpacking (Central/Eastern) Europe

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Worded verbatim from my journal entry:

Salzburg- 12:00am

"Salzburg is a quaint and nice little town, save my 1st impressions were tarnished by a wrong way, one-way bus ride into the opposite end of the city, followed by a 1.5 mile walk back the other direction (with our heavy packs on!), and feeling dirty, disheveled, disgruntled, THEN not being able to find this damn little hostel which happened to be on top of a mountain, inside the woods, contained within a FORTRESS!"

Upon arriving to our hostel, located atop Monchberg ("the mountain") meant that either we had to climb some very long and steep stairs, or we had the option of taking the Monchberg lift.

We chose the latter.

After unpacking, changing and resting up a bit, Adam and I decided to explore a little bit of Salzburg.

From gasthofschorn.com:

"The Mozarts lived in 9 Getreidegasse from 1747 to 1773, and their son Wolfgang Amadeus was born there in 1756. Today, the home of the Mozart family is a museum where famous exhibits are displayed. Among other attractions, visitors to the museum can see the violin played by the world-famous musical genius as a child, his concert violin, his clavichord, a pianoforte, portraits, and letters of the Mozart family.

The Mozart family lived in the third floor of the house, which belonged to Johann Lorenz Hagenauer (1712-92), for a total of twenty-six years. Hagenauer, a trader and spice dealer, was a good friend of the Mozart family, and his name can still be found in the city today - the square in front of the house where Mozart lived is named after him, and a café on the Universitätsplatz square is also named after this friend of the famous musical family.

Mozart's neighbour, Babette von Moll, used to live facing the Universitätsplatz in the rear part of the house. In 1985, with the help of private loans, her home was converted into a replica of a typical middle-class home in the Salzburg of Mozart's time. As well as displaying furniture and objects of daily life, it covers three themes in detail: Mozart and the University of Salzburg, Mozart's friendship with Salzburg families, and church music and the veneration of saints. The second floor is devoted to the subject of Mozart and the theatre. Numerous dioramas describe how the interpretation of Mozart's operas has changed over the years. Models of sets from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century illustrate the diverse approaches that have been taken to his operas. The International Mozart Foundation uses the first floor of Mozart's birthplace to house an exhibition, changing yearly, on this universally relevant composer."

After walking around town for a little while, we found a Nordsee seafood place. All this trip, I've eaten nothing but sausages, potatoes, and sauerkrat, so I longed for a morsel of the sea.

August 21, 2008:

We awoke bright and early this morning, exchanged information and chatted with our fellow bunkmate, Kitty, a traveler whom happened to have her camera stolen while in Croatia, and had a breakfast of bread, jam and butter, while slapping the yellowjackets away from us and our food. Shortly after, we walked down Monchberg's stairs, through the cobblestoned streets and across the bridge to the other side of Salzburg. From there, we walked to Mirabell gardens and enjoyed the rows of manicured lawns and flora, then off to the Hofbanhof for our ride to Vienna.

Gemuse: kidney-- for some reason, I found this significant enough to write down in my journal. Maybe I should be worried...???

From Wikipedia:

"There are two versions of the winged stallion's birth: One is that they sprang from Medusa's neck as Perseus beheaded her, a "higher" birth, like the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus; Another says that they were born of the Earth as Medusa's blood spilled onto it, in which case Poseidon would not be their sire. A variation on this story holds that they were formed from the mingling of Medusa's blood and the sea foam, thus including Poseidon in their making.

Bellerophon caught and tamed Pegasus, and presented him to the Muses at Mount Parnassus. After he became the horse of the Muses, he was at the service of the poets."

Next stop: Vienna, home of the Vienna sausages (which, is an outright lie by the way... there is no such thing as vienna sausages in Vienna) .