I think the sound of music is an okay film with very catchy songs. Let's face it, most of us have heard do re me or the hills are ALIVEEEEEE with the sound of children running to safety. When I was told we were going to Salzburg my first thought was "damn I haven't seen that film in ages, I'll have to watch it before we end up on a bus full of people who have", my second thought was pretzels....because pretzels, ya know?
7th of August, one hell of a drive led us from Ersperding (I will be very impressed if anyone knows that this place exists) to Salzburg. Around 9-10 ish in the morning we parked in a car park near the centre, opposite a plaque talking about Einsten. *This and the fact that I was the only one out of the 3 of us that can speak German will be important later so keep it in mind
There was a sign on the far corner of said car park, my mother expressed her stress over the fact that she thought that this car park was not a safe haven to house literally everything we brought with us but my step father insisted that it would be fine. I offered to translate the sign and he still insisted that it would be hunky dory. So that was that. We entered a cafe and did the healthy thing of eating cake for breakfast and balancing it out by drinking mango juice, as well as coffee. Then we skipped along our merry way, wandering doe-eyed through mirabel gardens and Salzburg in general.
Top tips:
1. Don't wear a traditional Dirndle or for that matter ANY dirndle on one of the hottest days of the trip. Yes, it looks thin but it. Has. So. Many. Layers
2. If you don't have time to look at literally anything to do with Mozart's home town, eat a Mozart Pretzel. It's the Pretzel version of Terry's chocolate orange
3. Be prepared! We stumbled across a music festival and spent a fair amount of the day listening to various buskers, my favourite being the guy who made music out of glass cups
4. SLEEP!!! I cannot stress this one enough. I was really looking forward to The Sound Of Music tour and I was completely fine the first half, belting out kareoke with a group of strangers on a long bus with the worst air con ever invented. Heck, I even got to take a selfie with the lonely goat. But I fell asleep on the bus and woke up just as we reached the wandery bit where you can leave the bus for half an hour and stretch and eat ice cream in the pouring rain whilst riding on a mini train.
My last tip is this: ALWAYS READ CAR PARK SIGNS. Salzburg was the monopoly Go square on the start of our mini food and drink tour around Europe. On the 8th we woke up very early, ready for a day stopping off at various places, such as Hofbrau Kalt Haus, on our way to Abtenau. Between us we lugged 2 suitcases and 3 duffle bag thingymagigs from our hotel in the centreish to the outskirts, where our car was supposed to be to find a market. A MARKET. Let me re-iterate, there was no cars in the car park, just a hoard of stalls selling who-knows-what.
Naturally we were a bit freaked out. Step dad O mine decided to head to the car park's "office" (I still have no idea what you call the places in the car parks with the help desk and the person who looks bored with everything) and inquire about where the hell our car was. As it turns out, both me and my mother were right. If we had translated the sign, like I suggested, we would have known that any cars left in the carpark at 4am on Thursday morning get towed to make way for the weekly market.
The guy at the help desk must have thought we were idiots or that we were very gullible tourists because he proceeded to say something along the lines of "Don't worry, your car is about a 5 to 10 minute walk from here." Naturally we took his word and decided to walk. 5 minuites became 10, became 15, became half an hour. By the time we reached the car we were all tired, sweaty messes and, added bonus, incredibly pissed off. To top it all off, we had to fork out €100, possibly more simply because it got towed in the first place.
Moral of the story, be careful where you park.
Side note: Watch National Theatre's Amadeus if you can. It's incredible even if you hate opera.
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