Salzburg: Title Redacted At Request of Spouse

We are just about to head out on our next trip, which means it's do-or-die time to write up the last one! Said last trip was to Salzburg, and it was a few weeks ago in late August.

To get there we flew into Munich then took a train over the Austrian border to Salzburg. On the Sunday we were there we then did a day trip to The Eagles Nest, which meant taking a bus back over the border (this time the Southern one) into Germany. The Eurozone meant that we didn't get any extra passport stamps out of it though. Stupid Euro.

Salzburg is located quite near the alps, and is nestled in between a river and a cliff. This gave it a highly defensible position during times that was needed, but also restricted its growth quite noticably. The scenic old center of town is quite compact, and the fortress built on the cliff above looms over it all. Mozart was born here and, as we found in Vienna, they are much more cultured than I am. While we were there they were showing free operas projected on a large screen in one of the squares and every seat was taken.

The town center itself is very Italianate due to the egos of the rulers. They were important, and wanted to look the part. They brought in craftsmen from Italy to design and build many of the squares and fountains, and it definitely has that feel. The main center is a series of connected squares with small roads running off higgely piggely. This view is actually of the largest square looking into a second one (the two buildings in the background are pinching the intersection between them.)

When you live next to a giant cliff, sometimes you need to get creative. The stone of the cliff was quarried and used for building materials, but they also would build some things right into it. This is a very old portion of a church (labeled catacombs, but I believe more like a monastic home) which was carved into the face. In general we have found our trips in Austria to be a bit less church-filled than some of our others in Europe, but we did quite like this one. Graves in the cemetery (see the cluster of markers in the bottom left corner) were all very well kept and elaborately planted with vibrant flowers. The church also has a bakery that's been around for hundreds of years, so how could we not love it?

As per usual when in Europe and near a tall thing, we were compelled to climb it. In this case though, it was the cliff rather than a church tower. The top of the cliff is covered almost entirely by a series of interconnected parks, with some museums and restaurants punctuating them. We had coffee at a very fancy place one afternoon to enjoy the view, then had dinner another night at a much more casual joint where we sat at cliff-side picnic tables and ate weird bread dumplings with delicious meat stews. The views over the city from up here are just amazing, and I could not get enough of them. I literally took hundreds of photos, most of which I am sparing you.

Back on the ground, we took a strange statue tour of the city. These two are no doubt from an opera (most of the statues in town seem to be,) but because of the staining from the trees behind they are super creepy. There was a whole series of these statues, and they were amazing in their un-intended spookiness.

Next up for odd statues was the "dwarf garden" at the palace. You might naively think that this would be a garden with smaller varieties of plants on display, but no. This was a garden with life-sized statues of the dozen or so dwarfs that served in the court of the Prince Archbishop. They are apparently significant because their clothing is known to be incredibly accurate to the period where they were sculpted, but it's a bit hard to get past the grotesquerie of it. This guy had a goiter and is shown throttling a bird of some form, and almost every statue was carved disfigured in some way.

As I mentioned above, Sunday was given over almost entirely to a trip to the Eagles Nest. This is a tea house that one of Hitler's advisors built for him, high above his house in Bavaria. The trip started with visiting some of the bunkers that the Nazi's used, which were a series of caverns and tunnels spiderwebbed under the entire area. It was interesting to see the scale of them, and to also compare them to the Churchill War Rooms in London. Whereas the ones in London had been preserved with the original furnishings, these had been stripped bare after the war.

Getting from the bunkers to the nest involved a bus ride up a winding, one-lane road that clung to the side of the mountain. I have learned, as husbands must do if they wish to survive, that poking my wife and saying "Wow, look at that drop off!" is not a good thing to do. I found it exhilarating and stunning, but was smart enough to keep that to myself on the drive. At the peak, you are faced with stunning views of the Alps and some of the towns in the valley floor below them. We had some clouds, but they came and went and really only served to add to the majesty of the place. Despite its dark history, it really is amazingly stunning. It was also here that I discovered the three things that my wife has in common with Hitler: She is mildly afraid of heights; she is mildly claustrophobic; and she has walked the halls of The Eagles Nest. She is also unwilling to have a blog post titled "Three Things My Wife Has In Common With Hitler", though I'm not sure where Adolf would have fallen on that one.

Back in Sazlburg, we spent some quality time back up on the cliff and in the fotress. It was strategically placed to be very well protected, and is immensely imposing. It also means it can require a lot of cardio to get there. The museums there were only ok, but the setting and the views were spectacular enough that it could not have mattered less. Overall it was a great visit to a fairy tale setting with wonderful food, and we loved it.