The German Blogs: Munich to Salzburg

Today's plan was to drive up to Dachau and see the Concentration Camp, and then continue on. However, sadly, when I woke up I recalled that Monday was the only day that it was closed. So we were forced onto Salzburg.

And the drive was rather uneventful. The Alps really do just sort boink appear as you're driving. They are stunningly beautiful, and I can see why people have always talked about them.

Then we arrived at Salzburg. Here is where things start to go awry. Now, T's big plan was to just "roll with it", meaning no real planning, no booked hotels, no certain iternary that we needed to follow. Salzburg turned this idea to shit. We didn't have a hotel, so we didn't have an actual in-town destination. We wound up driving around this town for about an hour, trying to figure out where we were, where we could stay (after he realized that it was my intention to stay overnight) and generally just being lost.

So we decided to pull into a parking lot. Bad decision. The person in front of us was sitting in front of the gate. Just sitting there. Neither pulling in nor pulling out. Parked, as it were, in the entrance to a parking lot.

I honked. Nothing.

I honked again. Nothing.

We sit for about 2 minutes, noticing that there is a woman in the booth near the entrance.

There are now people lining up behind us. I try motioning to the woman in the booth. She continues to clean her habitate with Windex.

Another honk. Nothing.

Now I am frantically waving at the woman in the booth, trying to get her attention. These two people in front of us are just sitting there. They truely seem to have no intention of moving. The person behind us gets pissed and backs away to get out. There is a horse and carriage waiting behind us somewhere. I'm still waiving at this woman, and when she finally sees me, I motion to the people in front of me and she shrugs and continues with cleaning her habitat.

Alright. That's it. I put the car in reverse, turn around and get the hell away from this situation. I'm aggrivated, tired, have to pee, and still don't have a place to sleep. There were about 14 cars and a carriage behind us, only 7 of which were trying to get in to the lot-- the others were trying to get into the old town. So I finally pull down in to the new town and there's traffic.

I look down the street and then look over at T. "Are we stuck behind a horse?"

He looks out the window. "I do believe that we are."

Indeed, there was a horse and carriage holding up traffic. I'm so irritated I don't know what to do with myself at this point. So I make a radical left or right, and I see a Mercure hotel up a head. I have seen these hotels before, so I pull in the driveway. I get out and go in and ask how much for a night. More than I wanted to spend, but if it has a toilet, I'm there.

Here's some traveling advice for Europe. Go with small, independent hotels that have 3*. Stay away from chains. Chains are terrible over priced and under-unique (if that's a term). They lack the charm that the others have, and almost never ever have a nice view.

So we check into our rather small disappointing room and head out on the town. We decide to walk. It's really not that far, on some major roads, so it's not a big deal. Not yet. Keep this in mind!

We find the old down and look through what, by the end of our trip, we would fondly refer to as the Ghetto Guide. We decide that there are only so many churches one can see, so we head up to the Fortress.

This is the only fortress in all of Europe never to have been taken by force. It was only captured once, and that was because it was handed over to Napolean. It dominates the whole town is really a wonderful peice of Europe. We took the funicular up because the path said 30 minutes climb and we said, "Um, no." When you get to the top, you are left at the main stairs and up and in you go.

Once you are inside, the first thing you encounter is the Marionette Museum. These things freak me the hell out, but T wanted to go in. They had one you could play with and this time it was my turn to play. But the strangest thing of all was that under one of the glass portholes in the floor, there was a skeleton marionette covered in money. It was really strange and kinda sealed my decision to leave.

We walked out into the court yard and walked around until we found the guided tour that we had paid for. Once again, we were handed those wonderful little prerecorded handests and listened to everything about the Fortress in not so mangled English. They took us to the top of the highest tower in the Fortress and let us out on the roof. Which is great for my new found fear of heights that I'm battling. Well, maybe it's not the height, maybe it's the fall...



I also would like to take a moment at this juncture to mention that I hate castle stairs. Any and all castle stairs. The spiral ones drive me nuts. This has been true since my first trip to Europe. I hate them, and not to mention about 90% of them have this little worn down divot where thousands of Royal Feet have trod upon them up and down and you have to aim for this divot or risk taking down the tour group.

This fortress-- no exception.

Now remember, Salzburg, The Last Golden Days Before the War, so I'm naturally looking for anything that's related to the Sound of Music. Up in the Fortress, I figure I can, at the very least, spy Nonneburg Abbey, where the real Maria taught and where the movie Maria was learning to be a nun.

I did. And wow, was it disappointing. It's still a convent, so you can't go in, and really the only thing you can see are the barrel vault arches on the far right of the center court. That's its. Talk about a non-event. We did find St. Peter's Cemetary, where they used the gravestones in the one scene, and that was pretty neat. But that was it. Everything else was way out of town.

We were going to eat at the world's oldest restaurant upon decending the funicular, but it was so fancy when we passed it that I didn't even realize that was the place. So instead we decided to try another cafe on the top of the hill. Upon buying the tickets for the elevator to the top, we are informed that the cafe is closed, and that the elevator only runs until 7 p.m. It's already 6.

Well, we have the tickets so we get to the top and take in the view. We take a little walked to the old City Wall and back and then try to figure where the heck we're going to eat.

Our Ghetto Guide recommends a small place just to the right of the elevator at street level. We decide that it's probably our best bet, and the gentleman comes up and offers us street seats. It's Italian, but I'm OK with that. Somewhere halfway through the meal, the owner realizes that we followed our Ghetto Guide and asks to see it. He's delighted to see his restaurant in an American book, ghetto or no.

It was lovely meal by the way.

So, after dinner we start heading back to the hotel. We're flat out of cash so we hunt down a Geldautomat. Geldautomat offers us a 50 euro. You can't get on the bus with that. Well, it wasn't a long walk to the center from the hotel, so it's probably not that far back.

Except that while T's sense of direction is good, his sense of neighborhood was not so good. Wandering through the dark, small back streets of the new town at 9 p.m. was not exactly what I called an experience you wanted to have. I was never so happy to see the hotel as I was that night. We walked in, walked up to the room, spent a few minutes searching for THE FRAU and then went to bed.