Salt City & not Mozart

Welcome to Salzburg! Who knew it was made famous by it’s salt mines. The white gold as they called it. Probably everyone knew this but since I don’t speak German, it never occurred to me. To Aeneas’s utter dismay, we did not make it to the mines to ride the makeshift slides they have available to decend the various levels or to the longest alpine slide (not possible without three legs of a bus ride or a car as it turns out), however, we did manage some really great times in the beautiful city.

We lucked out… and I struck out… the first day in Salzburg. We managed to catch a festival weekend which meant lots of beer, live music, helium balloons, sausages, street food and my favorite, every male that walked or skipped or was pushed in a pram in the streets was in Lederhosen. The women were dressed up too but I’m not gonna lie, it was the lederhosen that fascinated me the most…for obvious reasons!

The helium was pretty funny but watching my youngest belly laugh is one of my greatest joys in life! He thought this was the best thing ever.

It was the festival of St. Rupert and there was much ado. I thought it an absolute sin to visit Salzburg and not hear some Mozart so we showed up at St. Peter’s Monastery for what was to be a weekly 45 minute Mozart concert. We watched mass end about 6:45 and people file out as more people filled back in for what I was sure to be the concert. Turns out, I got us pinned in by little old ladies on both sides to a 3 hour Mass that didn’t finish up until after 10 PM. Please understand that the entire thing was in German (of course it was) so we didn’t quite “get” the message if you know what I mean. And although the music was unbelievable (I mean unbelievable!) it wasn’t even Mozart…it was Haydn! Dang.

The kids were gracious and very well mannered although a little mad about having to sit there. I rewarded everyone with drinks afterward. Justin had a double whiskey and coke. And the kids got hot chocolate and extra iPad time the next day. Everyone was happy although I figured we were just making up for not being in church for the past 4 weeks.

Speaking of church, we managed to catch up with one of our church parishioners from Durango for lunch one day. Paul was staying in Germany, not 20 min away and met us in Salzburg one day.  We had a nice time catching up on Durango happenings. We were sorry to have missed Cathy who was showing up later that day!

The kids were pretty perplexed and amazed at all of the “lockets of love” on the pedestrian bridge. We stayed on the opposite bank of the river and crossed several times on our way to things which amounted to a huge bottle neck on our part as the kids had to stop in what seemed like every section and find something unusual.  A locket that looked cool, or one form Colorado, or one that was really old, or with their names (no, Aeneas did not find his). They insisted on these photos being included just so viewers would get the idea of how spectacular this whole lock on the bridge thing was. In hindsight, we should have shown them the bridge behind Notre Dame in Paris. It was twice as “spectacular.”

#funny #music #citylife #culture #curiosities #Salzburg #food #church