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| Salzach River flowing through Salzburg |
Who
can ever forget the Academy Award winner film Sound of Music? Though Salzburg is
named after the salt it used to produce it is also known for music. Mozart was
born here and in recent times the movie Sound of Music was filmed here.
Only
two and a half hours away by train from Vienna day-tripping to Salzburg is
easy. Several trains leave from Vienna for Salzburg during the
day. We caught one from Westbahnhof (the Western station in Vienna). We had got
off here in 1987 when we travelled from Munich to Vienna.
A large number of
day-trippers take the train in the morning. Young men and women seem to carry
their bi-cycles along as I noticed a whole bogey dedicated to stands for
bi-cycles. Salzburg is on or close to the foot of Alps and hence it has its ups
and downs that should be difficult for cyclists. For young people, however, that
does not seem to be an issue.
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| Mirabell Palace in the background |
Salzburg
Tourism has done a good thing by organizing a tourism counter right on the
platform. It is a great help for the day-trippers who have very little time in
hand to go round the place. Quite a lot of time is taken to travel from Vienna and
back– almost 5 hours consuming the best part of the morning. We bought tickets
for a package of sight- seeing by a tourist bus.
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| Baroque architecture |
It
was a whirr. I do not remember much of what we were shown that mostly had a lot
of Mozart, the Abbey and a few baroque structures after which we were dropped
on a square for wandering around. Yes, we had a bit of Sound of Music in our
itinerary which was the Mirabell Palace, an imposing neo-classical structure by
the side of the Salzach River that flows through the city, its waters eventually
draining into the Danube basin. The Palace has some exquisitely laid gardens.
It is located in the Historic Centre of Salzburg and is a World Heritage Site.
Mozart used to play here when he was a child and the song “Do Re Mi” of the
film Sound of Music was filmed in the gardens of this Palace. The Palace is
also associated with Adolf Hitler whose wife Eva Braun got married here to a
senior Nazi official.
The
Square that we were dropped in is also a World Heritage Site with
period
buildings all around. In one of these buildings somebody was running a
restaurant. We climbed up as it was an outfit on the first floor offering a
fine view of the Square below. We had whatever looked palatable to us, relaxed
for a while and got back to the bus for our return trip to Vienna. So, that was
it – short and crisp.
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| A Salzburg street |
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