In any event, everyone was heartsick when we drove away from the hotel the next morning. Really. It was like the first time you break up with someone and you realize it's a mistake, but you already have a new date to Homecoming, and so does he, and she's someone you hate. I'm not speaking about my personal experience here. This is just an analogy. In it, the boy is Salzburg, the break-up is leaving, the new boy is Berchtesgaden, and the rest is just gratuitous story telling.
You may be thinking that we've watched The Sound of Music too many times, and this is the reason we loved Salzburg so much, but this doesn't explain the kids because during a forced viewing of the movie before we left the US, one child fell asleep right before they determined how they would solve a problem like Maria, and the other labeled the movie not worth his time as soon as Julie Andrews started singing. In fact, he asked so many times why he had to watch the movie that we told him he could go to bed instead, and he accepted. It was 7pm.
If you're thinking that another reason we loved Salzburg is because it's the birthplace of Mozart and my husband has been nuts about Mozart since the 6th grade (yes, I'm his first girlfriend), again this may explain my husband and I, but it doesn't explain the children since they haven't built their lives around admiring the same music as their father. In fact, unless Mozart tours with the Black Eyed Peas soon or hits the Top Ten in the near future, he's not on their radar.
As you probably know, when you're in a city with kids, expensive admissions to beautiful buildings and museums are largely out of the question since you always have to have an exit strategy, and there is no exit strategy when you just paid 60 Euros for admission, there's just "we're walking forward, be quiet, and don't touch anything." We've tried the whole game of "The first person to find these ten things in the paintings (a dog, a duck, a row boat, etc) wins," but the first time they see something nude nobody cares about the list anymore, because you're whisper/yelling to them that if you hear them call the artist a pervert one more time, they'll be sorry.
So, outdoor activities really matter and Salzburg has all kinds of great outdoor spaces where the sounds of bells tolling and violins playing is abundant. Music is also pretty common indoors as well. We weren't there for the Mozart festival (it is going on now), but most churches have free organ concerts or choirs from around the world performing for free. In a strange coincidence, upon entering the Salzburg Cathedral (pictured below), we were handed a flier for the choir which was performing a Mozart Mass in the front of church (fitting since this church is where Mozart was both baptized and played the organ), which stated that many of the singers were from Rhodes College which happens to be my husband's alma mater. No light beamed down from Heaven at that moment, but the kids and I were surprised it didn't.
Salzburg is also one of those rare places whose new town area is almost as quaint as the old. The old town is mostly restricted to foot and bike traffic (except taxis and cars with special passes), and many of the sidewalks are under old buildings which open briefly into hidden courtyards which more often than not have outdoor cafes. Mozart's first childhood home, and place of birth, is on a pedestrian-only street in the old town which--according to my husband--is a better tour than that of Mozart's adolescent home in the new town (obviously, not very new) which happens to be just a short walk away from Mirabell Garden.
This garden was commissioned by the Prince Archbishop of Salburg and opened by Franz Josef after the 1848.....you're thinking, "blah blah blah", right? So was I. You should go there because you'll recognize the Pegasus fountain. The children and Maria walk around the ridge of it singing in the movie (I believe they're singing "Do, Re, Mi", etc). There is also a very nice playground nearby in case your children are driving you nuts asking when they can get a gelato, and you need to be closer to lunch than breakfast to feel good about caving.
After you buy your gelato from the guy in the park (which happens to be the only food cheaper in Europe than in the US), then walk back over the bridges which connect old town to new, you may notice master-type padlocks attached to the side of the bridges with initials written in marker (pictured below).
According to my husband and his hero Rick Steves (I'm not using the word "hero" in a pejorative way, his admiration is warranted), couples place these locks on the bridge as an expression of their love. Periodically, the authorities snip and remove the locks, but more locks follow.
Wild aside:
I assume couples remove these locks when they break up as well, but it would be important for both people to know about the breakup before walking across the bridge. Otherwise, there could be a lot of frantic, angry people turning over locks in the middle of bridges in Salzburg.
It also occurred to me while crossing a bridge one day that setting up a camera to watch frantic lock checkers would be particularly interesting if you liked drama or didn't have cable. One hopes the lock cutter cuts all the locks in an area and doesn't pick and choose which locks to cut. If it were me, I'd be tempted to cut the tiny locks and the huge locks, but leave the medium ones alone. Not so much because I'm a middle child as because the small ones don't seem to have their heart in it, and the large locks are trying too hard. In case you're thinking that the owners of the small locks may be too young or poor to afford a good lock, I looked it up on Amazon and there is only a $3 difference between a small Master padlock and a medium one. And if a couple can afford to blow $4.99 on a lock, they can put in the extra three dollars to make it a respectalble size. BTW, you can also buy locks in bulk on Amazon ($23.49 for four), but you wouldn't want your girlfriend or wife to catch you with these.
Before you ask, we didn't take one of those Sound of Music double-decker bus tours. It's not that we weren't tempted, but one of the first things we saw upon entering Salzburg city limits was one of these buses with a child my son's age looking out the window, head in hand, clearly wishing he were somewhere else. Now, I'm not above making the kids suffer, but they hadn't done anything to deserve it that day, and I wasn't in a "picking a fight" kind of mood. So, we ended up visiting the sites individually and mostly on foot.
I could say a lot more about this city, but I'm beginning to bore myself. Below are pictures of the sit-in (first picture), the Cathedral (second picture), Mozart's baptismal font (third picture), the many church steeples (next three pictures), St. Peter's Graveyard (reproduced by Hollywood for the Sound of Music scene when the family hides behind a tombstone) with an 11th century monastery on the cliff below Hohensalzburg Fortress (eighth picture), inside the monastery (ninth picture), Hohensalzburg Fortress (next three pictures), View of Salzburg from the Fortress (12th picture), the river (13th picture), the next two pictures are of streets in old town (one open, one under a building). We particularly like the name of the enclosed street (BTW, "schmuck" means "jewelry" in German and there are "schmuck" signs everywhere, and it's just a matter of time before we catch the boy under one).
The next three pictures are from Mirabell Garden, after that is a picture of locks on a bridge. Third from the bottom is a picture of a restaurant where Charlemagne ate in 803. It is still a restaurant and claims to be the oldest, but my husband wanted to mention that it's under new management.
The last is a picture of Leopold (Mozart's father) and Constantia's (Mozart's wife) grave. Mozart is buried on Vienna...and this is a post for another time.
Author of: Letters to Salthill
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