The Hills are Alive in Austria

by Tasha in Europe, Topdeck

The hills are alive with the sound of Salzburg. With songs they have....

Okay I'll stop there. Full disclosure, I'm kind of a massive Sound of Music dork. And I'm guessing, based on your stunned silence and gradual backing away from the computer...you may not be.

Or maybe you are. Maybe the Von Trapps are hidden in your trove of guilty pleasures and you are waiting with baited breath for me to describe in perfect detail the locales which the lovable Austrian family danced and pranced their way across Salzburg in the classic musical film (and to a lesser extent, real life too, I guess).

Salzburg (as you may have guessed) is the literary home of Rogers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music and the literal home of Mozart, although I doubt the two facts are directly related. If you're a fan of classical music or classic musicals, it's a city that should be at the top of your bucket list. Or if that doesn't sell Salzburg for you, it is also the home of truly terrible weather.

Summer in Austria is apparently a thing to behold, with flowers and fountains blooming in a riot of colour. Unfortunately, not travelling in summer meant that instead we beheld the sight of the aforementioned truly, truly terrible weather, with both flowerbeds and fountains lying empty and dreary under a constantly gray sky.

You know it's cold when all your fountains are hidden behind acres of plexiglass

Instead, we found ourselves in the company of awesome new peoples and with a day and a half to kill in a town which was hailing on us anytime we tried to step outside. It was strange, frustrating, and in a weird way, kind of awesome.

Alex with Jona and Car, two of the most photogenic girls I have ever met...you'll be seeing a lot of them! (also Luke)

It began, as all good stories should, with donuts. And not just any donuts. Really really good donuts. Tasty Donuts even. Donuts that were totally worth Car and I running through the streets through a barrage of rain, hail and sleet to find them. One even looked like Spongebob.

Pictured: Not a spongebob donut...but literally all that was left of the 12-pack when we realised we should take a photo

After feasting like kings, we checked outside as the clouds seemed to be clearing, and the outlook was almost optimistically positive. For around five minutes.

You deceptive clouds, you!

But in spite of our, okay Alex's, better judgement we worked our way across the various streets and platz's, stopping to try the town famous Mozart balls (in all their delicious pun-erific glory). They are small, almost Ferrero Rocher like, but with a pistachio marzipan base covered in nougat then layered with chocolate. Ours had a few different chocolate layers.

Now, I am a bit of a candy crazy person, so much so that Alex is currently choking on his lunch at the word "bit". More honestly I freaking love candy and all sugar related awesomeness. You may remember that I had a candy guy in Killarney. A candy pusher of my very own. Who I miss so much.


But sentimental tangents aside, you can imagine my face when I pop a town-famous Mozart ball into my mouth (you can't NOT go there!) and it is just....meh. It was kinda okay, nothing special. Most of us pulled funny faces eating ours, to the delight of Jona who was spared for allergy related reasons (you win this round Jona, but we will have our revenge in a few short weeks in Berlin!)


After some more meandering around town, and a few photos with some interesting statues, both campy and creepy, we jogged up to the Festungsbahn, a cable car that runs straight up to the giant fortress overlooking the town. It was one of the few things both awesome and safe from the infernal weather...it was also closing.


I can't say if it was the sight of five young adults who closely resembled drowned cats, or perhaps that a few of those young adults were very attractive girls, but something magical happened in that Festungsbahn station that day. Something that led to the aforementioned five drowned young adults talking their way onto the last car of the day - which was only leaving to pick up the last visitors to the castle.



With only a few moments at the castle to spare, we perfectly embodied our generation as we ran over icy walkways, taking constant photos and selfies, trying to soak in as much culture from the castle as possible....under a ticking clock. I'm not sure if we truly succeeded with the latter, but we had a hell of a time trying.



As our time ran out, Jona and Car took the smart and responsible (as it had again begun to rain) route back down on the cable car. I however, had my heart set on seeing the nunnery from the Sound of Music, because of course I did. The nunnery lay half way down the hill, down a somewhat steep path, that was currently covered with ice and snow.

It was worth it for the views...when it stopped raining...that one time.

But nothing ventured, we slowly made our way down the harder path. The ticket guy openly laughed at us as we past by, which made us dissolve into laughter once we were sure we were well and clear as we realised not one of the five of us running around paid the considerable admission fee. Oops!

The nunnery, or Nonnberg, lay quietly around an innocuous corner. It had a lovely little courtyard, and little doors running off everywhere. Alex and I had one of our long silent conversations on what to do. We really wanted to see inside, but it was very late, getting dark, and still relentlessly pouring with rain.

Added to that we weren't entirely sure of the etiquette of visiting a nunnery, as we hadn't done so before and most tours seem to visit by appointment. Eventually we wandered a bit about the courtyard, noted the quiet sounds of a service starting, and took our leave.

We rejoined our Top Deck brethren for an typical Austrian night out...at an Irish pub...for a pub quiz. But not just any pub quiz...a superhero pub quiz. We felt pretty confident in our abilities. As you longtime readers may have deduced, Alex and I are really, really massive nerds, and with Carlos the great and Ally and Car the movie whizzes at our side, we were prepared to kick some serious ass.

And somehow I manage to miss Ally in almost every photo - sorry Ally!

But alas, this was no ordinary quiz, this was an Austrian quiz. It turns out in Austria "superhero" is a very loose term, and although the MC tried her hardest to translate each question into English as well as German, there was some definite loss in translation. For example:

"Who is the actor who plays Bruce Banner?" Answer: The Hulk
"...huh?"

"Which superheroes turn into cars from outer space?" Answer: Transformers
"...I didn't know they had cars in outer space...wait...Optimus Prime is a superhero now?!?"

"Which superhero uses his money and technology to solve crimes?"
"...okay this is broad but you could see an argument for both Batman or Iron Man here, or....wait it's NOT Batman or Iron Man? huh? It couldn't be any one obscure...this is a pub quiz...it's gotta be...FREAKING INSPECTOR GADGET!?! HE IS NOT A SUPERHERO! THERE IS NO UNIVERSE TO WHICH HE IS A SUPERHERO! Okay well, obviously if there are infinite universes then there may be a universe where he is a superhero BUT IT'S NOT THIS ONE!!!!"

Okay, sorry about that. But I stand by my initial judgement - Flipper is a superhero, Lassie is a superhero, Inspector Gadget is a twat in a hat!

To be fair I don't think the quiz lady liked us very much, not only did we list every actor who has ever played Bruce Banner - there are more than you'd think - but we were taking constant pictures with our small blue team mascot. 

But our crushing defeat aside, we had a great night. And we all learned some things. We learned that there is no shortage of dirty puns for the words "Mozart Balls". We learned that I truly and vehemently despise Inspector Gadget - and this fact kept everyone entertained for far longer than you'd expect.

And we learned Stitch just can't hold his liquor.

Which I suppose isn't so surprising after all.

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This weeks post is sponsored by Bruce and Tania Smith.
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