Saltzburg--- Part One

Ann and I decided to take a day trip on a bus to Saltzburg. Now ordinarily, I’m not enamored of canned bus tours, but this one turned out o.k., and Saltzburg was well worth the journey. The town is named after the fact that it had a salt mine as its major source of employment at one point in its history. Hence— Salt town became its name, and there is still salt to be had there, as we shall soon see. If you saw the excellent movie Monuments Men, you will remember that the Nazis hid things in mines of various sorts, and at the end of the film there was a race to one of those mines to rescue yet more art treasures. That mine was in fact not far from Saltzburg. But I digress….

On the bus ride from Vienna up into the more mountainous regions where Saltzburg is, we passed a very famous and huge monastery— Melk Monastery. Here is where I remind you that Austria has always been an overwhelmingly Catholic country, hence the monasteries. While the Reformation did reach here, it does not seem to have had much long term effect.

The scenery was something out of a bucolic fairy tale….

Like both Vienna and Prague, Saltzburg is a very hilly town with a big river running through it, the Salzach.

As rivers go, this one is not as scenic as either the Moldau or the Danube.

What this town is certainly famous for is its music, as it is indeed the birthplace of Mozart, Franz Schubert also hung out here, and more recently the famous conductor Herbert Van Karajan was based here and was director of the opera.
Here as well was the home of the original Mozart chocolates or Kugels as they are called.

Here’s the Schubert shop and locale…

Speaking of music here is the garden where they filmed the Do Re Me, song in the Sound of Music….
So you’ll also not be surprised that they were selling edelweiss on the edge of this garden!