So Many Bulls
Salzburg Day 1!
This morning I woke up bright and early, along with 12 other students, to get on our 6 am train to Salzburg. As the grandson of a Sound of Music superfan, I had several sights to see on my list. One of these is THE hill that Maria proclaims to be alive with the sound of music at the beginning of the film. While on the train, I looked into how to get to this hill from Salzburg and was shocked to find out you cannot. Rather than being in Salzburg, the hill is very far away across the border in Germany.
With this knowledge, my plans for Salzburg changed. We got off the train and immediately went to the center of town to look around their beautiful, historic, downtown area. The big group split into smaller groups and I wound up going to the fortress with McKenna, Amelia, Emelia, and Anna H.
Salzburg was built on the back of salt merchants, monasteries, and archbishops. Fortress Hohensalzburg was transformed from a medieval refuge fort which served the city into an impregnable military fortress. From there rulers were not only able to secure trade routes, but could control residents of the city. During internal conflicts, they were even able to attack their own city from this high vantage point. While only a few prince-archbishop rulers of Salzburg actually lived in Hohensalzburg, its imposing design and high position are meant to demonstrate the ruler's power over their citizens.
1191 was a turning point for the city of Salzburg as Prince-Archbishop Adalbert III reopened the Dürrnberg bei Hallein Salt Mine (which we'll visit tomorrow) and created a booming industry. He hoped to draw greater profits into the city and draw more money from the trade for the archbishopric. Within 50 years of reopening the mine, Hallein was the biggest salt mine in the Eastern Alps and the main source of Salzburg's steadily growing wealth.
Anna and I went into the princely rooms of Leonhard von Keutschach, a late 15th century archbishop who transformed Hohensalzburg into a military fortress while maintaining its position as the center of early modern Salzburg. What they didn't tell us when we bought our tickets to do this is that the princely rooms were under construction, meaning we actually did not get to see much up there.
One of the most well-known landmarks in Hohensalzburg is the Salzburg Bull, a mechanical organ with more than 200 pipes built by von Keutschach in 1502. While it was certainly the most impressive bull at the fortress, it was not my favorite one. Apparently, during a siege of the fortress in the medieval period, soldiers defending the fortress had almost completely run out of food. In order to make sure their enemies didn't know what a dire situation was unfolding within Hohensalzburg's walls, the soldiers took their last remaining male cow and painted it over and over again to try to trick their attackers into believing they still had more food. Somehow, this worked, and the attackers backed off because they believed their efforts to be futile.
While at Hohensalzburg, I also got to visit their extensive puppet collection. They were cute, fun, and definitely not nightmare fuel. I'm not writing this just because I'm worried they will break free from their marionette strings and find me in the night, I really did think they were lovely. I'm a big fan of the Muppets, but Muppets these were not. These artfully crafted marionettes represent the history of Salzburg as well as its place in popular culture with puppets meant to show everything from the daring escape from Hohensalzburg that Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau had to pull off when he was imprisoned there during a war with Bavaria to these extremely accurate and not creepy Sound of Music puppets.
After exploring the halls and courtyards of Hohensalzburg, we made our way to the most beautiful beer garden I have ever been to. When we got there, some weird dudes shouted something obviously sexual in German to my group of female friends but, later, thankfully, the bartender serving beer let me know he had an eye on them and that they were obnoxious and causing problems. By the time we had left the beer terrace they seated us at to go to our table for food, the guys were gone and we got to enjoy the stunning view in peace.
I haven't had an obscene number of beers in my life but I can say, with certainty, that this is the most scenic beer I've ever had. With the gorgeous sunset, towering Cathedral, and sprawling city of Salzburg below me, Zwickl has never tasted this good.
At our table we had Salzburger Nockerln, a dessert made of extremely airy eggy dumplings that melt in your mouth. While this is a Salzburg delicacy, everyone found the citrusy flavor to be unsettling and the texture to be too chewy. I'm not a particularly big mochi fan even when it's good but this had a very similar texture as mediocre mochi. While I didn't mind the flavor and I'm glad we tried this, I wouldn't order it again.
After an evening walk through the darkened Salzburg, we returned to our hostel (which thankfully has rooms with 6 beds meaning I don't have to share a room with any strangers) to rest up before we head to the salt mine tomorrow.
