Friday, April 6 – Monday, April 9 2012
After our return to Geneva,
Deb spent a few days getting to know our city (perhaps more than any other person
we've talked to!). She saw and enjoyed
so many different things, we realized we needed to start getting
around to more places before our time is up in a couple months! :) She also rented a car for a day and took one
of our favorite day trips out of town—to Gruyères
(the cheese factory!), Broc (the
chocolate factory!) and Montreux (the
sweet old castle!).
Easter weekend was another
opportunity to get out of town on a 4-day trip (we get Good Friday and ‘Easter
Monday’ off here in Switzerland). As
mentioned in our last post, Deb's other must-see location was Austria. We had previously been to Vienna this past
December, solely on mission to see perhaps the world’s greatest Christmas
markets, so we were excited to get back there and see what else it had to
offer.
We left on an early train
out of Geneva on Friday morning and arrived to our first destination:
Salzburg! For any of you Sound of Music (SOM) fans out there, Salzburg is the place to go for everything SOM. In fact, over 25 scenes were filmed here and
in the outlying towns and mountains (although everything filmed indoors was
done back in Hollywood). Deb is a huge
fan so we started off the trip by surprising her with a stay at the Von Trapp mansion!
(Well, technically we slept next door.) Also,
we should specify one of the Von Trapp mansions because in the movie they actually used two separate properties, one
representing the front and another for the back. We were staying at the "back,” aka the Schloss Leopoldskron.
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| Schloss Leopoldskron |
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| Our 'mansion' next door |
We arrived around 3:00pm so we had enough time to swing through the mansion and see the back yard and pond where Maria and the children fell out of the boat and into the water.
Beyond the SOM hype, this
mansion was actually really cool in itself.
The room where we would have breakfast the next morning was huge and
very ornate, and the library was incredible.
After visiting the library we decided if we were ever to build a house, we
would mirror this library (at a much smaller scale of course). :) Anyone staying at the property had access to
the library and all of the books within it, which is really neat for people
staying longer than a night, of course.
Extra treat: they had a table of books that they were giving away free
for any takers, as they were trying to make room for additional books—we each
found a couple gems.
If you've never heard of the
Salzburg Global Seminar (we hadn’t
either), we learned that it’s a scholarly conference that started after WWII,
with the primary purpose to
"challenge current and future leaders to develop creative ideas for
solving global problems.” These conferences are always held on the
Schloss Leopoldskron estate and most of the meetings inside the mansion. In fact, a conference was going on that
weekend. Funny side note - when we
arrived at the hotel, all of the conference attendees’ name badges and folders
where laid out. We saw one that said
"Bill Murray" and got excited at the small chance it was the Bill Murray! Later we found the pictures of all the
attendees and Bill Murray was not who we had hoped... :)
After the mansion we decided
to take advantage of the late opening hours and clear weather by taking a walk
through the gorgeous countryside (along side a herd of goats) and climbing up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress.
While the castle itself didn’t really have any key historical events to note (it was built in the 11th century A.D. and because it was so intimidating nobody ever attacked it), it provided us spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and the city below.
After the steep hike up and
back down, we took a much deserved dinner break and found a perfect little
restaurant that served traditional (and delicious at that) Austrian food and
beer. The perfect way to end our first
day in Austria.
The next morning we were on
a mission to see as much SOM as we could.
What better way to start than by taking the "original" SOM tour
in Salzburg (although the “original” claim is shared by at least two different
tour outfits). :) Either way we found
this one on TripAdvisor and the reviews were great so we gave it a shot. Our overall verdict was "great" - the
tour guide was funny, the bus was comfortable, and the sites were as
promised. Although the guide did give a
disclaimer ahead of time that he would point out all of the ways the movie differed from the real story of the Von
Trapps (which is more than you would expect). He apologized for shattering the hopes and
dreams of anyone who had fantasized that the movie indeed told the real story.
:)
After the tour we ended up
roaming the streets of Salzburg - half doing a city walk and half a SOM
sightseeing tour. Below are pictures and
captions of what we saw throughout our 2nd day in Salzburg. Warning: If you don't like the Sound of Music,
you may not enjoy the next few sections. :)
Oddly enough our SOM tour
started with the same hotel we stayed at the night before, the Schloss
Leopoldskron estate. This time however,
the group took a stroll around to the other side of the lake for a different
view than we saw during our stay. We
were still glad we stayed at the mansion though because only estate guests are
allowed to roam the property.
We then drove by the building
used as the "front" of the Von Trapp mansion (Schloss Frohnburg), but unfortunately
didn't have time to stop to walk around.
This building is now used as a music school.
This row of trees is where
Maria sings the "confidence" song.
You'll recognize this - the
gazebo of the "16, going on 17" song - although the interior was a Hollywood
set. The original placement of this
gazebo was at Schloss Leopoldskron but it’s been moved a couple of times.
We drove out to the town of Mondsee, which is
about 45 minutes out of Salzburg. Here
we saw the church that Maria and the Captain were married in. We had time for a quick lunch and some of the
world-renowned Austrian apple strudel.
And this is the row of trees the children played on and climbed in.
The SOM tour seemed to just
whet our appetite. Once we were back in
Salzburg we stopped at the Mirabell
Gardens where several scenes of the "do-re-mi" song montage were
filmed.
Here is the convent where both
the real and movie Maria lived before marrying the Captain.
This is the outside of the grand stage that the Von Trapps performed on before escaping from the Nazi’s. We couldn’t make our way inside but we took a picture of a poster showing the interior (classy).
And finally, here is the graveyard that the "hideout from the Nazis" scene was inspired by, although we were told the scenes were shot in Hollywood.
Yes, it was a lot of SOM,
but even as mild fans (well, Deb could be considered more than a mild fan) the
two of us thoroughly enjoyed the “Easter egg hunt” to find all the different
sites. It wasn't all SOM sites though—we
did see some other cool things that day that were strictly Salzburg...
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| Mozart (one of many images of him in Austria) |
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| (Not a real man, but a little CREEPY nonetheless) |
This is the impressive Salzburg
Cathedral. It was built in the 17th
century, at a time of great turmoil between Catholics and Protestants (Austria
trends toward Catholic). History aside,
this church had some of the most impressive ceiling detail we’ve seen to
date. It also had a crypt that showed
off foundations of the earlier church (from the 8th century).
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| WWII Damage |
Mozart was born in this yellow building and started to compose many of his famous works here…
One
interesting thing we
learned – take a look at the photo below of the writing on the doorway.
It says “20+C+M+B+12”. This strange message is marked on doorways
during the Epiphany holiday, celebrating the arrival of the Magi to
adore the
newborn Jesus. The letters are the
initials of the wisemen and also stand for the Latin phrase Christus mansionem benedicat (aka “May
Christ bless the house”). The “20” and
“12” combine to form the year the house was blessed by those who collect
donations during the Epiphany season.
Before leaving Salzburg we
sought out an old-school, underground brewery—Augustiner Braustubl Mulln. It
dates back to 1621 and was originally run by monks (still is partially operated
by a Benedictine monastery). We are
suckers for Bavarian style beer halls and being that this one was super old and
run by monks, it checked all the boxes.
The cool part about this one (besides the amazing pub food, medieval
decor, and typical atmosphere we've come to love) was the way you purchase and
fill the beer. Here is Dave demonstrating
how it's done - take the glass from the shelf, rinse it out (it is already
clean, you are just cooling it down before putting beer in it), pay for your
drink, take the receipt to the nice beer man, (if you're lucky they will change
out the sweet old-school keg right in front of your eyes) watch your delicious
beer be poured, and enjoy! :)
Later that evening we were
on the train to Vienna, worn out from an already packed day. The only unfortunate aspect of the day was
that it was freezing cold, rainy and
fairly windy the entire day. We were
ready to be in our warm hotel room in Vienna, and once we arrived later that
night we crashed pretty hard.
Sunday morning (Easter!), we
had an extra special treat planned for Deb.
When she indicated that Austria was at the top of her list of places to
visit, the famous Vienna Boys Choir was probably the biggest reason why. We were able to secure tickets as soon as we
knew this, so the process to get a seat was relatively easy (so glad we booked
ahead of time—so many people waiting outside hoping to get in). We took
our seats for the 9:15 Mass and enjoyed over an hour of fantastic singing,
mixed in with several breaks of German and Latin bible verses and
chanting. We did hear one bit in English
- something about Peter talking to the risen Jesus (it went quick). :) The boys were hidden in the choir loft pretty
much the entire time except for the end when they came out and sang the song
shown below. We are so glad we could
experience such a highlight!
If you remember from our Christmas post, we described Vienna as a grand city. Nothing changed from our previous visit, but we wanted to experience even more of the "grandness". After Mass we toured the Hofburg Imperial Apartments, located in the heart of Vienna. Last time in Vienna we visited the Schönbrunn Palace; this time around aside from learning a bit more about the somewhat tragic life of Empress Sisi (Elizabeth), the rooms and history of the Habsburgs were fairly similar in both palace attractions. We did get to see a whole lot more bling in this palace though - you can see below all the different ornate tableware and decorations that the Habsburg royal family received over the years.
After a couple hours in the
museum we grabbed some lunch at a little cafe near the palace - on the way we
passed the horse stalls of the Spanish Riding School, an equestrian school
created by the (Spanish) Emperor Charles IV.
We didn't opt to see the horses perform (somewhat of an expensive
attraction), but it was kind of cool to see the royal horse stalls. :)
Another thing that blew us
away was that it was snowing! We didn't
even get to see snow on our Christmas trip, yet here in the second weekend in
April it snows. How ironic because we
thought our April trip would be a prefect compliment to our winter trip, so we
could see the city in the light of multiple seasons... guess not. :)
We continued our royal tour
by stopping quickly at the Austrian
National Library. We didn't want to
pay 7 Euros per person to walk around a library for 5 minutes, but we did snap a
picture from the entryway - it was quite impressive even from there. We added a google image photo as well which will give you a better idea of how extravagant this library is.
We followed that up with a
visit to the Imperial Treasury (aka Schatzkammer) to see even more of the
Habsburg dynasty bling collection. Some
things of interest were the following...
This is the largest cut
emerald in the entire world. It is 2,680
karats.
While we found it hard to
believe, there were a few Jesus-related relics here (or so says the Catholic
church). The first is supposedly a spike that drove
through Jesus' hands or feet. The
second, a piece of the original cross.
And third, the sword that pierced Jesus' side to confirm his death.
It is believed that this long staff is actually a unicorn's horn. ;) (In reality, it is most likely the long tusk of a narwhal whale.)
One of the more impressive pieces were the huge royal vestments that were lined with gold and surprisingly took over 10 years to sew. Such patience!
We concluded our royal tour
by taking Deb out to see the gardens at Schönbrunn Palace. We were slightly disappointed when we visited
in December because the statues were covered in tarps, the flowers were dead,
and the fountains were shut down. Well,
at least this time two of the three disappointments were resolved (the
fountains were still shut off). We got
some cool shots of the grounds with a stormy sky in the background.
We were surprised to see
that an Easter Market was going on in front of the palace (we are starting to
think Europeans look for any excuse to form a market). :) Dave put two and two together and headed
immediately for the refreshments stand where he found, yes, the coveted gluhwein! Deb confirmed how delicious it was after we
talked it up over our different Christmas Market trips. We took a few minutes to browse what the
market had to offer - surprisingly similar to what was offered in December with
a few extra Easter-ish things…
That night we headed for the Schweizerhaus beer hall/restaurant,
which was recommended to us by a local that we were sitting next to back at Augustiner
Braustubl Mulln in Salzburg. We were
surprised to find that the restaurant was on some permanent fair grounds (well,
actually not that surprised
considering Oktoberfest is one giant fairground with beer tents). We were pleased to find that the restaurant
had our beloved Budvar on tap, and were even more pleased when we saw how
frothy the bear came out of the tap.
Yes, it was as delicious as it looks. :)
Monday was our last day in
Austria. We started the day a little
later just to give ourselves a break from the previous early mornings. It was a blue-sky day, much appreciated after
the snow from the day before. We decided
to take a journey away from the center of town and see a couple of famous
cemeteries (or more accurately, famous people buried there which made the
cemeteries famous). The first cemetery
was Cemetery of St. Marx (aka Friedhof St. Marx), a very old cemetery which also held the grave
of Mozart.
The second, and considerably
larger, cemetery was the Central Cemetery
(aka Zentralfriedhof). Seriously, this thing was huge – over 2.5
million people are buried there. It was large
enough to need a public bus service to get people around. There was a massive cathedral in the middle
of the grounds that was equally impressive from the inside. Our main goal of the visit besides wandering
around and seeing some quirky grave sites (check out the site with the car on
it... dude must have really liked that Mercedes), was to see the burial sites
of musical legends Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Strauss. Somehow we finally stumbled upon some clues of
where they were buried (we wandered for so long that we thought the cemetery was
doing its best to conceal them) and below you will see pictures of our bounty.
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| Dude loved his car... |
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| Strauss |
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| Brahms |
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| Beethoven |
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| Schubert |
After the cemetery visit, we
took the tram back into town. The plan
was to take a tour of the Opera House, known as the grandest in all of Europe,
but unfortunately it was closed for the holiday. :( Instead we
grabbed a bite to eat and followed it up with the supposedly famous Sacher Torte. The story goes that some dude (Franz Sacher)
created this recipe about 180 years ago and it's been a worldwide hit ever
since. We’re curious if any of you have
heard of this famous torte before? Because
we hadn't until a co-worker told us about it.
The torte/cake was good - really rich, but good and it lived up to the
hype.
Even though we had already seen the massive St. Stevens Cathedral on our last visit, we insisted that Deb see it for herself (and it was worth a second look for us). The biggest difference this time around was how bright it was inside! Forget the dreary winter days, the cathedral lights up and is quite brilliant when it's actually sunny outside.
Our last major stop in
Vienna was the House of Music (aka Haus der Musik). When visiting one of the world's most famous
musical cities, why not visit a museum devoted to music? :) It was actually quite good. We started the tour with the
Waltz Dice Game, where the two of us composed our own unique waltz together by
rolling dice to combine random strings of music. Besides that there were a bunch of
other interactive exhibits that gave detailed information on sound in general and how
our bodies react. We learned that Ang
can hear higher frequencies than Dave... perhaps that's why she gets annoyed at
the random sounds that Dave makes but is oblivious to... :) We also learned a lot about the
different famous composers that lived in Vienna throughout the last few hundred
years. It's interesting that each one
had different levels of success while alive, depending on the social and
cultural atmosphere at the time.
We had the chance to conduct
the (virtual) Vienna orchestra as they performed a famous song. Dave chose this familiar song (below) and did a terrible
job (although we read that the musicians will actually stop playing if you do
poorly enough, but that never happened, luckily). :) To his credit, it was really hard!
We ended the museum by watching
a couple of different concert series that took place in Vienna - one of them
was in the Schönbrunn Palace gardens and there were a ton of people there enjoying some fabulous music. It looks like a great atmosphere for a
concert, let alone how phenomenal the orchestra was (they even played the Star Wars theme, it was fantastic).
After a quick dinner we
gathered our stuff from the hotel and made our way to the train station. We bit the bullet and booked another
overnight train back to Geneva, even after our struggles from our first overnight train experience. Yes, the cabin rattled again
(which Dave actually figured out how to fix with a sock, a couple hours in) and
yes the beds were just as small and uncomfortable for Dave as the last
time. We packed bigger travel pillows
this time (the flat airplane sized pillows they provide just don't cut it when
you’re lying flat on your back), but in the end, ironically, Dave may have
gotten less sleep than our first time around.
Oh well, we will just consider this a confirmation of our suspicion that
we will likely never do the overnight train again!
A couple days later, Deb's visit
over here came to an end. After two weeks we hope that she saw more than she dreamed of and learned a few new
things along the way. She ended her trip
with a relaxing Tuesday spent recovering at home in Geneva while mixing in a
relaxing stroll down to Carouge. We
escorted her to the airport on Wednesday morning and she was off to enjoy her
1st class ticket home (yeah, 1st class - she got hooked up by the airlines
through some crazy mileage plan rule).
Thanks, Deb, for the visit!
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