Getting into Salzburg….

The first big thing about Salzburg is that it is the birthplace of Mozart, and to people who live in Salzburg, this is a big thing! One would easily get this question wrong in Final Jeopardy. In my brain, it would go something like this:

Alex Trebek: “What was the birthplace of this composer who wrote every piece of Well known Classical music ever”
<Cue music>
Rishi: “It’s Vienna!!!.. <Brain….maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s Salzburg, didn’t we read this in some text for “Art of Listening” at McGill……<slap upside Brain> …. It’s Vienna> <Proceeds to write down Vienna as final answer>

Alex Trebek: “Well viewers, let’s see what the contestants wrote as their final answer” ……< 25 seconds later> ….Ooh I’m sorry but everyone got this wrong…. everyone should know that it Salzburg was the birthplace of Mozart and not Vienna. You all must die now, for getting Final Jeopardy wrong! You are the Weakest Link! Goodbye!

Now how does one be soooo sure that Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart? We can answer that question in a bit, after seeing the pictures, but it is acclaimed by many guides as one of the prettiest cities in Europe, its location on the banks of the Salzach river and beneath the cliffs of the rocky hills, Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg is enviable. In addition, there is great food and CHOCOLATE everywhere… seriously!!!!

Everything Mozart all the time. His house of birth and residence are tourist attractions. His family is buried in a small church graveyard in the old town, and there are many monuments to “Wolferl” in the city. You would mistakenly believe that Mozart and Vienna go together but god forbid you say that in Salzburg, they are very proud of their favorite composer son. So of course we grabbed a picture of his house.

Of course, you could not walk around this small city and not find the statue of Mozart

Salzburg is definitely a town about the River Salzburg. But one of the highlights of Salzburg was me getting my ass handed to by the Sausage guy at the bridge. He has a sign saying that he has the hottest sausages in Salzburg and of course I laughed at him and the sign, in my typical fashion. Well here is the pictorial evidence of me sweating bullets.

The meal itself was just fried sausages and put into a little paper container. Well it was actually the claim to have the Currywurst with the hottest sauce in the world. Now Currywurst is

Start of the pain

and then more pain and crying after he dropped the black capsicain sauce on another order for me.

After that was all done and I recovered from the pain, it was then on to more walking, eating, shopping, then eating more gelato (mmmm… man I will miss the Gelato… europeans gelato is just so much more superior to the crap we have in North America)

We did do a river cruise, where they played Mozart and then spun the boat around and its also where I learnt that Coke and Cheap Red Wine will give you Austrian Sangria!!

Here are the girls enjoying some time off their feet…. Well I did tell them about the hectic pace I try to keep up 🙂

Finally more walking around and then pictures of Hohensalzburg Fortress at night. These shots did take a lot of time to compose and figure out, especially when I don’t have a full SLR to make life a little easier or when I don’t have a light meter to gauge the right exposure and framing for the shot.

Can’t wait to hit Vienna tomorrow 🙂