The hills are alive...
Okay...so Oktoberfest was everything we wanted it to be but after 3 days of ompapapaaaaa bands and liter beers it was time to say auf weiterzein, Germany.
After our brewery tour on Wednesday morning we jumped back on the train and headed the two hours down to Salzburg, Austria. What can I say...Salzburg is adorable. Small little cafes everywhere, intertwined between old-as-dirt churches, fortresses, monasteries etc, etc, etc. We stayed at a cute little hotel just outside the city so we got acquainted very well with the city bus system. We decided that since Salzburg has so many sites to see that we would get the Salzburg card which saves you a ton of money to see all the sites in the city and gives you free bus rides.
We hit up the Fortress on the mountain overlooking the city. It has such a steep entrance that they built a little trolly car that takes you up. The views over the city were amazing and we got to see all the old rooms, museums etc. We headed back down the mountain on foot, grabbed a snack outside at a cafe that was crammed into the tiniest street ever, and then headed over to the museum of modern art.
Now I typically do not care too much for modern art but this museum was pretty cool and since it was part of our discount card we headed over. There was some interesting exhibits and some very very weird ones but the best thing we saw by far was this installation of 16 video portraits by Robert wilson, the famous theatre/opera director. The portraits were extremly interesting and unlike anything I have seen. Kind of like what you would imagine the a portraits in harry potter to be like. People holding pretty darn still like a photo but as time goes by you see them move ever so slightly and things change around them. I totally want to do one of Lola!
After the museum we tooled around a bit but we were pretty darn tired at that point so we headed home for an early night. The next day was our big tour day! I know it is super cheesy but ever since we decided to go to Salzburg I have wanted to see the sights from the movie The Sound of Music. So sooooo cheesy, I know, but nonetheless I wanted to do it. So we booked a spot on the Original SOM tour bus. They came and picked us up at our hotel with a couple other people and then we hopped on the big big bus. It was a four hour tour of a bunch of places around the city and surrounding area where they filmed scenes for the movie. The bus was huge and how our driver navigated the tiny streets was beyond me. We had a hilarious old man as our tour guide and had fun checking out the area, seeing famous sites from the movie and yes...singing on the bus. The best part of the tour by far was the drive out to the lake district outside of Salzburg. I finally got to see some alps worth calling "alps" and the lakes were gorgeous. Greg and I agreed that we must come back soon and rent a car.
After the four hour tour we hit up a few more sites. Mozart's birthplace, a few more cathedrals to check off the list, an amazing series of catacombs at St. Peter's and finished the sightseeing off with a speedboat tour along the river.
After all that sightseeing it was time for a beer. So we headed over to Augustiner Brau just outside the main city center. It is a 1,000 seat beer garden at an old monastery where they serve up big ceramic mugs of beer. The fun thing about this place is not only is the beer garden incredible but you do self service to get your beer. So you go up and pay for your beer and then go to a gigantic wall of grey ceramic mugs and pick out a mug, walk over and rinse the mug with a little old fountain and then you hand your mug over to the bartender, who pours delicious liquid into your mug. Yummy. We hung out there for awhile but soon got pretty hungry. We decided to opt out of the selection of meat on a stick or more sausage and so we headed over to a vegetarian Indian place we had read about. It was delicious. Fully satisfied with our days in Salzburg we headed home to bed.
We got up very early the next morning because not only did we have a 6 hour train ride ahead of us to Verona but we had one more task in Salzburg to complete before we caught our train out.
For the past month we have been to many many cities and in serval different places we have come across this trend of people locking padlocks onto bridges. Most of the locks have the names of couples on them. We thought this was interesting and always kind of wondered how this trend started. Well while we were in Salzburg we found one of the bridges had hundreds of locks on it so we decided that since it was our 5 year anniversary that day we would take the lock we had brought with us on the trip and lock it to the bridge in honor of our big day. So that is what we did Friday morning. It was very casual but it felt pretty cool to know that locked onto this bridge with hundreds of other couples is our 5 year anniversary lock.
We hurried to to train station and settled in for a long train ride into Italy. Luckily for us we met some great people over the 6 hour ride that helped us pass the time quickly. We met a young lady from Chicago who was traveling after running the Berlin marathon and who ironically enough turned out to have been on our sound of music tour bus the day before. After a train track change we ended up sitting with a fabulous Aussie couple who regaled us with tales from their 6 weeks on the road so far. They win for longest trip as they are currently on a 12 month journey all over the world. We actually hope that we might see them next august when they hit up the west coast.
We pulled into Verona kind of late and with no map but thankfully found our hotel close by the train and went out for some sightseeing in this amazing old city. We had our first of many Italian pizzas and began our journey into the wines of Italy just for my Gregory. We ate dinner at this tiny little place where we made friends with the little waitress who told us that if we were going to rent a car we would have to hit of the lake district just outside of Verona on our way up to the alps. We thanked her for the advice and then walked home in the unusually warm October weather.
The next day we went to find our car rental place which was a bit of a walk from the city center. Since we were spending a week up north in the mountains we knew we had to rent a car. We didn't want to have to go to the airport to rent so we found this tiny place that did rentals. But little did we know it was more like a car repair shop that rents a few cars on the side. So when we arrived we realized that renting that ever-so-needed GPS system was probably going to be out of the question. After a few looks of...Oh Boy..what are we going to do....we got in our little smart car and headed over to pick up our backpacks and find a better map than the one the rental car place had which was of Milan, Rome and maybe the main roads of Italy. Thus began the amazing map adventures of 2011.
Now if you are unfamiliar with Italy the roads in many of the cities and outlining areas are super super tiny. You can drive on most of them but especially when you are in the middle of town you can't really tell if you can drive down the streets because they are CROWDED with people. We spent about 45 minutes traversing the tiny tiny streets in Verona on a search for a map to get us up into the alps to find our lodging for the week. After finally finding a somewhat decent map, we parked our car close by and sat in the city center and ate a pizza, all the time watching our little car to make sure it stayed safe. Towards the end of the most delicious pizza I have had, the cops walked over and started looking at our car. Of course we were not suppose to park there and so Greg ran over and moved the car, only to park it in another spot that it turned out we we not supposed to park in. So we quickly paid for our pizza and rushed over to the car, passing the same cops who saw us getting into the car, shaking their heads, as we drove out of the city center.
Now the place we had booked for the week in Italy was about a 2 and a half hour drive outside of Verona, in the alto adige region in Italy. Beautiful but hard to find on the map. So of course we had this very large general map to get us at least up to the city of Bolzano but after that we were going to have to wing it and/or find another, better, map. So of course, as you do, we took the wrong road out of Verona and like you do we said...oh no problem, look there is another road we can take to get back to the main highway. And of course as it always happens that road is tiny, with many many switchbacks and takes an hour and a half to get you back to that main road. But I must say Greg and I now know the mountains outside of Verona very well.
We finally made it to the highway and cruised smoothly along until we reached Bolzano where we knew we were going to have to turn off to head up into the mountains. By this point our big map was not going to cut it and we knew we had to find something fast. But by than it was about 5:30pm and we knew that most of the tourist offices would be closed so we parked illegally at the train station and I hopped out of the car in search for something to get us up the mountain. It was in that train station that I had one of those moments where I was like , holy moly, where am I and what is going on. Because for a few moments I had no money, didn't know what city I was in and couldn't speak the language. I finally found a very nice old Italian man at a little store in the station and together we found a map of the region that could get us where we wanted to go.
I jumped back into our little smart car and we headed up into the mountains for a week of relaxation, hiking,wine tasting and as I finish typing this now...snow.
More mountain updates soon but for now I must get going so we can grab some internet before it snows again. 5 more days on our European adventure and then it is on to our cross country road trip as my parents wind their way from the west coast to the east coast with their travel trailer.
Onwards and upwards,
Missy and Greg
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