Salzburg, part I - getting there

Today, I have a dream. And that dream is to finish all blog posts on continental #4 no matter what it takes. (At present, a cup of coffee.) It's been going on for far too long - a whopping 4 months. This is a rather sobering realisation. And after that I can get onto work and resurrect continental #1.

When other people are the train wrecks hurtling towards Clayton Ravine, it's amusing and merits popcorn. When you yourself happen to be said trainwreck... not popcorn. Some sort of refined delicacy I suppose.

I mentioned how nice the view was in the train from Munich to Salzburg. Caught up a bit on my journal, this is what I wrote, and so technically this is a wrapup of the past few days:

View from the Meridian.

Train to Salz. The men in lederhosen looked like leprechauns. (AN: Nothing new there.) Munich's kind of boring. The Rathaus and the Glockenspiel are nice but that seems about it. Dresden's old town was startlingly beautiful, but I did not care for the tourist tax. Nuremberg was ruined by the weather, but I did like the hostel I stayed in. It was so nice sleeping in a proper bed for once. What I did manage to see of Berlin through my whopping cold was hot, communist and boring. My only favourite was the Brandenburg Gate.

OK, maybe I shouldn't have included that. It wasn't after I'd started transcribing it that I realised that most of the stuff I mentioned in my journal is already in my blog, despite my not having referred to it at all. Oh well.

I arrived in Salzburg at about 6, and my first impression was FREEZING and wet. I waited at the Hbf for my bus to the hostel for simply ages, and it was pouring with rain. And did I mention freezing? It was about 5 degrees. In September.

My first impression of Salzburg, therefore; cold, wet and mountainous, but I could see a taster of its beauty.

Though this picture is probably not a good indicator

My hostel proved ridiculously and unbelievably hard to find. I wandered around for 2 hours. GPS failed me, as did all the roads signs. I went to McDonalds for their free WiFi, determining to look up their phone number and just ring them and ask where they were, but the WiFi didn't work for some reason. I finally swallowed my pride - also it was getting dark very fast and I didn't fancy wandering around looking for my hostel after dark -  and asked a person who couldn't speak much English, but she pointed me in the right direction and I found it. I was not at all surprised that I couldn't find it, when I eventually arrived. Misleading GPS, plus it was just tucked away behind a huge gaggle of buildings, which you had to walk around.

After that rather irritating episode of hostel-searching, I checked in, went up to my room and found it to be rather pleasant. The hostel Hotel Meininger - was another pseudo-hotel like Nuremburg's, but alas the only two proper beds in the room had been bagged by a Kiwi couple who looked like they could climb mountains all day. (They always look like this!) Other roommates included some more Kiwis, two Scottish girls doing their undergrads in Edinburgh, and some Aussies. I hope this next sentence does not come across as offensive, but listening to them all talk together gave me a bit of a headache - their accents were really quite thick.

Went out exploring the next morning after morning coffee and, because I'm lucky that way, the weather was dreadful. Went into the Old Town, obviously. Untersburg was shrouded in mist, as was Salzburg Fortress. However, despite the horrid weather, that first glimpse you have of the Salzach and the Old Town rearing up at you out of the alpines, is something that you'll never really forget.

I took loads of pictures of this actually, but since I have spoiler alert lots of pictures of this when the weather was much better, I'm just going to include this one.

I walked all the way through the Old Town, and went mountain climbing, which was actually a little scary, since there was no one else at all in those rather wet and secluded mountain paths. There was a golden statue of the Buddha, rather surprisingly, deep inside the mountains, but didn't take a picture.

This creepy statue that's definitely worth a picture. It looks like a Nazgul, or a Dementor.

View of the Old Town from the mountain.

Managed to get a rather nice picture of the Fortress, before hurriedly making my way down.

During my stay in Salzburg they were having their own version of Oktoberfest - Rupertikirtag I think it's called, and the old town square was filling up with stalls and I threaded my way out. Sold stuff like those huge iced biscuits, loads of wurst of course, and then our run-of-the-mill hams that you also have in Borough.