Tim's Travel Blog: Salzburg

I recently took a trip to Salzburg and Munich. It was, to say the least, eventful, but it was also fun and memorable. That being said, the absurdities began at the very onset of the trip. Luke and I initially intended to catch a 5:00 train from Prague to Salzburg. At 2:35, five minutes after my final class ended, I received a call from Luke announcing that he had finished work early and that we could catch the train that departed at 3:15. I immediately grabbed my bag, which, fortunately, I had brought to work, ans left for the train station. While on the train, we learned from an attendant, a nice Austrian lady who barely spoke English, that the tracks were being repaired and we would have to exit the train and take a bus to the next train station, where we would continue a journey on a train. We didn't quite get all that information from her, but we eventually surmised the details. After a wild, high speed bus ride through single lane roads in rural Austria, an adventure in and of itself, and one that reminded me of driving the school bus in Cruzin' USA, Luke and I were back on our intended journey.

We arrived on time, at about 10:00. We hadn't eaten since lunch, which for me almost always consists of a sandwich and cheese flavored pretzel sticks, and were famished. Our only choices for food were McDonald's and Burger King, so we headed straight for McDonald's because it had free wireless internet. After our much needed meal, we browsed NBA scores while we waited for Daniel and Amanda, who had just gotten out of a dinner concert, to meet us and take us to the bed and breakfast where all of us were staying. When they arrived we immediately left so that we could make the last bus. Unfortunately, we took the wrong bus. We exited the bus at the first stop after Daniel realized we were going the wrong way and, somehow, were able to hail a taxi that took us to the Bed & Breakfast. We were very tired, so we went straight to bed. When we woke up the next morning, we pulled back the curtains to reveal our view of the Austrian Alps. We hadn't been able to see anything the night before and that view was a pleasant surprise.

We had a traditional Austrian breakfast and talked to the owners of the Bed & Breakfast before beginning our tour of Prague. We took our bags, locked them in the lockers at the train station, and began a day of sightseeing. We saw Old Town Square, went to the fortress at the top of the hill, and the beautiful garden at one of the palaces. We ended that day by relaxing at Salzburg's most famous, and according to our taxi driver best, beer garden. Upon returning to the train station we realized that we had missed the last train to Munich by about three minutes; nobody had bothered to check the time that the last train departed. I will point out, only once, that I was in charge of planning what to see in Munich and nothing else.

After a brief panic, we were able to get just one room at the Bed & Breakfast we stayed at the night before. Luke and I slept on mattresses on the floor. While Luke's mattress was decent, mine was more like a mattress pad. I kept having dreams that I was sleeping on a mattress that had a spring gouging my hip, which, when I awakened, was the ground from which my mattress had failed to protect me. We woke up very early, had a great breakfast from our very kind hosts, and took an early train to Munich. The rest of the story, and the rest of the pictures, will come with the next post. Until then, enjoy some of the pictures below, or view all of them here.