Friday 14 May - Salzburg

Got to say it here - Salzburg is one of the jewels of Europe I'm sure as far as cities is concerned. Not that it would be even called a city in Australia, as there are only just over 100,000 residents here. Probably at least 5 times that number of visitors though.

The view from my hotel room this time

It's really pretty, and hard to decide whether the old part or the 'new' part is the best as they both have their own charm. Of course it's the birthplace of the Mozart of "The Magic Flute" fame - the favourite Salzburger.

Was totally whacked when I woke up this morning - to the point where I almost fell asleep at breakfast. Body is tired, but it will keep up for a few more days I'm sure. So I headed out for a walk up the road from the hotel to get my bearings. Found a great little bar/cafe and had some wonderful Austrian cooking for lunch, then headed back to the hotel to be collected for a tour of the main points of Salzburg. Today is a public holiday here for some reason and there's a huge festival happening in the old city from mid-afternoon on, so traffic's crazy. On top of that the Salzburg soccer (football) team just won the Austrian final and there's a huge 'do' on this evening in the main old town square to laud the lads. Oh, and tomorrow is the Salzburg Marathon, which ends in the old town. So all-in-all it's going to be a nutsoid couple of days.

Anyway, the tour wound its way (small van with 8 of us onboard) through the traffic-jammed streets of the old and new towns, and out into the countryside where we visited a couple of palaces. One with the most lovely and peaceful lake in front of it, and the fortress above the old town in the background. Evidently the lake freezes over in winter and the locals play ice hockey on it.

Palace 1 with the peaceful looking lake.

Then it was on to another one - sorry, can't remember the names and the relevant bits of paper are in my room - I'm downstairs in the public area, so you can just take my word that I have the names somewhere. The second one is all yellow and really pretty. More peaceful gardens, this time with a tiny palace perched on the hillside above them - the Month Palace (cos it took a month to build on a bet between the Archbishop Prince who commissioned the main building and some other guy).

Palace 2. The gardens had 2 statues of unicorns in the middle if you can see them.

I got dropped off in the old town and spent a couple of hours wandering around until I heard the sound of music (no, not the film, though you can do "Sound of Music" tours here cos it's where the whole thing happened). Anyway, the old town is all these cobbled streets, with little covered laneways going off them to other courtyards and shops. In one of the small squares is the house Mozart was born in and spend his early childhood. Nice little museum in the house and learned a lot about the man himself, his sister and his mum and dad.

.. Oh, the music. Yes, so why music? Well of course it's the festival (an annual thing evidently). First there was the pounding sound coming from the huge speakers attached to a huge black Red Bull promo van. Then I saw the square with a huge stage set up at one end and massive screens either side of the square and the stage.

The zydeco/reggae band

Wandered around the opposite side of Mozart square and heard yet more music, but this time it sounded live, not canned. And I was right - a couple of guys with guitars playing some wicked blues. Listened to them for a while and then went off to find the source of more music in another direction. Came across a larger band of blokes playing a cross between Zydeco and Reggae that had the crowd bopping and smiling - everyone was smiling and found I was too. These guys were having a great time and it spilled over to the audience. Hung out and listened to them for half an hour or so then went to see if there was anything else - and found a duo out front of the Irish Pub (yes there's one in every city). One guy was Irish, the other an Aussie and the music was all oh, so familiar. Made me a combination of homesick, familiar and happy.

By this time I'd done as you're always told when a kid - if you want to know, ask a policeman. What was going on in the area that seemed to be the main stage and when was it scheduled to kick off.

This was where the soccer team thing was happening and it started at 7:30, so I had decided to hang around until it happened as it looked to be fun.

The square before the festivities started

So glad I did. Lots of hundreds of Salzburg soccer fans all went nuts when they eventually bought out the team - was really cool to see. This tiny city had won the equivalent of the AFL Grand Final. They had good cause to be happy, and happy they were in spades. For those who have no idea what the AFL thing is, it's the Aussie equivalent of the Grand Final of any national football game - it being Australian rools footy.

I escaped before the end of it all as I thought it was going to get mad trying to get away, I knew there were taxis just behind me, and it was getting cold and damp (not raining, just like the clouds had decided to descend into the valley).

As the soccer team is driven onto the stage.

So here I am back in the hotel with a cup of tea, filling you in on my day.

Tomorrow I'm going to explore the city some more, and will probably get run over by a few marathon runners. I'll let you know.