Thursday 17 August 2000. At the end of the previous episode we took the funicular railway up from the many squares and churches of Salzburg to the Hohensalzburg fortress.
It's an impressive chunk of masonry and design, far bigger than you would find most castles in the UK to be. In fact inside those formidable walls is an entire village.
It therefore gives an air of both calm beauty and impregnable mass.
It was never taken by force. Even when under siege during the Peasants' Revolt of 1525, with food running out, the defenders coloured their only bull a different shade every day and paraded it around the walls in view of the besiegers below, to convince them there was plenty of food left.
We spotted at least two wells within the confines of the fortress, so presumably water wasn't a problem.
We had gone up there thinking that we might spot a few locations from The Sound of Music, but not so much really. We've already seen that the courtyard seen in the film housing the von Trapp Family Singers competition was down in the city itself...
Just about the only reminder of the film was this. The puppet theatre that had provided the puppets (and no doubt the puppeteers) for the Lonely Goatherd scene. We didn't have time to watch a performance, but I bought a couple of postcards showing some of the puppets. The theatre began in 1913 when friends of sculptor Anton Aicher convinced him to turn his private hobby into public performances. The family by the time of our visit in 2000 had amassed some 2000 puppets.
An underground passage leads you out of the inner fortress to the path leading back down to the city. We had gone up by funicular railway but opted to walk back down.
The way down is steep. Boarding with slats across, like a ship's gangway, are laid down the street to help you keep your footing. In winter it must be almost impossible! The fortress is immensely popular with tourists. After the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna it is the most visited tourist attraction in Austria.
We came down and turned to visit the cemetry of the church of St Peter, one of Salzburg's gems. We found these intricate iron crosses set up on short gravestones. We had seen some similar ones in Kitzbühel.
Finally we get back down to the city level and in a grim reminder of the reality that was behind the fluff of The Sound of Music, passing through a small square we read a plaque on a wall that told us that Himmler's Gestapo had made their headquarters there during the war.
Not the best quality photo but in 2000, digital cameras were very new and not capable of the high-quality that we take for granted today. Even then, you would not have dreamed that they would be an add-on to a phone you could carry in your pocket! These are eggs. Blown and painted and displayed in their thousands in a shop that sells nothing else but painted eggs!
When I say in their thousands I'm not joking! Miss Franny restrained herself from buying any but then regretted it for the next couple of years until we visited again. On that as yet future trip she would be known for the rest of the week to the coach drivers as The Egg Lady...
It was getting time to return to the coach station. Just time to look at the river - well alright, so we got lost and found ourselves at the river... Anyway we had a look at the river, a look at the map and found we were not so far off track after all!
No need to catch a trolleybus then! Not been on one of those since the 1950s in Manchester...! And they weren't bendy in the middle then!
We got back to the hotel, had our evening meal and decided (gluttons for punishment that we are) to have another bash at walking into Zell-am-See after our meal. Tomorrow night, after all, will be our last night so we would be spending it packing and having a last night with our fellow passengers. So it was tonight or never.
This time we made it all the way! Well, perhaps we did catch the little train seen a few times previously... Asking for a ticket in an unknown language is quite something - especially on the return journey where we wanted to get off at Kitzteinhornstrasse...!!! Actually I must have done ok because the driver/conductor launched into a long spiel which I just about gathered was advice on buying a weekly ticket to save money. "Ja, danke, but wir ist der trundlink homevards zer day after morgen"...
You might have guessed how the weather changed once we got there... Ah, lovely.... lightning show over the lake anyone? We sheltered from the light rain to give it time to get really hard again, then dashed for the station, getting wet at the level crossing, waiting for a mainline train to go through then again after the train ride as we walked back to the hotel. "Been out taking pictures of the rain again?" came a cheerful voice...
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