The Hills Are Alive

"History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days."  ~Winston Churchill

April 6, 2013

We had decided to go to Salzburg, Austria today! Although our plan had been to get up a little earlier and head out around 9am, we fell a bit behind schedule due to some great conversation and another breakfast of Cheerios.

Driving over to Salzburg took us through beautiful mountain passes in the Alps. Despite another foggy day, the views were breathtaking. As we passed through small mountain towns, wrapped tight little bends, and saw the parting clouds reveal jagged cliffs, the entire ride was amazing. The whole way over, we made jokes about Skoda cars and my upcoming marketing project. Our American conclusion was they are too boxy and old fashioned.

“They need a new slogan,” Lizzy said. “And a new car. And a new name.”

We laughed, although it is true that “skoda” is the Czech word for “tragic.”

Arriving in Salzburg, we parked in a parking garage that was literally inside of a mountain. It took us awhile to find a spot, but driving through the garage allowed us the entertaining opportunity to see a tour guide attempt to park a 15 passenger van in a compact parking space. Remarkably, he did it!

As we exited the mountain, Matt pointed out a plaque to me on one of the walls. It stated that inside the caves of this mountain (which are now part of the parking garage) was where US troops and Nazi troops met when the US took back Austria from Nazi control.

Directly above the exit of the cave was a small statue of a woman. It looked like one of the many saint statues that decorate so many European squares and landmarks, but this one was wearing a sleeveless red dress that barely covered her knees.

“That is the most liberal version of the Virgin Mary I’ve ever seen!” I joked.

The first square we came to actually was part of the Monastery. In the square is the oldest restaurant in Europe. Founded in 803 AD, and opened continuously since then, they count among their previous guests such names as Charlemagne and Christopher Columbus.

Just next to the restaurant is St. Peter’s Church. This church is perhaps most famous from the Sound of Music, being the church with the cemetery that the Von Trapp family hid in while fleeing from the Nazi’s. (As another fact check on the movie: the family did not flee the night they performed in Salzburg. They fled several months later and not under fierce pursuit from anyone.)

The doorway to St. Peter’s Church was large and black with gold trim. Inside, the sanctuary was bursting with more gold stucco as well as detailed murals on all of the walls and ceiling. The colors were vivid and bright, but the detail of the paintings was realistic and lifelike.  One particular mural that is famous from the church can be found in the annex off to the right side of the sanctuary. It depicts several cherubs carrying salt blocks (Salzburg’s main medieval export) up to Heaven.

Once again, there were shrines to various saints around the room and several former priests were buried in marble casements in the sanctuary. We took pictures of all of the crosses, statues, and shrines, capturing every image of Jesus and Mary that we could. As we were photographing, the confessionals, Lizzy found a door off to the side of the altar. Creaking it opened, she called us over to take a look.

Walking in, we found another very decorative, but much simpler room. There were no chairs, just several candles and stained glass windows, along with a few commemorative plaques. As Matt translated a few of the plaques for me, Lizzy wrapped down a small hallway into a room that looked like a little chapel.

All of a sudden, there was a lot of shouting. Lizzy came bolting out of the chapel, chased by a priest.

“No can be in here,” he barked. “We have baptism soon. No tourists!”

“We were just going to pray,” Lizzy said. “Tell him Matt.”

“We were just leaving,” Matt said, as the priest practically pushed us through the door and back into the sanctuary.

It was honestly the first church I’d been thrown out of in Europe. But if you never go into the forbidden rooms, you never see the cool stuff.

As we were leaving the church, we saw the baptism family arriving. “We should have said we were the Godparents,” Matt joked. “Then he wouldn’t have kicked us out.”

We walked up around the church and through the cemetery. The cemetery is also famous from The Sound of Music. Fans may recall that in the film, the Von Trapp family hides in the gated crypts of the cemetery as the Nazi’s search for them. The film was not actually filmed in the cemetery (as that was seen to be offensive to families who own the gated crypts) but on a movie set. The cemetery however was beautiful. It seemed to wrap around the back of the church with dozens of artful graves dotting the cobblestone path. Inside the gated tombs were beautiful shrines to loved ones.

There was also a small chapel in the cemetery, for small funerals and wakes. It was not open to the public, but one door was open for guest to peek into. The stained glass windows and simple wooden altar were beautiful. Instead of pews, there were four rows of six chairs set up. A single red candle and bouquet of pink flowers decorated the front of the sacred space.

Our next stop was an old mill. Outside of the mill, a water wheel spun to the current of the river, while inside, it literally turned the rocks to grind the wheat into flour. There was a video in the entry way showing how the mill worked. We only watched for a few minutes, before stepping back into the kitchen to see the staff using the flour to back bread. Matt bought two loafs of their traditional bread. He and Lizzy split one while he gave the other to me. It was very heavy and grainy, but incredibly tasty. I swear we do not have any bread in the US that compares to what I have eaten over here.

At that point, we began the climb up to the Salzburg Fortress. The Fortress was perhaps the most medieval castle I’d seen yet. With jagged walls and impeding watch towers, it looked like a child’s toy castle. It also happened to be situated at the top of a very steep hill. There were too options to get to the fortress: a cable car ride, or steep ½ mile hike to the top. Since Matt is a fellow former boy scout, we opted for the climb.

Walking up the hill explained why the castle was never taken by force (it was eventually succeeded to Napoleon, but no blood was shed in the process.) If an army were to try and take the castle, they could be seen coming for miles. If they managed to make it the hill, it was a steep treacherous climb, just to reach the first guard tower. If they somehow managed to get past that tower, the climb became even steeper and guards along the wall would be able to throw cannons, animals, garbage, and debris down onto the invaders. If that didn’t stop them, there was a second guard tower they would have to clear. If through some miracle, they cleared that tower too, the climb gets even steeper. Eventually, it does lead to the main gate, which is over a foot thick, and has several deadbolt locks extending feet into the castle wall.

We however had no problem approaching the castle. The climb was a little steep, but Matt kept us entertained explaining the history and significance of everything we were seeing. When we reached the main courtyard of the castle, we saw a small forgery right by the entrance. It made total sense to have the people working with fire on the far outskirts of the castle. It also made sense that the person making weapons be close to the wall that was being defended.

In the courtyard was an old wiry tree. It has been so cold, there weren’t any buds on the tree yet and the old branches looked blackened with death. Lizzy went to find a restroom and Matt showed me the gift shop. Here, we found two of the most popular Salzburg souvenirs. The first was the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. CDs, movie posters, and memorabilia from the movie are available everywhere. The city has certainly capitalized on the pilgrim like worship that tourists have for the film. The second souvenir was a black t-shirt with a yellow warning sign on it that read “There are no kangaroos in Austria.” Apparently, this has actually been an issue where tourists come to Austria not realizing it is a different country than Australia.

“I hate that shirt,” Matt said. “People should know some basis geography.”

It really would be an exceptional disappointment to travel halfway around the world to Austria, only to find you were still half a world away from Aussies.

The first area we toured was the chapel. On the outside of the chapel was a statue of the founding bishop, a quaintly carved crucifix, and a beautifully painted sundial. The inside, was also incredible. Small and simple, tourists couldn’t go very far into the room. The sanctuary was bright and light filled every inch of the rounded, arched ceilings. The walls were decorated with stunning carved wood panels. They looked like marble, but our curiosity confirmed they were wood when we reached through the security gate for a small touch.

The first set of rooms we toured was the royal quarters. We walked through endless rooms with brightly covered ceilings that had golden orbs bolted to them, portraying the image of stars in a night sky. There was an incredible ornate dresser from china in one room, juxtaposed with a simple drop toilet in the next. Photos weren’t allowed, but it was yet again a truly royal scene.

The next area we toured was more of the militant quarters. This part of the fortress, we went through on a group tour with audio guides. We were lumped in with a German school group of high school students.

“I thought only American teenagers were annoying,” I said.

“Nope,” Matt said. “Teenagers can be annoying anywhere.”

On the audio guide, we had to press different numbers for the tour in either English or Austrian. Austrian is actually German. The languages are exactly the same. The Austrians however swear that they are not German. It’s true that they’ve had different histories, different cultures, and different pasts, their languages are identical.

The tour was also available in Italian which Lizzy made note of.

The tour took us through the old Salt storage room from the time that Salzburg used it as their main export. Blocks of salt from the melting glacier would be stored in this room until they were measured, weighed, and shipped out. Since the fortress is now a tourist attraction, this room has been converted to showing the history of the construction of the fortress. It grew from year to year, until the archbishop surrendered to Napoleon.

We also got to on in the dungeon and see more instruments of torture. No one was actually killed in this dungeon, but many people were housed, chained, and tortured into confession. Matt tried on a set of cuffs, eliciting laughs from lots of the teens.

From there, we climbed up a long spiral staircase to the top of the tallest tower. At the top, we went out on a viewing platform that let us look across the valley. The fog and low hanging clouds blocked the view of the music filled hills. Regardless of the weather, the rolling green fields could be seen for miles, as could the dazzling green domes of all the churches in Salzburg.

On the way down and out of the fortress was the famous Salzburg Bull. The Bull is actually a high-tech organ of more than 200 pipes. It was built in 1502 and is played daily between Palm Sunday and October 31.

Leaving the fortress, we stopped once more at the restroom before beginning the descent down the hill. Once outside the castle walls, Lizzy suggested that we go see Nonnburg Abbey. Nonnburg was the Abbey that Maria Von Trapp was living in when pledged to be a nun. Matt hesitated a little bit, but in the end we went to see it.

The entire thing was surrounded by a high beige wall. Most of the quarters were closed with the exception of the church. The exterior of the Abbey was used in The Sound of Music but the inside of the church was reconstructed (as again filming inside a church was seen as bad taste.)

The inside however was beautiful. The shrine behind the church was bursting with color, and the architecture of the building was grand and expansive. There was some stained glass, but not a ton. Even so, the room was dark. I usually try not use flash when photographing churches, but this one wouldn’t show up without.

The particularly dark part was in the hallway in the back of the church. A coin operated light allowed viewers to see the fading paintings of saints that line the back of the room. They looked like old cave drawings, but the detail was incredible. From golden gauntlets to faded halos, the details were simple but beautiful.

In the film of The Sound of Music, Maria and the Captain get married at a large church in Salzburg. While the church is real, it isn’t as large as the movie makes it look. If you watch the wedding carefully, you see Julie Andrews walk by the same people several times. The church wasn’t big enough to sync up to the music (or to look like the grand wedding the characters deserved) so she actually walked the aisle several times to give it the allusion of being larger. In real life however, Maria got married in this church in the Abbey.

Outside of the church was a little bit of information on the Abbey. Most of it was in German, but Matt translated. The board depicted the nuns doing service work in the community such as tutoring kids and baking bread.

“I want to find the Nun’s bakery,” Lizzy said.

“The nun’s probably don’t run a bakery,” Matt said. “They’re probably baking holy bread.”

“Well we need to get some!” Lizzy said. We all laughed.

Surround the abbey was a very peculiar barbed wired fence. We had to make a few jokes about why nuns needed a barbed wired fence, but the entire thing looked so out of place.

After taking a few dozen photos of the church, the garden, and the housing, we left the abbey, and began descending back down into Salzburg.