Salzburg and Kira's Adventure

Kira and I spent three full days in Salzburg exploring the baroque old town, taking a bicycle tour of the Sound of Music scenes and sights, and exploring the old salt mines that gave the city its name and wealth.

Sound of music bike tour. Way more fun than it had any right to be!

 

Kira was about as excited as one can be for the tour. Please note the thematic hair.

With our tour guide, Jonah.

Salzburgers love to point out that the city was first settled 6,000 years ago, "1000 years before they built the pyramids." Nearly every civilization that existed on the continent of Europe did something here, with the most prominent being, of course, the Romans and the Catholic Church. The city was ruled by archbishops for most of its recent past, which means that there are tons and tons of very pretty churches in and amongst the other super old architecture.

 

That wall is made of salt mined in the area!

Church and castle/fortress.

Also, this guy Mozart was born and lived there. Austrians are really proud of Mozart, they have statues and plazas and streets named after him, and they've even invented a specific candy for him. A "Mozart ball"is a chocolate ball filled with layers of marzipan and pistachio. They're very tasty, but I can't seem to find out why that particular candy is related to that composer. They're literally everywhere, from tourist shops and grocery stores to the sketchy tobacco shop at the train station.

 

The yellow building is the house Mozart was born in. 

The bottom floor is now a grocery store, but out of deference to the importance of the location they sell tons of Mozart balls and have changed their normally red and green logo to gold at this location.

While we were in Salzburg we got to go running every day from our hostel near town (a habit that utterly baffled out roommate, New Zealand. NZ couldn't understand why we would run before walking all day or--worse--walk all day then go running), and in the process of running we got to explore the parts of the city we didn't see on the tourist maps.

 

A part that's definitely on the tourist maps. I hate carrying my phone when I run so no pictures!

 

Kira especially got to see some bonus Salzburg. She ran to a cheap restaurant to grab takeout dinner (they're really into Döner Kebabs here, which is a kind of sandwich thing of Turkish origin, very tasty) then attempted to run home. As background to this story, please note that Kira's (wonderful and very sharp) mother once famously drive south on interstate 5 instead of north, ending up past Anderson's Split Pea after assuming that there was a second. For those of you not familiar with central California, it's a hundred-mile-plus detour.

Since Kira and I had been running before, she recognized a number of things on her attempted run home. Here was a pump house by the river painted with waves (it must be a citywide thing, not street art as we thought), here a bridge we had commented upon earlier (they have two!) and finally, what a surprise, there is another hostel with the same name as ours! But Kira was looking for OUR hostel, and she was certain she was running towards the city center from far away. Why was everyone running the opposite direction and why couldn't she see the hilltop castle (visible behind her)?

In case you're worried, here's Kira. She's fine.

 

In the end, I woke up to a sleeping Kira (I'd fallen asleep early with a migraine, unfortunately) and an email from her explaining that she had gotten lost and a hotel chef was driving her back into town so she could come home. Kira (the ultrarunner who just competed a 50-mile race) had run so far out of town searching for our real hostel (which she had already seen) that she had to be driven back. We ran part of her route that evening and when she realized what had happened Kira's distress grew with each "doubled" landmark we passed. But she made it home safe in the end, so it's now a fantastic story and a mistake I doubt she'd make again. Moral of the story for those who can, though: if you ran 15 minutes on the way out, don't run a marathon home!