Wandering around the birth place of Mozart

Salzburg is perhaps best known for being the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as being the setting of The Sound of Music. The historic centre of the city of Salzburg is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site though honestly I can’t say it appealed much to me, cos I feel that most other old towns in other European cities look similar to it. Ah well, I guess I’m no expert so leave it to them to decide.

The Sound of Music came out in 1965 (when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia, coincidentally), and after 46 years, there are still Sound of Music tours you can join! Since we weren’t that big fans of the movie, we skipped those tours and instead did a city tour with the tourist office. Can’t say I remember anything specific from the tour but the guide was friendly enough.

Beautiful ceilings in Salzburg Cathedral

We actually wanted to visit the Residenz State Rooms but they were closed for an event which was a major letdown. On hindsight it would probably be the same as any other state apartments but still it would have been nice if we were able to go in. We also visited the Hohensalzburg Castle which has a completely preserved fortress dating from 11^th century. The castle didn’t interest me much thus we left after a short while.

Man on golden ball by Stephan Balkenhol in Kapitelplatz

As Salzburg was the place of Mozart, you can imagine how much they were trying to milk it. Other than visiting his birthplace (we stood outside but didn’t pay to enter since the two of us would probably not be able to identify any works by him) and residence, you can also buy all kinds of items with his name on it like Mozart chocolates, Mozart dolls, Mozart mouse pads, the list goes on. It was quite kitschy actually but also funny at the same time.  

The one thing we did enjoy a lot though was the Hellbrunn Trick Fountains. The ticket allows you to enter the palace as well and since we had some time to kill, we went there for a short while. The palace was nothing to write home about but the trick fountains were fantastic. There was a fixed timing to enter the trick fountains and we were had a guide who would explain each item to us. It was a lot of fun and we did get quite wet though not as wet as some others in the group. Its not called trick fountains for no reason, water jets out from all sorts of hidden places and it was quite fun to try to spot where the water pipes were hidden. It’s also quite an amazing feat of engineering since it was all built almost 400 years ago! Definitely a fantastic way to end our stay in Salzburg though we did get a bit wet!