Füssen to Salzburg, 17 Oct 2019
Our stay in Füssen was the shortest of the trip, and it was time to head into Austria. After getting settled in our apartment, we went into Salzburg to do a walking tour of Old Town.
Our last morning in Füssen wasn’t as early as the previous one. We had mentioned to the innkeeper when our train was leaving so he knew we would be down for breakfast when it started. We arrived to a very large spread, much more than we’re used to. Surely you know us well enough by now to expect us to have finished most of it anyway.
After breakfast, we chatted with the innkeeper a bit. He’s from Romania and thinks that people would enjoy traveling there, and isn’t sure why tours get so close but don’t go across the nearby border to experience it. He also seems to be more of a small-town person (good thing, since Füssen isn’t at all large).
We got to the train station with plenty of time to spare and we’re able to get good seats. This time we had three legs, the first an hour to Kaufbeuren, another hour to Munich, then an hour and a half to Salzburg.
Salzburg
Once we arrived in Salzburg, we grabbed a sandwich to share for lunch to split, since we were still a bit full from breakfast. The next to-do item was to procure Salzburg cards which would give us free bus fare and entrance to practically everything we were planning to see. We had added up everything on our agenda and they seemed like a good deal, especially since we would be able to shop the lines and just scan the cards for admission.
The bus stop was outside the station, and we ended up foregoing the transfer and walking about 20 minutes after we got off. We found the set of apartments we were staying at and found out the woman gave us a larger one since she had family in town and was putting them in the upstairs unit. Ours is very nice with a small but well-equipped kitchen.
After we got settled in, it was back on the bus to head to the city center to do a walking tour of the area south of the river, Old Town.
As with many European cities we’ve visited, Salzburg used to be surrounded by a town wall. This one was built in 1620 to avoid the tumult of the Thirty Years’ War.
As we passed through the wall, we entered Mozartplatz, names for Salzburg’s most famous and beloved home town hero. The next square over was Residentzplatz, the governing center.
On one side of Residentzplatz is the side of the Salzburg Cathedral. It’s large but still feels to be of human scale. It’s impressively bright inside, being white inside and having lots of clear (as opposed to stained glass) windows. It was first built in 774, rebuilt after fires in 1167 and 1598, and replaced in 1628. It was rebuilt in the 1950s after being leveled during WWII. There are five organs, all of them being used for Sunday Mass along with sinners in the balconies. The Mozart tie-in is this was his church for 25 years, and the font used for his baptism is still there.
The next square on the tour was Kapitalplatz, from which to get a good view of Hohensalzburg fortress. We would visit it the next day.
Nearby was one of many waterwheels that powered factories. The one where we were looking once powered a mill which ground flour to make bread for the monks of St. Peter’s Abbey. There’s a bakery nearby, so we popped on to have a roll.
St. Peter’s Cemetery is very nicely maintained, and the outer walls were lined with very fancy tombs. Above on the cliffs were buildings named The Catacombs, but we had arrived to late to tour them.
St. Peter’s Church is where Christianity started in Salzburg. St. Peter’s Abbey was founded on 696, and the restaurant in the courtyard brats that Charlemagne ate there in 803. The church itself dates back to 1147. You can still see some of the 13 century frescoes inside.
We then saw a small courtyard, Toscaninihof, where we got a good look at the back of the Festival Hall complex, where the real Von Trapp family performed.
After yet another square, Universitätsplatz, we walked along the sheer cliff face of Mönchsberg, which we planned to see more of the next day. We then turned onto Getreidegasse, where you find almost everything, from cafés to clothes. There are old wrought-iron signs above the shops which advertise what odd sold inside. One had a large key, representing a blacksmith shop since the 1400s. There are passages off to the side which are also lined with shops, open to small courtyards where you see apartment windows above, then continue to the next street. Old World mixed-use buildings.
Mozart’s birth house is also on Getreidegasse and was unsurprisingly crowded with tourists even though the museum was closed.
We walked around a little more to finish our tour, thought about some dinner, then decided to go to a grocery store to get dinner and breakfast items. That done, we found the bus back to the apartment and were done for the night.
