Unfortunately Vienna gets the short end of the stick on this trip, welcoming us at the end of our whirl-wind tour of northern Europe. Fairy tale castles and cobblestone walkways have all had their toll on us and both John and I quietly realize how strangely uninterested we are in exploring this city. As we leave this morning to visit the city, we discover that we are both more than anxious to find some warmth on the beaches of Croatia.

Today is a beautiful high summer day. The hot sun doesn’t encourage us as we literally drag ourselves around the city. We are already talking about coming back to Vienna to view its treasures with clear and refreshed eyes. We arrive at the Museum quarter and this furthers our resolve. This is a district that would put some of the great museum cities to shame. Beautiful buildings clustered together with a wealth of viewing potential. Classic architecture holding some of the best works of art in Europe. We wander through the quarter, not inspired enough to actually visit any of the museums today, and pause at an internet café for some coffee and a quick update. We have not found any internet cafés that will allow us to plug our lap top in and so while email has not been an issue, updating the web site certainly has. We have no idea about internet availability in Croatia so our journal may have to wait a week or so to be updated. Our anxious fans of followsummer.com may have to wait.



Top from left: The Rathaus; the Neue Hofburg
Bottom from left: The Burgtheater from the Volksgarten; the Rathaus from the Volksgarten

N 48
E 016

Salzburg via Melk to Vienna: 318 kilometres

We have a leisurely chat with our host, Martin, this morning over breakfast and discover that he is quite an accomplished young man.

We don’t have to be in Vienna before 6 pm so we linger and head out around noon. Our B&B hosts in Vienna, Kristian and Alex, have told us that we should stop and visit the Abbey in Melk, an hour or so outside of Vienna,

The morning is clear and sunny as we head to Vienna. We are both tired of the driving and day here, day there, life we have been leading. I secretly think that we are anticipating being on our vacation-away-from-our-vacation in Croatia in 48 hours, but our drive is buoyant and fun and we arrive in Melk around 3 p.m. and find an incredible baroque fantasy famous for its library, which is mentioned in Umberto Ecco’s “Name of the Rose”. There has been an abbey and library on this site since the 12th century, one of the most important in the Holy Roman Empire. Situated on the Danube, it is a huge building and it dominates the picturesque town of Melk below.


From left: The Abbey of Melk above the town; the main courtyard; the Cathedral


From left: The Altar at Melk; detail of the Library; the Marble Room at Melk

We enter and are immediately directed to the Abbey’s extremely interesting, modern and interactive museum. We make our way through the rest of the abbey – staterooms, library and church – and wander over to into town to do some banking and have a look around before heading back up to the Abbey and having a rest stop in its garden.


The Garden Pavilion at Melk

Vienna beckons and we arrive with great directions about 6:15 without a hitch, finding parking easily. However easy a day it has been, we are both tired. Our hosts are heading out of town for the weekend and it turns out that we will have the flat to ourselves for our time here. John runs to the corner store and buys some wine and we all have a drink together; then we unpack for the night, and head out to their recommended local restaurant for dinner and an early evening. I have risotto with gorgonzola and John has a wonderful dish of breaded and sautéed kohlrabi with a pesto sauce. The meal is surprisingly good for the price and so we wander back to our flat and enjoy the penthouse patio view as the full moon rises over Vienna.

A quiet morning but full of productivity. We reconfirm out B&B in Vienna. After our earlier than anticipated arrival in Salzburg and one other surprise arrival in Amsterdam, we are going to make it a habit of reconfirming our reservations. We also book a quick and cheap flight to London mid-August to see the city and more importantly to see our friend Neil, who we met in Mykonos. We finalize our mini-vacation to the beaches in Croatia, catch up on some email and head out to the city.

It is a gloriously sunny and clear day. We are in shorts and t-shirts but it is just a little too cool out of the sun so we bring jackets as well. Our first stop is the tourist information booth where Martin has directed us to find out about – yes –the Sound of Music tour. It is prohibitively expensive and again, even I can’t bring myself to suffer the kitschiness of it all. We wander across the street to the Schloss Mirabell and gardens and decide to do our own tour of Saint Julie’s movie. You will remember this garden as one of the gardens her Saintlieness sang “Doe, a deer” with those adorable children. Today it is full of tourists and workers, who are setting up an event for the Festival later this evening. The garden is actually quite lovely and has a sweeping view up to the Festung Hohensalzburg.


Schloss Mirabell gardens: can’t you just hear those delightful children singing??

We stop for a patio lunch beside - you guessed it: the house where Mozart lived for seven years - and then continue our exploration of the city. We cross the river, stop into one of the many shops selling Mozart chocolates and John buys some marzipan and I buy some dark chocolate. We take the funicular up to the Festung Hohensalzburg and spend an hour enjoying the almost 360 degree view from high above the town. We look for Hellbrunn, the Von Trapp family schloss (in the movie) and Stift Nonnberg, the famous convent where Maria sought refuge from her life at the beginning of the movie and from those terrible Nazis at the end. No need to remind you of all those dear, memorable songs sung at the Abbey.


The view from the Festung Hohensalzburg

We cannot pick out Hellbrunn but we do see the red domed bell tower of Stift Nonnberg and wander down to the Abbey. It is a beautiful chapel, quiet and completely uninhabited by tourists. I discover later that Maria and the Baron were actually married in this Chapel, not the grand cathedral that, in the movie the Saints Andrews and Plummer were so theatrically wedded in.


From left: Nonnberg from the Castle; the view from the Abbey; Nonnberg

We continue walking down into the town proper in the late afternoon sun and have a rest stop over a quick beer in a small patio on a little square. We walk back over the Mozart pedestrian bridge, head for home, very quick naps and back out for dinner and another glimpse of the almost full moon, rising above the castle.


A well deserved beer!

N 47
E 013

Prague to Salzburg: 399 kilometres

We seem to be following the ghost of Mozart: first in Prague, where he debuted many of his works and now onto Salzburg where he was born. Legend has it that Mozart didn’t like Salzburg that much but we find the storybook town just as Julie Andrews and the cast of the Sound of Music left it: picturesque, clean and surrounded by those famous mountains. And with all the buzz and excitement of the Salzburg Festival, which has just opened.


Our first view of Salzburg from the North

Because we are in the mountains, the weather is crisp but sunny. Our drive has taken much longer than we expected today because of intense traffic and road construction. We telephone our B&B host Martin and low and behold, he is expecting us tomorrow! We wander around the town for an hour, to allow him to scramble for our arrival and we drop our bags off and walk into town for some dinner and a glimpse of the town as the sun is setting.

Martin lives very close to the river and we have a tree canopied walk to and from the town center, only 10 minutes away. We wander around the squares and across the Salzach River, which is quite high, singing the many and various songs from the Sound of Music, trying to pick out the different locales from the movie in the gathering dusk. No one takes any notice of us as we sing. The locals must be quite used to this. The various Sound of Music tours, expeditions and other outings make a lot of money for the town. There is even a Sound of Music dinner theatre that performs year round. They will cater to your corporate function, business meeting or what have you. They add carols for their Christmas show. In the summer, they have a “cocktail show” at 5:15. The menu? “Schnitzel with noodles and crisp apple strudel”. Even I am horrified at this prospect.

There is a lot of music scheduled for the Festival and we consider purchasing tickets for one of the performances. But this will all have to wait until tomorrow when we can get a better look at the town in the daylight. We wander the labyrinth of the old town practically alone, shopkeepers and tired waiters closing up for the night and the odd group of kids hooting it up on a Wednesday night. This seems to be a town of music and, strangely enough, plastic surgeons. For every reference to Mozart or music there is a surgeon’s sign hanging from a Baroque building, advertising their expertise. We traverse the river over the Mozart pedestrian bridge, heading for home and as we round the corner the moon, almost in its full glory, peeks out from behind the clouds just behind the fantastic Festung Hohensalzburg, the castle, high on the hill above town.


Festung Hohensalzburg

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