Day 12--Salzburg and Munich

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We woke up at 7 because we could check out of the hostel at 8. We walked over to the train station to drop off our bags in a locker and began our adventure for the day.
We started off by climbing a mountain. We walked up a long, very high path of stairs which lead to a wooded, forest like area. We continued waling and went by a church. We walked through the mountain looking for the different “panoramic views” of Salzburg below. However, when we did manage to find one of these so called panoramic views, you couldn’t see much but trees. Also, the paths we not clearly marked so it was hard to tell where we were in the forest at times. But we managed to find our way through it.
After climbing the mountain we headed towards the Glochenspiel. At the top there is a post office that has a different zip code than the area below. When we got there you had to go through the Salzburg Museum to get to it. However, we did not go to the museum because after looking through some brochures we realized that you are only able to go to the top on Thursday nights and Friday mornings. So we decided to take pictures o the outside instead.
Mozart’s birthplace was our next passing point. We could have gone into the Mozart home and museum but you weren’t allowed to take pictures so we just looked at the information and facts etc that they had in the main entrance way. From there we moved on to the Fortress. The fortress is on top of another mountain so we took a mini-train ride up to it. Once there we went up to the highest point of the fortress. We also saw a small exhibit of marionette dolls. There we found out that there was a marionette theater near by and had we been in Salzburg longer could have seen a play with marionette dolls. There was also an exhibit of war artifacts through out the fortress. There was one really cool display of metal soldiers set up in a battle scene. There were arrows and spears flying through the air above us and even a cannon ball just being shot out of a cannon.
After the fortress we headed back down, again taking the mini-train ride down. At the bottom we got something to eat consisting of a pretzel and a wiener schnitzel. We then headed towards the train station to catch a train back to Munich to spend a few hours before heading to Amsterdam.
In Munich we decided to take the walking tour that was suggested on the pamphlet we were given the day before. This took us to many different locations around the city. The first stop was for the Karlsplatz. When we got to that location we weren’t really sure what it was because there was a significant looking building, an arch, and a large fountain there. So we decided to take a picture of everything there and try to figure out what it was later. We then saw the Frauenkirche—this was a large building which had a clock with what looked like moveable people. When we got there it was about quarter pass the hour so we decided to keep going and come back later to see the people move. Just across the street was the Glockenspiel.
Farther down the street was the Viktualienmarkt. This was the part of the city where it was shop after shop of butchers. There were a few bread shops thrown in there as well, but it was a meat market. Next on our walking tour list was the Hofbrauhaus—this was a bar/restaurant. We didn’t go in or know why it was such an important one. There were some other stops of statues or monuments as well. One thing that was a little different on the list was the Eisbach/surfing. When we got there it was one of the rivers in which people were able to surf. There were about 5 people taking turns surfing as many people watched.
Justin said I had to share this story because I’ve shared a good number of stories about him. Well, by this point in the day I really needed to use the bathroom—we had drank about 1.5L of water earlier. We were in a park area and so bathrooms were not easily accessible. However, we did find map of the park that said the bathrooms were not far away. We walked over in that direction only to find that the bathroom was closed and looked as if no one had used it in months. By this point I was doing the two-year-old potty dance. I was all set to go and pee in a bush that I originally thought was nicely covered. Well, it was nicely covered from the ground, when I got back there I noticed a window up above and had to ditch that idea. So we continued on our walk because the next stop on the walking tour was about 15 minutes away and was a park/eating spot and had bathrooms there.
The Chinese Tower was the next stop. This is where we had a beer and some food to eat. The beer was GIANT. I took a picture of the name of the beer but can’t seem to find it again in my camera so it’ll have to be named later. To eat we bought a brazen. We ate and drank while listening to tradition German music. The music was live and being played y men who were sitting in the Chinese Tower. This was one of the last stops on the walking tour that was not a museum or closed for the day. At this point we decided to walk back towards the Frauenkirche.
We had about 25 minutes to wait until the hour so we sat in the square below the clock. We were disappointed that at the hour the figurines around the clock did not move like we had thought. We then left the square to walk around some more before heading to the train station.
The end of the night we had an overnight train from Munich to Amsterdam. Before boarding the train we bought some snack food to eat later and also when we got up since we probably wouldn’t be able to get food in the morning when we arrived in Amsterdam.