Salzburg: from the Sound of Music to Mozart (and a little bit of Mother's Day)

We stayed up way too late on Thursday night and then could hardly sleep because we knew we had to wake up early on Friday morning to catch the train to Salzburg. Optimistically we had told ourselves that we could sleep on the train, but we didn't really do that, either. The views were beautiful—I was surprised by how much countryside there was (that is, there was much less urban sprawl than I would have expected). 

Fortunately, it's a fairly short trip. When we arrived and found our hotel (to ask if we could store our bags while we walked around) the receptionist offered to see if she had any rooms available right then (though our check-in time wasn't until much later in the day). As it turned out she did have two rooms available, so we checked in and had a quick little rest before hitting the town. 

Hotels in Salzburg charge a tax to guests that allow them a Guest Mobility Ticket, which lets them use the buses, trams, and metro in the city. It was very nice to be able to hop on and off transport as we wanted/needed to!

Our first stop was Mirabell Gardens—which the von Trapp children and Maria danced around in The Sound of Music). Here's a selfie Hadis took of our group:

And here is a picture Hadis took of just Josie, me, and Patrick:

This more serious garden leads to the Zwerglgarten (the dwarf garden). There are twelve dwarves for each month, so they can be some kind of strange zodiac, but there are some missing, and many others, so we simply picked one for everyone in the family.

These two fencing dwarves we decided were Benjamin and Andrew:

Specifically, we thought this was Benjamin:

And this was Andrew:

This tree-climber we thought would be Alexander:

Here's Zoë:

Rachel...maybe...I don't know (the older girls were difficult to place):

Miriam (again, difficult to place):

And Phoebe—with a tongue stuck out, ready to lick anything and everything:

From the gardens we made our way to Mozart's residence, which is a rather short and subpar experience. 

Josie couldn't remember which museum was worth visiting—Mozart's residence or Mozart's birthplace. It's definitely Mozart's birthplace! Josie and I ended up going to both (and I can confirm that Mozart's birthplace is the museum to visit if you need to choose between the two...if you decide to do both museums, be sure to ask for the combined ticket). 

We walked across the Salzach on the Marko-Feingold-Steg:

Past some pretty streets:

And stumbled into Mozarts Geburtshaus—bright yellow, can't miss it!

Inside is this cute Playmobil Mozart:

...as well as many artifacts from Mozart's life (and/or about Mozart).

This unfinished painting of Mozart was done by his brother-in-law. It was also displayed at his residence (but no pictures were allowed there), which made me think that they were both replicas. And, indeed, it seems the original is kept in the Mozarteum in Salzburg—so I imagine that many things in there are replicas rather than originals.  

This is not a terrible thing, really, considering what sometimes seems to be the lax security at European museums...and that one time Auntie K bumped into a display case at BYU's dinosaur museum, causing the skeleton to collapse. She was so worried about it, but the employee at the museum assured her that it was simply a 3-D printed replica. 

I thought my kids would appreciate this little medical kit from the Mozart household:

One favourite medicine was black powder, "a dramatic laxative whose main active ingredients were extracted from plants. However, it was enriched with additional ingredients such as finely ground earth worms, frogs' hearts, or antler tips." I'm not sure that I've ever seen the words "enriched with" and "earth worms" in such...close succession...but there we are. The sign also told us that most of the medicines, honestly, did have a laxative effect due to the belief that illnesses needed to be flushed from the body. 

Ah, the 1700s—such a glorious time to be alive!

We tried to find the letter from Mozart to Nannerl, wherein he calls her horse-faced, but alas we could not. Still, it was fun to go through and read some of his musings and...to think about how awful the life of a child prodigy must have been (probably would have been little better now, honestly). 

We've got a full day ahead of us tomorrow, so I'll leave off here and cover the fortress and other things later...

I did get to speak with the kids today. Alexander has been begging to play the same trivia game we played at Rosie and Austin's house in December. It's Uncle Patrick's game, so he set it up so that we could play. We had a fun time, even if some of the trivia questions felt impossible sometimes. Phoebe had her own controller and twice she managed to randomly click on the correct answer when we were just about to perish, thereby saving our whole group!

It was fun to get to see my kids for Mother's Day. 

It's been fun to be with my siblings as well. Patrick and Josie have been spoiling me—zero people have climbed into bed to kick me this whole time! That alone is quite a treat! 

But I am looking forward to getting back home for some wonderful little-kid snuggles (and to pack up and/or get rid of everything we own).