A Promise Kept

Eight years ago (it is a little hard to believe it really was that long ago, but I guess the numbers don't lie... when did the time start flying by so fast?), I was in the train station in Salzburg, Austria with my friend Stephanie but did not go into the city. We sat there looking out the windows of the train seeing how beautiful it looked, and thought it would be fun to go, but we didn't get off the train. Why? I had promised Darren, then only my boyfriend although I was pretty sure we were going to get married, that he could be the first one to show me that city. He had been there when we went to Europe through a class during our time at George Fox University and loved it. When he heard that Stephanie and I were planning a trip through Europe the summer after I graduated from Oregon State University, he asked me to promise him not to go there and instead wait for him. So, eight years later, he finally got to make good on his promise to take me. I am sure that when he pictured taking me he didn't envision having his mother-in-law, her friend, and our baby along, but we had a good time and they were a good addition.

After leaving Dachau on Friday, we got back on the autobahn and headed down the road to Austria. Salzburg is near the border of Austria and Germany so we didn't have too far to go. Salzburg is an beautiful city, nestled in near the Alps and situated along a beautiful river. If you have ever seen the movie "The Sound of Music" you know this, since the movie was filmed there and based on events that happened there. There are lots of tours that will take you around to the different sites that were used in filming the movie. The tours and hype around the movie is solely for tourists, since the people there and people in Germany don't really know what the fuss is surrounding the movie. We didn't care and happily bought our "Sound of Music" tour map and walked around to some of the different sites around the city, though we didn't join an official tour.

Salzburg is also the city where Mozart was born and lived. Many of the tour sites around the city center on him and his life, and it was fun to see some of that. We didn't go into any of the museums, but I think we found the locations of all of the houses he lived in.

All of the pictures that I have included in this post are from Doreen's camera since I managed to loose our camera with all of our pictures on it while we were touring through the castle above Salzburg. It was frustrating to lose such a nice camera (although, it was the new little one that we had bought before the trip and not my bigger one), but it was long gone by the time that we noticed that it was missing and Darren ran back up the hill to the castle to check and see if it had been turned in anywhere.

The park near our hotel, and also the entrance to the Palace gardens where quite a few scenes of the movie were filmed

Darren, Mikayla, and I on the steps where the kids in the movie jumped up singing "Do, a Deer". We didn't actually know it at the time that we took this picture, but found it out later when we consulted the guide that we bought.

Darren and Mikayla running down the vine covered walkway that the kids ran down in the movie

Darren

Mikayla found herself a place to sit while we were trying to get the pictures to turn out of Darren jumping

Mom and Doreen in Salzburg

The wonderful little bakery that we found to eat breakfast at on Saturday morning before starting our day of site seeing

Mom and I in front of... something. A clock? Not sure, but we thought it looked neat.

When we got to the square that was in front of one of the main old churches in town, we saw that there were lots of horse drawn carriages offering tours of the old part of the city. We thought it would be fun to take a tour that way and get a little bit of a guided tour, too. Mikayla loved the horses.

Mom and Doreen on the carriage ride

Mikayla fell asleep on Darren during the tour

One of the main churches in the old city

View of the river with the castle in the background

Darren pushing Mikayla up the hill to tour the castle. This picture doesn't do justice to just how steep the climb was up the hill to get there.

A view out over the other side of the castle hill from the castle yard

Doreen at the castle well

A view out over the main part of Salzburg from the castle

The steps up into the castle

Vendors playing music and selling the Russian nesting stacking dolls.

The house where Mozart was born and composed some of his earliest works in

Yummy chocolates

Me posing with a cow painted with a "Sound of Music" theme

Doreen's purse, all geared up with essentials for entertaining Mikayla

The last night we were there in Salzburg, we rented the movie "The Sound of Music" from the hotel. Mikayla loved the singing parts and sat there and watched quite a bit of it until it was time for her to go to bed. She has talked about watching that movie for days since, and especially love the "Do, a deer" song.

The drive back was a little hard. What normally would be a 6 and a half hour drive turned into nearly 11 hours because of road construction and traffic jams (or "stau" as they say there) on the autobahn. It kind of felt like the never-ending trip because as soon as we would clear one delay and start to drive normal speeds, or what passes for normal there, we would hit another one. Mikayla was a trooper, though, and did pretty well. We sang a lot of songs, she watched videos on the iPod, and talked with Nana C and Doreen. My favorite was when we were talking about the swimming pool back at the hotel. We had managed to get her away from the pool the night before by saying that the pool had to sleep because he was tired. Some how that worked itself around to Nana C saying that the pool needed to sleep so it wouldn't be cranky. Mikayla thought that it was hilarious and giggled any time someone would say "cranky pool."

It was a fun visit to Salzburg, although we definitely didn't get to see all of it. I guess we will just have to go back someday.