Urlaub 4 - Wien (Vienna) and Salzburg

Continuing our holiday posts...we went to Austria for a week! The land of "The Sound of Music" and Mozart. Can you hear it now..."The hills are alive...."?

Now before we go on, here's an interesting collection of signs we found in Austria. What do you think they mean? In the spirit of German driving tests, at least one of the following answers is correct, however up to all may be correct. Answer at the end of the post.
a) No smoking
b) No vehicles.
c) No dogs
d) No cyclists.
e) Bicycles may not be left unattended

So what do you do when you are in Vienna? Eat Vienna Schnitzel - of course!







The other thing to do is eat cakes. There are cake shops everywhere (called Konditorei), where we sampled a fine selection of Austrian desserts - at least 15 cakes over 7 days! Owen enjoyed helping select them, but wasn't allowed to share in eating them!

Of course you can't visit a European city and not see a church. Here is a very impressive one in the centre of the city - Stephanplatz

We did a few bus tours, though for one of them we all had a long nap. There's so many monuments, statues, historic buildings, etc that it all just washes over you and becomes a bit passe. Let's see, shall we see XYZ, or have another cake?

Vienna has been the centre of music for a long time, and it was interesting to go on a walking tour on the life of Mozart, as well as to visit the House of Music - a museum with interactive displays for the kids. One thing that they kept drumming into us - don't believe the movie Amadaus - it's got lots of historical inaccuracies.

Schonbrunn schloss is towards the edge of Vienna. A beautiful castle on huge grounds, and with a guided tour of most of the rooms - which have been set up as a museum

Salzburg, the home of the Sound of Music. This is the closest we got to a sound of music tour, thank goodness!

We visited the Salzburg fortress, which has a great view over the city. This fortress was never taken by force, and has several layers of walls built up over the years.

We also saw one of Jo's school friends Natalie, who is a musician in Salzburg.

Oh, and did you know that there are no kangaroos in Austria?

But there are digeridoos!

Despite Austria being a German speaking country, we found some strange words - mostly when we were reading the menus. The one we found most amusing was Erdapfel. Literally this means earth apple, but it's actually potato.

Answer: b, c and d. The strange thing about European traffic signs is that a red circle is the same as a red circle with a red line through it. ie not allowed. Another is that a completely empty red circle means no vehicles allowed. This can be quite confusing!