Journey to the West: pre-semester trip (part 2)

Finally I have access to internet!! Internet is like a luxury here. In school there is wifi which does not seem to work. My hostel is a piece of shit although it is not as bad as I had expected it to be (of course, there's no internet connection). I am at mcdonalds now to eat dinner and access the wifi. Anyway, I will post some photos of the hostel in a separate post.

Ok now I shall continue with an update of my trip to central/eastern Europe.

Innsbruck

Small town but arguably one of the best places I visited. The highlight of this city is the rocky mountains called Hungerberg. We went up by a cable car and the view from the top of the mountain was simply breathtaking.

Lunch at the top of the mountain was superb. I paid 7,60 euros for this plate of mixed salad with duck breast meat.

Salzburg

This town in Austria was where the famous musical "Sound of Music" based its storyline and where the film was shot. This town was also the birthplace of Mozart.

Day 1

We started the day visiting Mirabell Garden which was one of the spots used in the SOM movie. Trust me, you'll never find flowers as beautiful as those in Europe. Botanic Garden can just go and eat "merde". After lunch, After lunch, I visited the Mozart Geburtshaus where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. From the background information I read, Europeans during that period believed that hot water was especially harmful for the body as it opened up pores that allow bad air to get into the body. The Mozart family was one of the few families who still bathed (the rest did dry scrubbing).

Mozart Wohnhaus was Mozart's second home where he grew up. This museum was not to be visited for people who cannot appreciate music. When the audio guide started talking about C Major or D Major..blah..blah..blah..i was like HUH? I understood almost nothing after more than one hour in this museum.

Then the weather turned nasty and I experienced hailstorm for the first time in my life. It so happened that I was under an umbrella, but I held it so close to my head that I could feel some “gravels” hit my head. Initially I thought the wind was so strong that it blew the gravels from the flower beds in the balcony of the houses nearby. Then it dawned on me that it was raining ice. Still not convinced enough that what I saw was true, I picked one ice gravel and indeed, it melted on my hand.

Day 2

Some of us spent the whole morning watching the Sound of Music movie at the TV room since we were going for the SOM tour in the afternoon. I thought the movie was too slow and dramatic for my liking. The tour itself was not fantastic. It was quite a waste of money especially for the extravagant 33 euros I paid. The tour guide was trying very hard to be funny and entertaining but her British jokes were just too much for me to swallow.

Well, at least I learnt some stuff about the movie:
1. Hollywood used 2 houses for Captain Trapp’s villa. Leopoldskron was a house by the lake used to film the back of the house.

2. The gazebo was moved from Leopoldskron to Hellbrunn palace.
3. Eldest child of Captain Von Trapp was a boy and not a girl as depicted in the movie.
4. The von Trapp family did not escape from Nazi by hiking the mountain; instead they took a train to Italy.
5. Christopher Plummer did not sing Edeilweiss.

The row of trees in Mondsee used to film the kids hanging down when Captain was driving back with the Baronette.

I had apple strudel when we stopped by at Mondsee. Rather costly at 5.40 euros. After that, we headed back to Mirabell Garden where the tour ended.

Day 3

Our first destination was Hellbrunn which has a topological feature of water spurting out of the garden. The compound consisted of the palace, the trick fountain and the Schloss Garden. The trick fountain left a special impression on me. As the word suggested, there are a lot of water surprises as we walked around the compound. There was a dinner table made of stone which could seat 8 people. This table was used by the then archbishop to host his friends. As soon as his friends were drunk, he would secretly turn on the fountain which would spurt out from the middle of the seat right into the ass(h**e). Funky dude. Haha.

There was this water jet that was so forceful that it could lift up an object weighing 7 pounds. There was also this tunnel of criss-crossing water jets that we had to go through to get out of a cave. I naively thought there was no trick so I stood in the middle of the tunnel to pose for a picture and before I knew it, there were jets of water shooting on my ass from behind. Damn paiseh cos there were a lot of people watching and laughing at me.

Schloss garden and the palace were not special. Only after we climbed up to higher grounds then we could see a better view of the garden.

Next stop was the Salzburg Zoo. This zoo really simulated the natural habitat of the animals. Actually there was nothing much in this zoo except a few exotic animals I never saw before, such as the very cute prairie dogs and Llama which is a horse with human-like hair (which is funkier than any of ours) which perhaps could only be found in fantasy movies.

We had to rush to Feschtung Hohensalzburg which was a fortress because it would be closing at 7 pm. By the time we reached there, it was already 5:30 pm. The journey up to the fortress was torturous as the slope was really steep (took about 15 minutes). My knees were really giving way after so much climbing within the past week. We toured the torture chamber and the salt chamber in the fortress and saw models of how the fortress had evolved over the years. Sinhui and I managed to get the entry to the observation point which provided us with a breathtaking panoramic view of Salzburg.

Vienna

Day 1

We stayed at Wombats the Lounge which was apparently one of the world’s best youth hostel. And its reputation is well-earned. The room and toilet were indeed in top condition. Service was excellent; two thumbs up, I would give more if I could.

Our first destination was Nachmarkt which is a flea market selling many different asian spices as well as local delicacies. After much contemplation, we settled for a restaurant which served Tafelspitz which was a dish recommended by a Viennese we met on the train. Tafelspitz is basically boiled beef of which the meat was taken from the neck of a cow. I would say it was not very special but apparently the locals love it. I also shared a plate of beef goulash which is a kind of Austrian curry cooked with tender beef. I love this dish! Eugene ordered this drink called “sturm” which is half-wine half-water (simply put) but it was actually a wine which is ‘halfway through’ to become a ‘real’ wine.

Tafelspitz

Beef Goulash

We then headed for Schonbrunn palace (again!). We toured around the rooms but I could not recall much after listening to the audioguide. Besides, the weather was super hot and it was stuffy inside the palace, especially with such a big crowd. All I could remember now was that one of the kings called Franz Josef had many children who suffered terrible deaths.

Privy garden next to the palace was not special as well. Just more flowers. The life-size maze was the only other interesting thing. At 6 plus, we proceeded to the Gloriette which was the highest point in the castle. Walking uphill was again a torture; my knees totally gone. Up on the gloriette, we had a nice panoramic view of Vienna. And since we had nothing much to do up there, we ended up taking stupid photos in silhouette. The girls posed as “charlie’s angels” while the guys posed as “apes in evolution”. A German engineer who happened to be there even asked us to pose for his SLR.

Could you see me?