Taking in the lovely sounds of an Irish harp. I did mention that it was the Celts who first settled here, didn't I?
Back at Residenzplatz, this is a bad picture of the fountain film-Maria splashes in when she's leaving Salzburg. There was lots of construction going on, making taking pictures a bit difficult.
Getting ready for our short tour of the Altstadt
Unfortunately, our tour guide did not speak much English. Fortunately, I understood enough German for us to get by.
View of the fortress over some booths that were set up for a market of some kind
The Wilde Mann (in English Wild Man, see German isn't that tough! Ha, ha.) statue. I've had trouble finding information on this statue, but he is apparently from the early 17th century and has an interesting history. He is said to stand perfectly still all year long. Only at 12:00 on Good Fridays does he take a second to move -- turning around in a circle to "shake the sillies out," if you will, so that he can stand still another 12 months. Many Salzburgers say they have witnessed this phenomenon, while other say they have stared at him fixedly at the appointed hour and saw nary a twitch. At one time he used to converse with Salzburgers, but since he was moved from his original home where he could view the Salzach River, he is so angry that he now refuses to speak.
Bex enjoying the tour immensely. It started to pour, and I mean pour, almost as soon as our tour ended, so, with Emilie in the stroller with Bex on her lap covered with one umbrella and I lucky enough to have brought along another, we made our way toward the marionette theatre, even though we would be three hours early for the show. I just wanted to be somewhere close to the theatre while I figured out what else we could do in pouring rain.We settled on the cold, hard inside steps of the theatre to wait out the rain. And so we sat, for two-and-a-half hours, as the downpour continued. Becca took a nap on my lap and I don't know how Emilie amused herself for over two hours, but she did. The rain never let up enough for it to make sense for us to venture outside again. Finally, it was show time.
What better show to see in Salzburg than The Sound of Music.
Detail inside the theatre
Can you guess what song Fräulein Maria is singing here?
The production was a combination of the original Broadway musical and the film. For example, the Captain, Max and Elsa the Baroness sing the Broadway song There's No Way to Stop It, which is not part of the film version. In that song, Max and Elsa argue with the Captain about the imminent Anschluss, trying to convince him that he must compromise, because it is inevitable. The Anschluss, or German takeover of Austria, was a strange moment in the production. Nazi soldiers were at first portrayed by 2-dimensional cutouts of Doberman Pinschers in Nazi uniforms. But then an actual man in a Nazi uniform appeared on the stage, sweeping up the confetti left behind from Maria and the Captain's wedding ceremony, symbolically sweeping away old Austria. By this point, your eye had adjusted to the size of the marionette stage, with the puppets in perfect proportion to it. Suddenly seeing an actual human on stage was like seeing an honest-to-goodness giant appear. There was a bit of nervous laughter from the audience.
For the encore, the marionettes performed The Lonely Goatherd and a mirror popped down, allowing us to see how the puppeteers worked their magic. And yes, the puppets puppeted other puppets.
Meanwhile, David took Micaela and James to the Berchtesgaden salt mines, which have been in operation since 1517. Salt was considered one the areas most precious resources, was even referred to as “white gold” and gave Salzburg its name.
The salt deposit in this mountain is estimated to be about 300 meters deep, and the current mine has 5 different levels. The salt is extracted by drilling a deep shaft down into depths of the mountain, pumping fresh water down the shaft to dissolve the salt-laced rock and then pumping the briny water back up to the surface to be evaporated and purified into table salt. A large cavern is eventually formed as the water dissolves more and more of the salt-laden rock. Each shaft takes about 30 years to completely process and yields over 1.300.000 m³ of salt over its lifetime.David, Micaela and James first had to don miner’s uniforms, making them look a bit like modern-day Oompa-Loompas and were then able to ride a little train deep into the mountain.
Visitors got so see how the salt was extracted, slide down wooden rails to lower levels, and ride a raft across a subterranean salt lake. They even got to sample the salty water from they lake they had just traversed, which was pronounced "Ewwww!" by Micaela and James. They had a great time and got a souvenir sample of salt from the mine to boot!
