Salzburg - Hellburn and Fortress

On Saturday we decided to rent bikes from the Yoho (our hostel) because it was only 10 euros per person per day – by far the cheapest bike rental we have found thus far. Plus, we figured it would provide us with a quicker way to get around town.


So after breakfast, we took off towards Hellburn Palace – a picturesque palace that had some Sound of Music sites around it. It was about 4 miles outside of town so we took a bike path to get to it. Riding the bike paths through the Salzburg countryside ended up being the highlight of our time there – it was beautiful. There were little quaint Austrian homes and multiple fields and well-kept country sides along the path – not to mention the Alps in the background.

It was a great reminder that we didn’t have any jobs to attend to or any homework to finish – just enjoy our time on vacation. We were a little lost for a couple minutes but we found an older Austrian couple biking and they showed us where to go (the people have been very nice here).

The Hellbrum palace was a bright yellowish structure (pictured) that had pretty amazing gardens surrounding it.

We got a picture at the Sound of Music Gazebo where the ’16 going on 17’ song was sang (throughout our time in Salzburg, Em, Tiffany, and Mike have done a lot of singing all the Sound of Music tunes – I don’t know them nearly as well) then decided to do a tour of the palace’s ‘trick fountains.’ We didn’t know much about the tour but Em really wanted to do it and my professor Dr. Blades said it was one of her favorite things to do in Salzburg. I thought that it was going to be a tour through interesting fountains that did tricks or made objects move (which a small part of it was) but we were wrong. It ended up being a 40 minute tour through some pretty gardens and funny sculptures (the whole place was build 400 years ago, and these sculptures and fountains were meant to be funny) and at the first stop we walked up to a sitting area with a stone table in the middle. The ground around it was wet but there were no fountains.

The tour guide (a really funny man) asked for some volunteers to sit at the table so Mike and I and a couple other people sat there and after a couple minutes of him talking water shot up out of my chair soaking my shorts and fountains erupted all around us! The rest of the tour was very similar, we would walk into a place looking for all the possible places to get sprayed but on numerous occasions we were still surprised and got soaked. One of the last places the tour guide (a really funny man) made us all run through a line of fountains that created an archway of water, I was the last one running through squatting (not getting more wet) and I finally made it to the end proud that I hadn’t got completely soaked when the wall in front of me erupted in more fountains shooting directly at me! My glasses flew off and I almost fell over - everyone got a kick out of it. Overall, we loved the place.
We had lunch at the local market buying Schnitzels (I think?) and some deserts then headed towards Salzburg’s most famous attraction, the Hellstrom Fortress. It can be seen from anywhere and is at the top of a large hill overlooking Salzburg. We skipped the tram (too expensive) and walked all the way to the top and toured the Fortress grounds.

Some of the exhibits and audio tours weren’t too exciting but the views from the top were great, it was a full panoramic view of Salzburg and the neighboring country sides.
That night we went cheap and ate off the dollar menu at McDonalds and then dressed up a little bit and walked around town again. It was a Saturday and there were multiple concerts – only one of them really interested us as it played Owl City and some other artists we were familiar with. We mainly wanted to find some Mozart Chocolates that Em had wanted since we got here and we wanted some Gelato. We ended up finding Gelato at a pretty cheap place (2 euroes for 3 scoops!) and stayed there for about an hour talking to some other backpackers and watching the USA/Ghana world cup game. Em and I normally don’t follow soccer but out here it is a huge deal and we actually found it much more interesting that we would have thought. It got kind of late so we ventured back to the Hostel and finished watching the game there in a lounge area where we were actually filmed (along with some other backpackers watching the game) in a documentary about American youth following the world cup.