Salzburg Austria. Dec 23rd - 26th

Salzburg, Austria. December 23rd – 26th

The train ride from Munich was uneventful. It was Lisa’s first train ride, so she was excited and apprehensive with the whole motion-sickness thing. The ride was only an hour or so, so she didn’t have much time to get sick and barf all over me.
Arrived in Salzburg and got a bit turned around in the train station because they have the entire thing under construction. It doesn’t look like the pretty little train station that it was 3 years ago when I was here with Ben. We left the train station to go and find something to eat before checking into our guest house. We ended up heading into a place that Ben and I frequented when we were here. Little eatery close by the train station where you can get food, drink beer, and smoke inside... Perfect. We ate and headed back to the train station to find the local train and head to Germana’s house.
As per usual, I enjoy getting lost everywhere, and Salzburg is no different. So we got lost for a few minutes within the torn-up station looking for the correct train/platform. It didn’t take us very long. No fun...
Made our way to Germana’s and trudged up the hill-of-death towards her house. Here it seems EVERYTHING is at the top of some hill or another. It can be tiresome when you are already sore and lazy from walking and sitting in a train. Also, the air is thinner here in the Bavarian Alps, so that certainly can add to the laziness. Germana is the same little cheerful Austrian lady that she was 3 years ago. She speaks good English albeit a heavy accent and is just full of stories and suggestions about where to go, what to do, etc etc. She pointed us towards the Salzburg Christmas Market and set us off to find more Christmas stuff to satiate Lisa’s obsession. By the time we made our way there, Lisa was tired and cold, and not very interested in the market. The mighty Christmas-crazed monster had been defeated. We strolled about for a little while longer and made our way back to Germana’s.
The next day was Christmas Eve. We decided that we needed to find something Christmas-y in order to get past the homesickness that we kind of had. The holidays can definitely be a lovely time to travel, but you do end up missing your family, even though you may be in a beautiful land such as Austria. We took the LokalBahn to Obernsdorf and walked through the village to the Stille Nacht Kapelle (Silent Night Chapel) to see that little modest chapel that such a big piece of Christmas history came from. The chapel itself is a tiny little building compared to some of these monstrous cathedrals that are everywhere in Europe. It may seat a dozen people, probably less. In 1816 a little priest there wrote the timeless song Silent Night. It was first performed there 2 years later in 1818. The organ was broken, so they had to use a guitar to accompany the singing.
I like stories like these. The song wasn’t written by some famous classical composer or Archbishop in the mighty Vienna Cathedral, but rather a little tiny chapel, in a little tiny village, by some modest priest. It isn’t much different than the story of Christ’s birth itself. A small town, a modest building, with a handful of humble participants. Such is more often God’s ideal setting for history it seems.
After finding presents for our beloved Mothers in Obernsdorf, we headed out to find our way back to the train station. We decided to take a shortcut, and by “shortcut” I actually mean getting lost and having to spend additional hours finding our way back. We eventually made it back to Salzburg-city and set out to look for a suitcase for Lisa.
*Side-Note* Lisa has been miserable with the backpack. There is little in this world that she has complained about more than the backpack. She detests it with all her heart and soul it seems. She complains about it incessantly and we decided for her sanity and mine that we needed to find a roll-suitcase for her. We did find one... It’s hot-pink… and huge... Lisa happily rolled her suitcase back to the train station so we could stow it in a locker, I trailed behind her feeling pretty well emasculated. Such is love I suppose...

Most of the shops were closing now due to it being Christmas Eve, so we wandered about the city looking for an open restaurant until we came upon the Tokyo Café or something like that. We had a lovely Christmas dinner of spring rolls, fried won-tons, and teriyaki chicken in the Tokyo café with a bunch of other travelers that had nowhere to go either. All things considered, it wasn’t too bad in the end. We went back to Germana’s and played Trivial Pursuit, drank wine, and ate chips until we were both nodding off from exhaustion.
Awoke on Christmas day and decided (per Germana’s suggestion) to check out one of the free concerts/mass that were being held in all the various cathedrals in Salzburg. We went to the main cathedral and enjoyed some of Haydn’s works that were occasionally interrupted by a priest performing catholic rituals in German. Lisa seemed to pick up on some of it; I didn’t really understand any of it other than the various Latin that I would pick out here and there. One fatal flaw that I think the Catholic Church did was to create these enormous cathedrals. It is too easy to get distracted from the monotone priest when one starts looking around at all the detail and ornamentation of one of these cathedrals. They clearly didn’t have Attention Deficit Disorder in mind when they built them.
After church they re-opened the Christmas Market and the tourists and locals all came out in force again. We wandered about eating and drinking for awhile before heading to the Salzburg Fortress/Castle. It was raining a little bit, but wasn’t too cold. We decided to gamble with the rain and walk up to the castle for the beautiful views of Salzburg below.
At the top of the castle I told Lisa that she had to marry me or get thrown over the side, she reluctantly agreed and we are now engaged. She is now my objectified piece of property and I own her completely.

-P