Month: March 2012

  • The Sick One Asks for Prayers

    I am taking a break from the scenery of Austria to whine a little bit and ask for prayer. I am sick. I’ve got some sort of something. I have not been feeling well for over a week, but it’s getting worse.  I have a sore throat, headache, and achy neck. I get dizzy, and sometimes I cough. When I do cough, it doesn’t seem like much of a cough, but I fear my lungs is where the source of my problem lies.  Also, I am not sleeping well.

    I don’t know what’s up with me and sleeping. I’m off caffeine; I’m not napping, I’ll be good and tired, go to bed late, and then I’ll lie awake for hours. I’ll doze off and then wake almost on the hour, every hour, to lie there staring at the ceiling. It’s annoying.

    Last night was my worst night for sleeplessness. I woke with a terrible headache and a chest that killed me when I would swallow. (I drank water anyhow!) I wound up dozing on the couch sitting up which was the most comfy I could get. Today, I got up and did Bible time with the kids, put in a load of laundry, and grateful collapsed back on the bed in a dizzy heap.

    Those of you who know me well know that I don’t mind being sick. I even like it. But we leave for a 4-day trip to Berlin Wednesday morning (8 hours on the train each way). Today, I have to pack and get ready.  I would prefer not to be any sicker. If I have to be sick like this, okay, so be it. I’ll push through, Lord willing. But if I start running a fever (rare for me) or other odd things, then I’ll have to find a doctor–in Germany.  I went to the pharmacy here in Linz and got some sort of lung decongestant and sore throat helper. 

    So, I would ask for prayer that I don’t get sicker, that maybe I even get better, that we have a lovely time as a family on our trip, and that I’m not contagious! Thank you, my friends. 

     

  • Saturday and Postlingburg

    We woke up this sunny, Saturday morning, got ready, and headed out to the flea market. The city was abloom!

     

     Every Saturday in the Hauptplatz, there is a big, open-air market. I bet this has been the tradition for hundreds and hundreds of years. And we got to be part of it!

    They had all sorts of things–jewelry, china, old medals, DVDs, stuffed animals–all sorts of good junk to paw through! Not knowing how to count to ten was a hindrance since we could not barter. But, really, I didn’t see anything I thought was worth stuffing in my suitcase and dragging home. 

     

    Okay, truth. I did buy an ice cream cone. Maybe I’ll just have to drag a few extra pounds of ME home instead of some trinkets.

    Another item on the Top Ten was Postlingburg. (There is supposed to be an umlaut over the o, but I don’t know how to type that.) James kept saying it was a castle, and I kept saying it was a church. It turns out, we were both right!

    The church of Postlingburg is perched on a high hill and overlooks the city of Linz. We opted for the train (tram) to take us up the very steep slope. 

     

    Once at the top, we weren’t really sure what to do, so we followed the crowd. First stop was an overlook. It was a hazy day, but it was a great view!

              

     

    Then, we weren’t sure what to do next, so we went to the church. 

     

                

     

    But the front door was closed. Did we ride all the way up here for nothing?? Then we saw someone come out of a side door. I was brave enough to go through that door and another door to peek inside. Success!

    What a dear church! It’s a Catholic church, but it looked like a real church. There were children’s drawings down a hallway and it just felt like people would be there Sunday morning greeting their friends and listening to the priest. 

    The church seemed to focus on family. The side altar to the left featured a painting of Jesus’ birth, and it was flanked by statues of Mary’s parents.

           

     

    The right-hand side altar had Jesus’ presentation at the temple with statues of Anna and Simeon.  

     

    There was a statue of Joseph with little-boy Jesus.

     

    The altar at the front was something to do with Mary. 

     

    This is the view facing down the aisle

     

    And the other way

     

    This was up high, about half-way down the aisle. I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up. 

    It turns out, it’s not just some cool Latin saying. It’s a chronogram! Now, what’s a chronogram, you might be asking? It’s a way to show the date using words. This saying shows the date 1774.  Wikipedia says this is how you do it:  ARA Beatae LV GENT I NE S C E M F iliac Q V OT IDI E PR IVIL EC I ATA (= daily = MDCLLLVVVIIIIIIIII).That’s a pretty good coding. Even when it’s bolded out for me, I still don’t quite see how I was supposed to know for sure which ones were the numbers!

    The words translated mean “Preferred altar of the Blessed, is grieving the death of her son.” (Unless a Latin scholar wants to dispute that, I’m just going to go with what Google told me.)

    One thing I saw here which I had not seen in any other church so far in Austria was stained glass.

       

     

    After we finished our wandering through the church, we wandered outside. And guess what? We found the ruins of a castle! 

     

    It even had a moat.

     

    And what was in the moat? Deer! 

     

    Granted, it was not too difficult to find this castle since it was about 50 feet from the church, but let’s pretend we explored a bit.

     

     

     

     

       

     

    There was also a kid’s amusement park of some sort there, but at 6 euros per person to get in and three tall persons for children, we decided to pass.

     

    We found out later that there was also a zoo nearby, but as our NEW FRIEND Natalie said, “Unless you like birds and goats, it is good to skip it.”  This was more my idea of a petting zoo anyhow. (This was next to the gift shop.)

     

    Guess what? Wednesday, we take another train. This one to Berlin, Germany!

  • The Lentos Art Museum

    We got a list of the Top Ten Things to Do in Linz when we first arrived. Slowly but surely, we’ve been checking off items. One of the “Must See” places was the Lentos Art Museum, a glass and metal structure on the banks of the Danube. 

    They had been advertising an exhibit called “Car Culture.” I was excited for Michael–finally! Something at a museum he’d want to see! I pictured a lot of cool cars or tricked-out cars. Silly me. It’s a MODERN ART museum!

    Now, I can’t say that the displays weren’t amusing. There was a VW Beetle with two TVs on the dashboard which played a loop of windshield wipers going back and forth and pounding rain. There was an old convertible that they had filled up to the tops of the door with what looked like water (but was some sort of shellac or something). They had a shiny Smart Car.

     

    A car made out of metal wires suspended from the ceiling (pretty cool)

    This car looked like a nifty sports car. 

     

    But when you looked inside, it was all PVC pipe, tape,  and a pedal bike system!

     

    Wood paneled station wagon wreck gone even more wooden

     

    And there was this centipede-like car. 

     

    The sides of the car were made of recycled white shirts.  

     

    And this is what it looked like inside.

     

    The rest of the museum was modern art.  The one piece which was sort of neat was this one. 

     

    On the stomach using those pieces of thread? A map of the London Underground!

     

    This photograph reminds me of a painting by Norman Rockwell. 

     

    This was a sweet painting called “Coming Home.”

     

    Got to have a little fun!

     

    After we visited the museum (which was a pretty fast tour with only one real floor of art work), we hung out on the banks of the river and just enjoyed the sunshine.

     

               

     

    And we looked at our next destination: Postlingburg!

     

     

     

     

  • Stuff Inside in Salzburg

    In a continuation of theme, this entry is devoted to “Stuff we saw INSIDE places in Salzburg.” Some of them, I remember where we saw them. Some of them, I’d have to look up. But really, do you care that much? I didn’t think so. So let the adventure begin!

    First up, we have a Roman mosaic of two wrestlers. Why is this at all interesting?  

    Well, when they wanted to make this lovely square with a statue of Mozart in the middle…

    they dug up the ground and what do you know? A Roman ruins with lovely mosaics was just sitting there! So, they excavated it for about two years and put Mozart on hold. Also, the audio guide said that they think the Roman ruin was of lascivious intent perhaps. Oooh.  (Kids, it’s a new SAT word! Look it up!)

    I really liked this set of statues. They were from an unknown altar set in an unknown church.

    There were several things I liked about it. One was that Jesus looks like a person. In many altar statues, he is really scrawny or misshapen or something. Mary Magdalene is at the foot of the cross, and John is comforting Mary, Jesus’ mother. But what made this interesting to me was the other two guys. 

       

    I loved the detail in their faces. The one looking up is supposed to be a Roman soldier, and the fat guy is supposed to be his superior officer. I am not sure what the sculptor was trying to convey with these two, but I liked the unusual nature of the set. 

    Here’s Saint George killing his dragon. I saw a lot of St. George’s.

     

    This is a sepulcher. A sepulcher is a tomb. But, I am not really sure what one does with this in the Catholic faith. The audio guide said something about people being able to venerate here and it counted just as much as if they had gone to the real sepulcher in Jerusalem, but I didn’t have enough background to understand it as well as others might. It was about the size of a loveseat, just to give you some scale. 

     

     This is a painting of Mary. I saw lots and lots and lots of paintings of Mary. 

    I liked this one. It’s a “Madonna of the Wheat.” She’s got grains of wheat painted on her gown, and there is a bunch of symbolism, even down to the types of beetles at her feet. I am so grateful for audio guides that explain cool things! 

     

     

    The one place we visited which was indoors was The Residenz. When the Prince Archbishops were not living in the fortress, they lived in a 180 room palace and office place right at the base of the fortress. Not all 180 rooms were open, but the ones that were were pretty nice.  

     

            

     

    This is the bedroom of the Prince Archbishop.  Just like all the other rooms, it had amazing artwork on the ceilings, gold overlays all over the place, and more. But what I wondered was this:

    If you are going to have a million dollar room, why not get a bigger bed? 

    Look at the thing in the corner, the white thing with the gold round thing on top.

    What is it? It’s a heater! All the rooms in palaces and such had these ornate, ceramic heaters. Some were painted in all different colors, too. 

    This was a wooden box in one of the rooms. I was admiring the room, turned around, and the kids were opening this chest! 

    “What the HECK are you doing?” I said.

    “It doesn’t say, ‘Don’t touch,’ Mom. It’s okay.”

    “NO IT IS NOT! Stop touching that!”

    Oy…we are going to wind up in Austrian prison yet.

     

    This staircase was neat. For a lark, the builder decided to make the metal…um… what are they called? Those up and down spindle parts? These things. 

    Anyhow, the person made them out of bell metal and tuned each one to a different pitch. So if you tap on them (which we did), each one plays a different note! 

     

     

    We saw lots of other nifty things, but I think it is time we leave Salzburg and see what else we’ve been up to!

  • Stuff Outside in Salzburg

    Now we get to the point in blogging where I run out of clever ideas and simply can’t remember if something came from the Salzburg Museum, Salzburg Cathedral, or some random location that I forgot we even visited. So, the next two blogs are called “Stuff Outside in Salzburg” and “Stuff Inside in Salzburg.”  How vastly entertaining, right?

    Remember how I told you that we got to Salzburg and said, “Now we feel like we are in Austria?” Well, part of the reason was that while we were in a square looking at this:

     

    and this:

    We heard a four-man band playing traditional music. It was really neat, and we gave them a Euro.

     

    Also in this square, they had a big, outdoor chess set. We watched people playing.

       

    And we also enjoyed some ice cream. It’s sort of a light, yet creamy consistency here. I heard it is made with eggs, so it is richer. 

    In case you are wondering what on earth that big, gold ball with a statue of a guy on top is, I am wondering, too. (haha) It’s some sort of modern art thing designed for the square. Notice the Salzburg Fortress in the background. This sculpture was also there, and I thought it was cool. It’s called Coat of Peace.

     This magical “statue” of Mozart was outside on the way to Mozart’s house. He got a Euro, too! (Yes, he is floating. Maybe. grin)

     

    Libby had fun with a non-living statue, too.

     

    James posed with the Mozart statue. 

     

    You were not allowed to take pictures inside Mozart’s birth place nor inside the house where he lived when he was older, so I only have pictures of the outside. And surprise! They are yellow! Or should I say “Habsburg Gold”?

      

     

    We went to this square which is outside of Salzburg Cathedral

     

    And we had a picnic lunch.

    Schnitzel burgers and fries! They are yummy things, but they are pretty dry. The lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers they put on them really help a lot.

     

    I noticed a lot of sundials above buildings. And we were able to tell time by them. However, old-time sundial maker didn’t adjust for daylight saving’s time. 

        

     

    I mentioned before that Salzburg was romantic.  This bridge is some small proof.

     

    On this bridge, people put padlocks with the name of themselves and their loves. Some are engraved professionally with dates. 

     

    Some are simply written with marker. But the whole bridge is sprinkled with these “locks of love.” 

     

    A palm tree? Who expects a palm tree in Austria?  What’s next? The Spanish Inquisition?

     

    Ummm…. 

    It was also just darned pretty, so I took a lot of pictures of the tops of buildings.  I would have done WHOLE buildings, but it was difficult to back up far enough without running into another building. 

     

                           

     

    We confirmed what we already knew–Mike Crouse really did buy James an authentic Austrian hat!

     

    The kids wanted to sit by the Salzach River for a while. I was a grumpy pants that day (gotta see CULTURE!), but we did it anyhow. Silly me not to want to sit by a river on a gorgeous day!

     

     

    We passed on the horse-drawn carriage ride, though.

     

    A lot of the stores and restaurants decorated their doorways with flower garlands. They were so pretty. Even the Zipfer Beerhaus where we wound up eating supper the first night we were there (after two other places did not work out) was bedecked.

      

     

    I liked this statue which was in front of something somewhere in Salzburg. It was a man made of letters. Sometimes, that is how I feel I am or we appear to each other–just a bunch of words on a screen. There is nothing inside, nothing deeper than the shiny outside we make of letters. 

     

    HOORAY FOR AUSTRIA!!

  • Saint Peter’s Abbey and Cemetery

    The guide book for Salzburg put it well, “In most cities in Europe, this would be the highlight of the ecclesiastical tour. But with Salzburg Cathedral almost next door, this takes second place.”  Yes, they were right!  It was lovely, but it was not as gorgeous as Salzburg Cathedral. I did feel like it was more of a “working church.” By that I mean it felt like people went there and worshiped God and had Sunday school and all that. Even though it was beautiful, it wasn’t unapproachable. 

    The church was founded in 646, but this building wasn’t build until 1147. (newbie.)  

                    

     

    When our tour of the church was done, I was excited to tour the cemetery and the catacombs. They have excavated old Christian burial sites, which is supposedly unusual for Austria.  But guess what? THEY WERE CLOSED!

     

    So, we wandered the cemetery, which was interesting in itself. It wasn’t some abandoned place. There were people buried there as recently as a few months ago. 

            

    The cemetery was lined with family crypts as well. 

     

    I wasn’t sure if I liked this quote or thought it silly. What do you think?

     

    A great mystery revealed itself to me while we were there. My neighbors in the apartment building have this on their door instead of a name:

     

    I thought maybe it was some sort of chemical equation joke or something. Then, I saw these chalked on doors around the abbey. Hmmm….

     

         

    Then I remembered my sister-in-law telling me about a blessing by a priest and how it was chalked on the doorframe.  So, I went to Google and looked it up. Indeed, it IS a blessing!  The first and last numbers are the year, so the two pictures above are from 2012. If it were 19C…B99, it would have been from 1999.  The letters in the center are the initials of the Magi and the first letters of the Latin words of Christ mansionem benedicat (Christ bless this house). The things I thought were plus signs are crosses. The blessings are supposed to be written in chalk (sorry neighbors with the sticker) to show that Jesus has accepted our earthly selves (since chalk is made from earth).

    Now, what other mysteries can I solve? I hear they are looking for Amelia Earhart again. 

  • The Salzburg Cathedral

    We have been in lots of pretty churches. No, GORGEOUS churches, both here in Austria and also in England. But I think the Salzburg Cathedral might just have been the prettiest of them all.  (This is not my picture, but it shows the whole church, which none of my pictures did.)

    There were three archways, as you can see. Each one had a date in gold over top it which corresponded to a year that the Cathedral had an addition. The first date was 774, the year it was built. You can also see the statues. They were of saints or archbishops. Now I can’t remember, and a Google search is coming up short. I guess you will live if you don’t know if it was John the Baptist or Archbishop Colorado in a statue. 

     

         

    No, you can’t really tell from the pictures how lovely it was. Nor can you tell from the pictures how ridiculously COLD it was inside. BRR! I guess all that marble retains the cold? You’d need a portable space heater or a ski suit to make it through the service!

    As in all the Catholic churches we saw, there was a huge, main altar in the front, and down the length of each side, there were other altars. There was a huge organ on the second level opposite the main altar (so if you were the organist, you could have dropped water balloons on the people who were coming in the front door to church).

     

     

     

             

     

    On the back wall, just as you walk out, there was this picture.

     

    It reminded me of two cell phones, so I had to laugh. 

    In the basement of this church, they had some excavations and a weird shadow puppet show of the Angel of Death. I didn’t take pictures of it because it’s difficult to take pictures in the dark of a shadow show.  

    Even though this church is beautiful, I’m still glad to call Faith Baptist Church my church.

     

  • Our Sound of Music Tour

    When people hear of Austria, and most particularly of Salzburg, many of them first think of The Sound of Music. It was filmed in and around Salzburg (and a lot in Hollywood studios). I will assume all of you are familiar with the based-on-a-true-story of Captain Von Trapp who marries the postulant (potential-nun-in-training) Maria who was governess to his seven children and the family’s escape from the Nazis in World War 2. 

    Anyhow, I saw in the guide book that this tour existed. It was advertised as being very cheesy and all in English. Just my style! I presented the idea to the family, but some weren’t interested. And with the price of the tour, it was good that only Libby and I really wanted to go. 

    Saturday afternoon, we hopped on the Sound of Music tour bus, which was packed full of all sorts of people speaking all different languages.

    First, our tour guide (who was full of puns and silly comments) gave us a tour of Salzburg.

    Since we had just spend the last few days touring Salzburg, we were familiar with many of the places and sites he pointed out. Then began the REAL Sound of Music stuff. (As a side note, I’m not a huge SOM fan. I like the movie well enough and have seen it a few times, but I cannot quote along with it or anything like that. We mostly went on the tour because we wanted to see the scenery.)

    Our first stop was “The Back of the House.”  In the movie, the house overlooks a beautiful lake.

     

    They filmed the capsizing rowboat scene in this lake. However, the actual house is never seen in any of the lake scenes. That is because they used a different house for the front of the house, and when they showed the back of the house, they showed the back of the other house!

     

     

    The famous Sixteen Going on Seventeen gazebo used to be in this yard. However, people kept jumping the fence to see it and photograph it, and it really annoyed the owners of the house (which has become a conference center), so they moved it.  Where did they move it? To our next stop, the Hellbrun Palace.

    We had wanted to tour this place, but it was closed for the season. It is best known for its trick fountains. If you tour here, you get soaked, as the wild and crazy Prince Archbishop who built the place had a wacky sense of humor and made fountains that are gorgeous but also water that shoots out of chairs, sidewalks, statues, and more. When we got there, the public grounds were open and covered in sunbathing public. But the palace itself was closed.

    This is the front of the palace. You may be wondering to yourself as I have been this whole trip, “Why are so many buildings painted this hideous golden yellow?”  Well, it turns out that this yellow is ROYAL. You could only paint stuff this color if you were a Habsburg. Then, when the Habsuburgs were no more, Lowe’s started selling it. (ha ha)

    These palace grounds are where they decided to move the famous gazebo so that the whole world could pose in front of it.

     

     

    Or dance around singing, “I’ll take care of youuuuuu!”

     

    We began to drive to our final destination, Mondsee. But on the way, the tour guide pointed out the house that was the FRONT of the house. It’s the one Maria walks up to and rings the doorbell that first day. And it’s yellow, too!

    We had driven past this house the other day on Bus 25 when we went to the zoo, but I had no idea I should have been paying attention to see the Front of the House.

    We went the back way for sure. There was even snow in the yards, we were so high in the mountains. We drove by the International Headquarters of Red Bull.  It was a lot bigger than this, but most of the buildings looked like this or glass and high-tech.

     

    The bus drove on and on and on, and they put in the SOM soundtrack. It was fun to have a bus full of strangers singing “Do, a deer, a female deer!” Then, the driver said we were going to stop and stretch our legs and they would open the bar. (The bus had a bar?) We stopped at a gorgeous overlook of a lake. Wow. 

          

    The “bar” turned out to be a cooler full of beers and sodas. (By the way, they don’t call it “soda” here. They are “limonade.” So Coke is a type of “limonade.”) Libby and I decided to try an Austrian soda which was sort of like fizzy apple juice.

     

     

    Soon, we reached Mondsee, which was the town where the church used to film the Captain and Maria’s wedding was located. The REAL Captain and Maria got married in Salzburg at Maria’s old abbey, but this church was prettier, I guess. And it was a lovely Catholic church!

     

        

    Here’s a picture from the movie. 

    It’s the same place!

    We were given about an hour to tour the town of Mondsee. It was a quaint, little place on Mondsee Lake (which means “moon lake”).  I think it had the most colorful downtown I’ve ever seen.

        

     

    With some nice cars.

    Libby and I decided to have tea at the local bakery.

    I had a raspberry sort of fluffy cheesecake and Libby’s was a chocolate and mandarin orange yummy.

     

    After tea, we went down to the lake and got some gorgeous pictures. I’m posting most of them, simply because I can’t decide which ones I thought were best!

     

     

             

     

                   

     

    Too soon, it was time to get back on the bus. Instead of taking us up winding back roads to show us beautiful country, we just hopped on the Autobahn for a quick return to Linz.  During this time, the tour guide told us how Maria von Trapp died. She loved cheese. When she was older, she didn’t want to eat anything else but cheese. And her stomach sort of folded in on itself and rotted, and she died of gangrene. How very interesting. 

    When we returned to Linz, we were instructed to go on our own to Mirabell Gardens where the Do, Re, Me song was sung. The Pegasus fountain was here, and that big tunnel of plants they run through. 

     

            

     

    Here’s a link to the song. See if you recognize the sights!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjobdArtiA  (skip ahead to about 3:57 to see the Mirabell Gardens part, the bride is the Mozart Bridge over the Salzach River)

    It was a great deal of fun to go off on a tour with Libby, to see some beautiful places in Austria, and to learn a little bit more about a famous movie. Does it rank up there with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? You betcha. 

  • The Salzburg Zoo

    When the kids heard that there was a zoo in Salzburg and that is was also free with our card, they were so excited. I was less excited. Why would we want to go to a ZOO when we could see Austrian culture and stuff like that?  But I stopped being a whiny pants and planned the zoo trip. (It turns out that if the cable car had not been closed, we would not have had time to go to the zoo. So in the minds of many people, not just the ones who don’t like heights, the closed cable car was a good thing.)

    It turns out this zoo really IS a part of Salzburg culture. It is on the grounds of the Hellbrun Palace (which we shall talk about later). The zoo originally started out in the 1400′s as a hunting preserve. (Oh look, kids! It’s a dead animal bleeding to death!) Then someone started showing other animals just to look at. The zoo of today was opened in 1961. 

    We were not sure at which bus stop to get off, so we picked one and started walking. We stopped at a random hotel to ask directions, and then we walked some more. It was a pretty walk for sure!

     

     

     

    Finally, we found the back gate, which led us to the front gate and admission!  It was a zoo with standard animals, but no elephants.

     

     

    One thing that surprised us was the lack of “Don’t be a total idiot and climb into the tiger cage” sort of signs. You could have hopped the fences pretty easily. (Well, not the tiger’s.) We went in one little display house that held monkeys. When we walked in, this little guy almost climbed up Libby’s arm!

    There were no bars nor glass nor anything! He and his pals were only prevented from escaping by the heavy plastic curtain pieces that served as doorways. Wow.

    Libby and I got to see this guy.

    A keeper put meat out and then called him, “Here Tiger, Tiger, Tiger!” (It was in German, and I don’t really know what she said, but it sounded like that.) The tiger came over to the keeper (who was on the other side of the fence) and ate meat out of her hand! It was pretty wild. 

    We all enjoyed watching the rhinos. Two were in a face-off. We at first thought that it was a young male trying to assert his dominance of the herd over an older male.

     

     

     

     

    Libby’s visit to the zoo was marred by her hooves hurting. The shoes which were comfy in three-hour stretches didn’t quite work for all-day treks.

     

    The zoo was interesting in that most of it was on the side of a cliff. The big cats, goats, bear, and other deer lived on that side.

     

    Other animals lived on the flatter side.

         

    We stayed until closing time, got a bus back to town, picked up frozen pizzas, and put our feet up. It was a good day for all the animals!

  • The Griswolds Go to a Cable Car

    Before we went to Salzburg, we researched the most affordable ways to see and do things. The Salzburg Card fit the bill. For 35 Euro per adult and less per child (Rachel only), we had three-days to use all the city buses and get into all the museums and such for free. One of the freebies was a cable car ride up the Unterburg Mountain. If you REALLY know your Sound of Music, this is the mountain Maria claims to have been born on. 

    Anyhow, we thought it would be neat to be on an Alp and see what we could see.  We took a bus to the central bus station, took Bus 25 for about a half an hour, and got dropped off. 

    Oddly, the parking lot was rather empty. Huh?  And then we saw the sign on the door.

        

    CLOSED?? The brochure said it would not close for season repairs until the 19th! It was just like that scene from Family Vacation where Chevy Chase drives the family cross-country in that wood-paneled station wagon to get to Wally World, only to find it closed.  Thankfully, James did not have a gun to take the woman sweeping the cafe area (also closed) as a hostage and demand she take us up the mountain.

    Instead, we hung out in the parking lot and took pictures and waited 20 minutes for a bus to come back.

     

     Even the view from the bottom was pretty nice!

     

                 

     

    But it all worked out for the best. It turns out Bus 25 is also the bus one must take to go to the Salzburg Zoo!