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182 days ago
The Mirabelle Gardens at the Mirabelle Palace are not the most ornate or beautiful gardens that we've seen on our trip to Austria, however, the palace is significant in the history of Salzburg. It was built by Wolf Deitrich von Reitenau for his mistress, Solomae, whom he loved dearly. von Reitenau was a powerful man whose fortune was made with the salt mines that we visited Wednesday. The Gardens are still beautiful although simple, and we worth visiting. Several areas in the Mirabelle Gardens were used in the filming of The Sound Of Music movie. There is an upper garden with 13 statues of dwarves. No one is certain as to the significance of the statues, but they are cute anyway. Two of the students who were on the Study Abroad with us last year, Sylvia Timothy and Meredith Morris joined us at the Gardens as well as our friend Christian Weisbacher who is from a little town on the border of Germany and Austria but attended and graduated from SUU. We had a good time seeing ...
182 days ago
On Wednesday we all went to Bad Durrenberg to the Salt Mines. Sound boring? It wasn't! The salt mine tour is lots of fun. We took a bus from the train station and drove high into the Austrian Alps, some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. When we got inside the entrance we were given white pants and a white shirt to put on over our clothing to keep our clothes from being damaged. Then we were led to a little train of rails where we rode about 1/2 mile into the mine. Once we stopped we got off the rails and walked probably another 1/4 mile to a little theatre where there was a short presentation on how the salt mines came to be. It was originally discovered by the Celts that had settled in that area around 800 B.C. The salt trade was very important to the area and salt was used as money for hundreds of years. There were several levels to the mine and we got from one of the upper levels to a lower level by using a hardwood slide about 30 yards long. It was a steep ...
184 days ago
Getting to Mauthausen from Salzburg is quite an ordeal. It's an hour and a half train ride from Salzburg to Linz where we change trains to continue on to the very small little village of Mauthausen. Then we either take a taxi or walk to the camp. The taxi is better because the walk is a long, steep uphill climb which is brutal in hot weather as last year's group can attest. But our journey doesn't seem too bad when it is compared to how the inmates of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp must have felt on their journey to the Camp. For some it was the last journey of their lives. We arrived at the stark stone camp at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday. The first thing we saw was a field where the Russian captives were kept. The camp is in a beautiful area that makes it hard to imagine the ugliness that was going on behind the stone walls. Then we moved toward the stairs, or the Todestiege (stairs of death), on which inmates were forced to carry huge blocks of granite on their backs ...
186 days ago
Today was hot and humid again and we also had two girls whose allergies were acting up and making them miserable. Katrina had a scratchy throat and Sara had itchy eyes. But they were real troopers and came along and participated in day's activities anyway. Because of the heat and the girls not feeling well we cut today's tour of Salzburg a little short. The first stop was on one of the prettiest streets in Salzburg, the Getreidegasse. On this street is the house where Mozart was born, the Mozarts Geburtshaus, and has beautifully ornate hanging signs, a practice that got it's start in medieval times. Jim also showed the students around other parts of the city and we visited a couple of small little street markets that were fun to poke around in. One of the little markets included a very large cheese and fresh meat vendor. There were lots of different types of cheeses and meats and with the hot weather the smells were interesting to say the least. We shared a huge ...
187 days ago
We got to Salzburg on Saturday and it's great to be here where it is so gorgeous. It is also nice to have wifi at the hotel where we are so that I can update this blog and have been able to add the pictures because the blog is in English now. Woohooo! Because of the price of the train fare to Prague, we didn't go. To kind of make it up to the kids, we took them to Bratislava which is in Slovakia. Actually, only the girls went. It's only an hour train ride from Vienna and the ticket was only 14 Euros which was a great deal. We went on Thursday because the students were out of class for Pfingsten or in English, the Day of Pentacost. The train was crowded on the way to Bratislava. I guess lots of families had the same idea as us about getting out of the city on the holiday. The Austrians and Germans really celebrate their holidays. Very few stores and restaurants are open. It's like a Sunday with almost everything closed up. Bratislava was under communist rule for ...
