City Walkabout Tour June 9

Our unofficial "tour guide" in Salzburg was a guy we shared our room with, Wes, who had been in Salzburg studying for 10 weeks and was spending his last week just enjoying the place. He took us to his favorite places, and told us the history of Salzburg inasmuch as he could. We walked up about a million stairs to reach the top of the Cappucinburg (The cappucin mountian/hill) where the views of Salzburg were breathtaking. Then again, so were the stairs: steep and never-ending they went from the street/river level to the top of the mountain, and we were gasping for air by the end of it, calves and thighs trembling and on fire.But the view was worth the pain, and as we took a different set of stairs back down, you could really see how Salzburg had grown from the rocks outward. They built houses and such right into the cliff face, which we found out had caused many a collapse of the mountain sides over the centuries.
He took us to the cathedrals and to the cemetery for the wealthy families of Austria. Apparently, you can be removed from the cemetery if your family doesn't continue to pay your burial taxes! THe city of Salzburg did have some plots for the American troops who died defending Salzburg from the Nazis in WWII, including a memorial to them for their valour. From there we went up the mountain upon which the Fortress, the Festung, was built and the original home and residences of Salzburg princes and arch-bishops. It was never taken by force, apparently, and is an impressive building with a long history back into the Medieval times. We stopped at a beergarten called Stegiel where we tried apfelstrudel and watched the sun slowly sinking down over the city of Salzburg. It was a wonderful impromptu tour of the city, and probably more enjoyable than any pay-tour.