14/10/2006

14/10 (Sat)


I went to Salzburg with my friends today. Because I only wanted to spend one night there, we decided to separate. First I went to the Mirabelgarden and Schlos Mirabel. I heard that they are famous because one scene of the movie “the sound of music” was shot there. But when I got there, actually nothing special, it’s just a very beautiful garden with fountain, flowers, trees, some Barock statues, and a labyrinth made by tree like “Horry Porter”. Moreover, I went to the Barock museum in the garden. It costed you 3 Euro, but in fact, it was really small. I only spend ten minutes there. Then I went to Mozart wohnhaus and Mozart geburtshaus. Here in Salzburg, there are two main products, one is the sound of music, and the other is Mozart. Everything connects to these two things, it means business. To be honest, they do a very good travel tour in these two places, but I think they sell too much Mozart thing and make me sick. Every shop you can see Mozartkugel which is one kind of chocolate covered with the portrait of Mozart and the CD of the sound of music. It’s enough. There are definite another fascinate attraction in Salzburg. They really have. In the afternoon, I went to Hohensalzburg fortress and Hellbrunn which is a palace with trick water fountain. I really like these two places, especially Hellbrunn palace. In Hellbrunn, you can see former owner of the palace. He wanted to trick the guests, designing a lot of water trap and delicate machine all powered by water. It was build 4 hundred years before, while they don’t have electricity at that time. Anyway, this is the attraction I like most. The other is Hohensalzburg, a biggest fortress in the Europe, build and maintained by several Salzburg bishops. The oral guide said Salzburg means salty castle in the past. Salzburg produced salt in the past, which is the most valuable product in the past, especially for the places not along to coast. So every emperor wanted to conquer this place. Thus the bishop of Salzburg which is also rich and powerful by the salt, enlarged the fortress time over time to defeat the enemies until it had been conquered by Bavarian Duke. However, when I listened to the guide, I wondered who actually build this fortress, not bishop, not enemy, not conqueror, but so many miserable peasants. They built the fortress, mining salt, and served to bishop; make wealthier the bishop but more miserable life, which means more wealth, more enemies coming, and more fortresses to build and more wars to fight. What a miserable cycle it is. No wonder there are such more revolution between hierarchy, now I can totally understand.