Nature is absolutely amazing. It was an arduous walk up, but the Ice Caves were incredible and completely worth it! Really glad we decided to stay on in Salzburg for 2 nights, instead of 1 as we had originally planned!
So we started off our day with a quick breakfast and rushing to the station to catch the 0718 train to Salzburg. Like seriously RUNNING! Next train was only at 0918 so there was no way we could afford to lose 2 hours just like that. When we stepped out of the hostel, we were shocked to see the beauty we were surrounded by! GREEN hills everywhere! Unfortunately in our rush, we couldn't stop to breathe in the fresh mountain air or experience the feeling of living right in the middle of nature. (No wonder the hostel had so many hiking activities! They were quite surprised that we weren't gonna do anything in Bad Gastein heh. Guess this is a place to return to in the future.)
Anyway, we thankfully caught the train and relaxed after all that running (station's only 5 minutes away, but we left the hostel with 7 minutes to catch the train so it was VERY close :P). On the nearly 2-hour journey to Salzburg, we passed through those lovely green hills and I managed to get a photo.
The hills are certainly alive!
We reached Salzburg around 9am and took the funicular up to our first stop - Festung Hohensalzburg (Hohensalzburg Fortress). Lovely brick architecture, similar to Buda Castle from two days ago. I always thought Fortresses were smaller than Forts, but after comparing Singapore's Fort Canning to this, I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. HUGE place with lots of hidden corridors and spiral stairways!
Going up the tower
On our way up, at one of the landings, we saw a fantastic panorama of the city.
Salzburg panorama
Really love European architecture. From up there we could see the river meandering through the city, and the multitudes of hills surrounding Salzburg. Lovely! After taking turns to pose with the background, we heard a bunch of guys near us. Indian dudes! Punjabis from London actually. And Krups recognized them from yesterday ;) no idea where and when she saw them, coz Neela and I definitely didn't remember! hehe. Anyway, to prove that Indians are EVERYWHERE, we took a group photo :P
Balle Balle!
I'm sure at least one of them was sweet on our krupee heehee :D After all that, we went up to get our Audio Guides and started the tour of the fortress. It's actually not just a fortress, but a castle! That explained the similarity to Buda Castle. (What's the difference between a fortress and a castle anyway? To be found out.) It's over 900 years old, and usual history heh. There were lots of artifacts and the whole castle was kinda like a museum. There was also a Marionette Museum! We were really keen to see this after the yodelling marionettes song in Sound of Music! Unfortunately couldn't get good photos from there due to bad lighting. Also, the puppets weren't THAT great :P Not cute, but looked a little scary like they could've been in one of those horror movies where dolls come alive. Ok I should not think about that now, right before sleeping!
On our way back, I'd planned it such that we walk down (approx. 30min) and pass by Nonnberg Abbey, which was the abbey in the Sound of Music! But the websites said that the abbey was closed to the public, and we could only stand outside the gate to take pictures. The same gate that the kids came to, to ask for Maria in the movie. But seeing just that little wasn't worth the time needed to go there, and we didn't want to be late for the Ice Caves tour later, so skipped it and took the funicular back down instead!
The funicular took us to the city centre, Kapitelplatz. And here were saw a huge Fan Zone for Euro 2008!!
Salzburg Fan Zone!
Again we got really excited about watching the match in Zurich in one of these! Huge screens and enough place for huge crowds! Can't wait for that mad atmosphere :D
To get to the Ice Caves, we decided to take a guided tour, coz it's actually in a different town. So we crossed the river to get back to Mirabelplatz. On the way there, we saw the Horse Fountain which was also featured in Sound of Music's Do-Re-Mi! Unfortunately there was renovation going on there (what's new!) so didn't stop for photos. Then we had lunch and went to the office to collect our tickets. I'd found out from the website that the tickets to and fro were 34 Euros each, which at about $70 was decent I guess. But turns out, the transport there was an additional 19 Euros, so the total price was nearly $120 each :( I feel so awful (sorry again guys) for misinterpreting the ticketing prices. But it was too late to go there on our own. We had to take a train (only limited timings) to the town Werfen, and then take a bus up to the coach stand, and then climb all the way up to the caves. Would've taken over 2 hours just to get up there, and we didn't have that kind of time. So decided to stick to the group tour and pay more than the intended budget.
I was kinda irritated with myself the whole way up, so just sat separately and looked at the gorgeous view. We started the journey around 1pm, and around 1.30, we saw Festung Hohenwerfen (yup, the castle in Werfen). The tour guide told us this was the shooting location of the movie, Where Eagle's Dare (Clint Eastwood's the hero)! And he said we'd be stopping there on the way back so we could take pictures then. The castle stood aloof and majestic, the only sign of civilization amidst all the surrounding peaks. Couldn't take good photos in the moving bus but got some nice shots on the way back.
Finally reached the maximum we could go on wheels, and had to go on foot for the rest of the distance up. It was a LONG TREACHEROUS walk up the mountain. And with my fear of slopes after the skiing incident, I was even slower than my usual slow speed. And very very out of breath. Neela walked up super fast (exercise freak that she is) but luckily krups maintained my speed and we slowly drudged up.
The walk up the super steep slopes
God even thinking about it makes me tired! After the whole group reached (yes we were the last, but thankfully we didn't make them wait too long coz everyone was happily taking photos), the guide told us that it wasn't over! Inside the cooold ice caves, we still had to walk up 1400 steps up and the same 1400 steps back down!!! OMG. Luckily, we were sweating so much after the climb that the coldness at that time was quite welcome, just that, 1400 steps! But I remember friends telling me that the Ice Caves was the most memorable part of their trip here, so I was really looking forward to seeing the formations!
The Werfen Ice Caves are called Eisriesenwelt (German for World of the Ice Giants) and are basically a labyrinth of limestone ice caves. We were told that the temperature was gonna be about 0 deg C and one in every 3-4 people were given lamps to guide us through the darkness. The guide led the way in, and thankfully we weren't greeted by the blast of cold air that I was expecting. Since the air was still, the freezing temperature didn't actually feel so bad!
Atmosphere was dark and slightly dank and the initial walk up was quite tiring. But soon the formations came into view. And took our breath away! The guide took his lamp and crossed over to the bigger ones for us to take photos. Seriously. Amazing. Nature is incredible.
One of the larger "Polar Bear" formations
It was totally worth it! The higher we went, the more of these we saw, and always a unique formation. After about 45 minutes of climbing up, we started the journey back down, but this wasn't so bad of course. At the end of it all, we felt victorious! And HIGH!! (hehe.)
V for Victory!
Now we could take more photos since we weren't catching our breath every few minutes. The fog had also descended now as it was around 6pm, making the whole experience even more mystical.
Krups wanted to shoot a horror movie here!
The view was spectacular, but sometimes obscured by the mist. Finally reached the coach and left the place. As promised, the bus stopped at Werfen Castle for photo-taking.
Us and Festung Hohenwerfen
The descending fog made the castle look even mightier. Can you imagine living in such a place! It's so spooky. Then we got back in and made our way down to Salzburg, super high after the trip. (It's a must-see, so people who go to Salzburg, please don't miss this opportunity!)
Got Gyros for our quick dinner at Mirabelplatz and took the 1904 train to our Bad Gastein hostel. After showering in that weirdo bathroom, we've packed up and are now ready to sleep! Our roommates are all sitting outside and socializing with one another. They all seem to be around our age and all English-speaking. I think we're being anti-social. But it's our last day here anyway, so we might as well rest for our journey tomorrow. We're off to Innsbruck! Goodnight.
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