Backpacking (Central/Eastern) Europe

Worded verbatim from my journal entry:

Salzburg- 12:00am

"Salzburg is a quaint and nice little town, save my 1st impressions were tarnished by a wrong way, one-way bus ride into the opposite end of the city, followed by a 1.5 mile walk back the other direction (with our heavy packs on!), and feeling dirty, disheveled, disgruntled, THEN not being able to find this damn little hostel which happened to be on top of a mountain, inside the woods, contained within a FORTRESS!"

Upon arriving to our hostel, located atop Monchberg ("the mountain") meant that either we had to climb some very long and steep stairs, or we had the option of taking the Monchberg lift.

After unpacking, changing and resting up a bit, Adam and I decided to explore a little bit of Salzburg.

From gasthofschorn.com:

"The Mozarts lived in 9 Getreidegasse from 1747 to 1773, and their son Wolfgang Amadeus was born there in 1756. Today, the home of the Mozart family is a museum where famous exhibits are displayed. Among other attractions, visitors to the museum can see the violin played by the world-famous musical genius as a child, his concert violin, his clavichord, a pianoforte, portraits, and letters of the Mozart family.

The Mozart family lived in the third floor of the house for a total of twenty-six years.

After walking around town for a little while, we found a Nordsee seafood place. All this trip, I've eaten nothing but sausages, potatoes, and sauerkrat, so I longed for a morsel of the sea.

August 21, 2008:

We awoke bright and early this morning, exchanged information and chatted with our fellow bunkmate, Kitty, a traveler whom happened to have her camera stolen while in Croatia, and had a breakfast of bread, jam and butter, while slapping the yellowjackets away from us and our food.

Shortly thereafter, we walked down Monchberg's stairs, through the cobblestoned streets and across the bridge to the other side of Salzburg. From there, we walked to Mirabell gardens and enjoyed the rows of manicured lawns and flora, then off to the Hofbanhof for our ride into Vienna.

Gemuse: kidney-- for some reason, I found this significant enough to write down in my journal. Maybe I should be worried...???

From Wikipedia:

"There are two versions of the winged stallion's birth: One is that they sprang from Medusa's neck as Perseus beheaded her, a "higher" birth, like the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus; Another says that they were born of the Earth as Medusa's blood spilled onto it, in which case Poseidon would not be their sire. A variation on this story holds that they were formed from the mingling of Medusa's blood and the sea foam, thus including Poseidon in their making.

Bellerophon caught and tamed Pegasus, and presented him to the Muses at Mount Parnassus. After he became the horse of the Muses, he was at the service of the poets."

Next stop: Vienna, home of the Vienna sausages (which, is an outright lie by the way... there is no such thing as vienna sausages in Vienna)