Day 13: Salzburg, Austria

Today was our last day in Germany and also a free day! The whole group decided to take the train 3 hours to Salzburg, Austria. It’s an absolutely gorgeous city located just past the Germany-Austria border. It was an hour train ride to Munich, then a transfer to a 2 hour train headed for Salzburg. We arrived in the city and began our walk to the main city center, seeing many beautiful sights all around. A cool thing I learned jut from walking through the city was that cars wait for pedestrians! This is the same in America, but in Germany this is not a law. One that we spotted immediately was the Festung (“fortress”) Hohensalzburg, which was a castle on a hill overlooking the entire city. We knew immediately that’s something we wanted to visit!

We reached the city center and looked at all the beautiful sites around there, including a towering fountain. There were so many beautiful buildings, and it seemed like they just kept going. There was so much to see, and I pictured lots below. Another really cool thing was a golden globe! We saw this on our way up to an adorable and cozy restaurant, which was on a hill, so we had a wonderful view of the city from the restaurant! I had a really yummy soup, which was beef broth and a cheese dumpling.

After lunch, we headed to the lift that would take us up to the Festung Hohensalzburg. We were immediately met with such an incredible view of the entire city of Salzburg. We took many pictures, then went on to explore around the fortress. It seemed almost like a little town whenever you were up in it! One thing I appreciate a lot is European architecture, and it was so cool to see it on this castle. We also found a fun surprise inside, which was a little puppet museum! They had so many cool displays.

Just when we thought we had seen everything, we went around to the back of the fortress to see an incredible view of the Alps. We got a really foggy day on view in Oberammergau, but these were extremely clear and absolutely breathtaking. I genuinely couldn’t believe they were real! After gawking at the incredible Alps for what seemed like hours, and taking lots of photos, we decided it was time to explore more down in the city. We took the lift back down and shopped at the stalls at the bottom of the hill of the fortress. I found some fun souvenirs, then we all branched off to do some more shopping. We went in so many unique stores, one being a really cool watch store! We also found out that Austria is the home of RedBull, and they had a huge store for it!

Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the station to catch our train back to Munich. The 2 hours passed by much quicker on the way back than on the way there, and before we knew it, we were back in Augsburg. It was a bittersweet end to the day, as we made such wonderful memories from our trip, but they were also going to be some of our last.