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Just a follow-up note on Salzburg:

Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart. This happens to be the 250th anniversary of Mozart and his picture is everywhere. In fact the most famous candy of this area, Mozartkugel, is named after him. We also learned that many towns have Mozart houses; if he spent the night, it was named after him, if he stayed for an hour, it was named after him. But Salzburg has the rights to his birthplace.

Salzburg also has many of the scenes of the Sound of Music. We walked right through the scene where they sing “Do, Re, Mi”. We drove by the church where the wedding was performed. Too bad it was foggy so we couldn’t see the Alps in the distance.


We also drove by the town of Hitler’s birth. There are two towns on opposite banks of the Inn River. The Inn River is the border of Austria and Germany. The town of his birth, Braunau, doesn’t claim or want the infamy from him. They say the other town, across the river and in Germany, is where Hitler was born. Of course the other town says, “No he was born over there.” They mutually decided to have his birthplace be the middle of the bridge so that neither town nor country had to claim his birthplace!

We arrived in Melk, Austria early this morning. Melk has always been an important cultural and spiritual center for Austria.
The Emperor Leopold I made the dominant castle which overlooks the Danube Valley his residence. After him, his successors filled it with valuable treasures and relics. In 1089, it was donated to the Benedictine monks and since then the monks have lived and worked here. It is now called the Melk Abbey and is the most important structure, religious and otherwise, in the town of Melk. It is also a school now and about 900 students also study here.

It is a very interesting church. It is done in the Baroque style and is filled with gold and glitter. The cathedral is beautiful with its gold and paintings. There is a library which holds over 100,000 volumes of important books, mostly written in Latin.

We were also lucky to hear a beautiful, and too short, organ recital. We were facing the altar and the organ’s pipes were behind us. He played for about 10 minutes and finished with a grand finale. We had been told it would be a 20 minute concert and only 10 minutes had passed so we just sat there. We weren’t sure what to do or if he was finished. Finally, I think I started clapping and as we turned to see him, he was standing up there. He was probably wondering who he was playing for as we were so quiet when he was done. I am glad that most of us stood up, clapping and turned around looking at him, so that he would know that we appreciated his beautiful music.

After lunch, we set sail again, cruising down the Danube to Vienna. This stretch of river had many beautiful little towns and castles along its banks. They opened up the “sun deck” on top of the boat for people to watch from. On the first couple of days it was closed because of the many low bridges. As we went along, the narrator came on the speaker system and asked everyone on the sun deck to have a seat and stay there as we passed under a low bridge!

The wheelhouse, which is on top of the sun deck, would lower using a hydraulic system like an elevator. We all sat there and watched the boat pass under the bridge with about six feet to spare. There was crew up there to ensure that everyone stayed seated. They were standing, however, and just stooped a little bit to get under the bridge!

We had a nice dinner and arrived at our port in Vienna in the evening. Tomorrow will be another busy day. We have a city tour in the morning, then a palace tour in the afternoon, and a trip to the Christmas markets in the evening.
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