Salzburg #3 Hiding in the towers of Salzburg

Snowblinded and cold, our shoes all wet and our hair half frozen, we arrived back our hostel where we were in need of a warm, long shower. The drop of temperature below, in the world as we knew it, was a lot higher, turning the snow we left above into icy rain drops below. The mountains immediately hid themselves behind the clouds again but now I knew their secret: winterwonderland was in constant progress behind these clouds. After warming up and happily sharing our pictures, we decided daylight didn’t allow us for another long journey. The sky turned dark blue at 6 as we left our hostel, phones in our pocket and our intuition to reach the river, on sharp. But that sadly didn’t save us, as it turned out we only walked further away from the glacier drops of Salzach. Sometimes it is okay to admit you are a loser and just use the cheating tools phones provide, of which Maps. And we headed back on track, still following the same wide street with pastel buildings lighting up the grey streets and thick clouds. The rain still softly drizzled onto our faces, warm with excitement. And finally a sense of green drew our attention. And it was, indeed, the Salzach in its full glory. Confident but peaceful it split the city in half with its crystal cold water and an emerald shine. For some unidentified reason I always want to touch water, and as I held my finger tops in, I quickly drew them back to find them beating red with the intense cold paralyzing my nerves. Then I always have to try to make some flat rocks hop over the water, which always sadly ended with 1 big dull splash only. The hills all picked a different shade of autumn, as some coloured yellow whereas others didn’t yet feel ready to let go of the intense green the rays of sunshine provided before.

The buildings rolling upwards these hills, partly covered by the strange thing fog created by the drizzle, were the absolute pearls of this part of the city. All of them were huge and most of them looked as if they were made out of marble, with their somewhat expensive look. They had many little windows, all rounded off by some detailed notches around the glass. All of them had big flat, black roofs that made me think of Paris a little, but what made it totally different was the unbelievable amount of towers gathering so closely. Pointy, slim church towers, sphere, green roofs and at least a few little castle-alike towers made of an older kind of stone. And totally on top of this happy, Lego-alike gathering, stood the obvious king: Hohensalzburg. This castle states from the 15th century and funny enough it wasn’t only there to house and protect the rich: In times of war, each and every citizen could find a safe haven here. To get there one had to walk a rather long and steep path upwards, or take the modern easy road by now; the cable car. Yet, as our night was young and the rain didn’t hurt us, we decided to have ourselves a challenge. The first actual steps upwards were already annoyingly exhausting, but they proved to be worthy rather quick. Every step upwards provided a better view on the colourful towers we left behind. The river turned greener, the towers shrunk, the hills seemed flatter and the sea of black and white roof tops, flowed wider. Rather quickly the drizzle started to transform into a decent cold shower, but luckily the trees protected us from most as we crawled away under our hoodies. Cold we weren’t, as the muddy road upwards constantly ascended until a point where you can properly feel your ass. The view was blocked as we found ourselves in constant oasis of green, that created the invincible sense of earth; dirt and plants.

Sometimes this opened up and suddenly showed one of the many buildings you could spot from below, one a bit more isolated from the others. Usually they were almost creepily quiet houses with no sense of life at all. Now the unexpected, already rare appearance of buildings really ended as the dirt road turned into an asphalt road, still hidden from the world by bush. And from there on we started an incredible steep hike upwards, which never seemed to end. Yet we couldn’t follow up with how high we actually went because thick brick walls surrounded us. And suddenly I felt like a prisoner walking the endless walk of shame to some doomed, unknown faith. But the walk did end, only for a new climb to start. This climb was surrounded my massive white walls, decorated with little dark windows. Strangely enough, a soft orange light shone trough the pitchblack windows. As if someone was there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if suddenly some pale face with black eyes stared upon us from the window. After all, we weren’t even supposed to still be here, officially it had been past closing time. Naturally, we couldn’t accept having climbed all the way just to hear that, so we decided to see how far the road would allow us. And we really planned to turn back when at the end of this final hill, a very solid black porch blocked the way. We really didn’t want to push our luck, so instead; we pushed against the porch. And believe it or not, as if we entered Hogwarts, with a massive screech, the porch opened. A small pathway appeared, built up by brick steps that was extremely slippery, and carefully we entered as it made us cross a tiny iron bridge, which turned out to be crossing the cable cars that would normally arrive here. Now it looked like nothing but an abandoned, creepy roller coaster that could slip any second. For some reason, this castle felt haunted. That didn’t exactly improve by the Latin words above yet another stone gate in front of us, baptized ‘gate to Hell’. But at the same time, I was completely addicted to these kind of places with a haunted sense to them, they made me feel as if anything was possible and as if I had entered a different era in a different world, far away from all we knew. a phantasy world, where knights still ran around and of course some harry potter- alike creatures hid in, on, or behind the walls.

We still entered the dark tunnel, supposed to lead to hell. Ironically, straight after this rather dark tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel appeared. And so we ended up at a massive, hobbly square, still surrounded by the thick white wall and its dark windows. I couldn’t help finding it terrifying that certain windows were illuminating whereas others were a quiet, dark pitch. Except for the ticking and streaming sounds of the rain, nothing was happening here. But my phantasy allowed me to go back in time and little and see everyone. The workers, the horses, the royalties, and I smiled. Despite knowing how daft and dangerous these times had been, how unequal and insane, part of me sometimes wished to experience these rather simple, authentic ways of living. We now really couldn’t go any further without keys and therefore enjoyed the last part of our quick, sneaky, medieval journey; its peeking walls. A thick grey coloured the city and drew a mystically fitting sense of silence over Salzburg. The only movements below us where the soft lights of cars and bikes, the only colours were the red roof tops, and the green trees surrounding the city. The sense of peace and stillness was an even stranger experience than ever, on top of a city.

As we slowly turned soaking wet with the everlasting rain, yet unable to stop staring at the little towers, windows, and lights below us, in the still world, my heart jumped. A sound so loud it went straight trough my chest to alarm goosebumps and paralyze me for a few seconds, broke the silence. But the stranger, almost eery thing was the sound itself. It was an organ, and it was so loud and pure that it must have been playing at the very second we stared at each other, thus far unable to smile about it. as if it wasn’t enough, we realized a little wooden hatch had opened and the sound did indeed come from not even 50 meters away. It played a little hymn, and before we could even speak about it, the hatch closed again and the silence returned. The first joke appeared. ‘was this a sign that the castle is really closing’? But as funny as we tried to make it, the dark walk back from the castle went a whole lot faster and without all the looking around, as we all were a little intimidated by this massive empty castle where we didn’t feel too welcome.

- It's an amazing life