Our First "Real" Encounter

Our train was leaving at 10:30 so we were up and moving by 9, juices in hand by 9:45 on our way. It was about a 20 minute walk. 

As we arrived at the station we noticed a large amount of people sleeping in the grass out front and quickly realized these were the refugees/ migrants we had heard so much about.  The station was fairly crowded with people trying to make their way to Germany. Don't care which side of the fence your are on as far as what should be done, it is quite slobbering to see families sleeping on the floor with all of their possessions.  Everyone was quiet and seemed bored more than annoyed at their situation, but we were only in the station for about 10 minutes, so take that with a grain of salt.

Our train was packed with the final stop being Munich. A large percentage of our car, and I'm sure the train, were a part of the migrant population... young and old (some kids sitting two to a seat).

We arrived in Salzburg and as we stepped off the train the loud speaker announced that the train was staying in Salzburg. Germany was no longer allowing trains to cross the border. This lead to a lot of confusion on the train as many of those trying to get to Germany were unable to understand the language. Some weren't ever sure were the train was at that time. As we walked down the platform there were people everywhere making the migration to Germany. As we entered the station it was a controlled chaos. People were sleeping everywhere and the police (with more of a riot appearance than standard patrol clothes) were working to keep paths clear. Everyone involved seemed to be cooperative and working well with each other. Hard to understand how difficult it must be for the migrants/ refugees and law enforcement.

TIME OUT: I realize that with something as major as this event is we should be writing more about it, but we don't feel it's our place. Just because a platform exists for us to view our feelings, doesn't mean that we need to. Ok, back to us I guess?

We left the station rather quickly and headed to our hotel across the bridge from Old Town. Amazing how a 15-20 minute walk makes can change the whole vibe of a place. We went from looking at a real struggle to an incredible beautiful town set on a small river. We even said it was hard to believe how there wasn't some sort of an overflow from the station. 

We checked in quickly, used the Internet to try to gain some info on the situation and decided to take a walk. We pretty much covered every place we "needed" to visit in that afternoon. We walked down the main streets, took pictures of the river, visited churches/ catacombs, etc. It was awesome. It had the feeling of a town like Charleston. Beautiful and a manageable size with a lot of history for tourists. We could tell we be happy here.  On our way back to the hotel we bought tickets for a marionette play of The Sound of Music and made a reservation at Zum Fidelin Affen for dinner.

On the walk we started to worry about how we would get to Munich on Saturday. With the trains the way they were, there was no telling what we would run into. After a lot of emails with Dolph and Emma (thanks again guys) we decided we should hire a car to get us across the border and then take a train from a local station (we would get this sorted later).

It was then time for the marionette theatre. If you ever get the opportunity to see a marionette play, go. It was beyond entertaining and we constantly forgot how small the marionettes were as the play went on. The group would use a human actors every now and then to provide scale it was always a shock to see. There was also an older woman in the crowd that was getting annoyed at how much fun the crowd was having. I think she spent more time shaking her head in disgust that actually watching the play. 

(There was no flash photography in the theater but Asha was able to grab some snaps of the performance - video at the botto of the page)

We then headed to dinner and had an incredible meal. The Faithful Ape offers an incredible homey feeling and we finally tried some schnitzel.  I added a schnapps at the end of our meal for good measure and then it was off bed for an early start for the Eagle's Nest on Thursday morning. 

Arriving in Salzburg - snaps from September 16th, 2015 from Ashley Habeck on Vimeo.