Every year in Salzburg they hold the Salzburg Festival. This is the culmination of many of the best musicians, almost exclusively classic, from around the world, and the standard, array and variety of music is known to make the best music festival in the world. Anything that you see at the Salzburg festival is simply of the highest and most superb quality.
Unfortunately the tickets for all the shows were sold out (testament to its popularity), and we had to settle for tickets to the final rehearsal of a Mozart and Haydn concert in the Mozarteum. I was simply glad to be going to see anything! We were running a little late though, and had to fly through the gardens and town on the way to the Mozarteum. It is a seriously impressive buidling, but we barely had time to take in all the intricate and fantastic gold cornicing and plasterwork, and the huge chandelliers, we had to grab our seats!
To cut a long story short the concert was simply out of this world. Never have i seen either Haydn or Mozart performed so perfectly, stylistically and musically. It blew me away, the soloist was also good, but the group was even better. It was an incredible concert, and that was only the practice!
We hung around in Salzburg, before meeting Michi's sister and brother for a coffee, after having met up with them also earlier in the day, at a friends house, also for coffee (yes i must say i have turned into a coffee junkie!). While we were there though i thought i would look at buying a pair of lederhosen (the traditional pants of Austria - as in the ones you always see people wearing with a beer and hat). Salzburg is like meccha for lederhosen so we went to the finest shop in town. We walked in, and asked for a pair fo me, the assistant turned up his nose at me, and handed me the pair, i looked at the price tag, 1300 euros. Thats like 2800 bucks at home. I thought i could give that a miss, i wanted these heaps, but not that much. But i was relieved when we found a store down the road that discounted them, which meant they were seriously cheaper, more to my taste. And they were really beautiful deer skin ones, i did very very well.
We went back to the house and had a fantastic day of swimming, and talking and going for a nice walk. It was such a calm peaceful place. The other families that were staying there (there were about 5 families) were very nice, and i got to chat to them a lot about various things, and they were particularly interesting in my lederhosen. I managed to ask a lot about the culture and the region and so, i love to learn new things like that. And then that night we watched the opening ceremony for the olympics, go aussie go!