After our “Sound of Music” Tour, we caught public bus #25 to Hellbrunn Palace to take the trick water fountain tour. We quickly discovered that it was trick as in “a cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone” and not a trick as in “an allusion.” No magic here. Just a prince archbishop’s mean-spirited toys.
Hellbrunn was finished in 1619 and belonged to
prince-archbishop Markus Sittikus von Hohenems.
It was a summer “day home.” In
other words, people came there during the day to have fun and then went back to
their homes in Salzburg to sleep. I
can’t imagine having a house without a bedroom, but this guy had a palace
without one. It has a natural spring
running through it which lead to the creation of the aforementioned water
fountains.
The first stop is an outdoor stone table where the
archbishop hosted dinners. Unbeknownst
to his guests, that hole in the top of every chair held a water spout (except
for the archbishop’s, of course) that would at some point be turned on and you
would spend the rest of the evening with a wet posterior. I wasn’t expecting our tour guide to ask
people to actually sit at the table, but she did. Apparently, some people hadn’t read a
description of this place before coming because there were volunteers.
From there we saw a couple of really nice outdoor fountains
before entering a room attached to the main house with a fountain of
Neptune. It was a fancy room with a lot
of paintings and molding work. Also, one
fountain was designed to fill up with water which caused it to stick out its
tongue at you. In a side room was a
fountain that had dragons swimming around.
When you left the fountain room, you were, of course, sprayed with
water. Once I got outside and noticed
the deer sculptures on the outside wall had water shooting from their noses,
mouths, and antlers, I put my raincoat on for the duration of the tour.
We followed a stream that was used to power wooden figurines
in shadow boxes and got to a large water-powered musical theatre (built in
1750). There were hundreds of wooden
figurines that moved and it even powered an organ that played music. It was really cool. Then, all the people who hadn’t noticed the
water jets on the stairs that were pointing right at them (luckily, I noticed),
were sprayed with streams of water.
The last room holds a fountain that when turned on moves a
metal crown up and down in. Apparently
it is meant to symbolize the rise and fall of power. At any rate, exiting was accompanied by water
flowing over the sidewalk in arcs and water jets shooting straight at you at
random. I was hit in the leg, but
luckily it wasn’t life threatening.
From there, we walked around the gardens and toured the
house, which features some amazingly painted rooms. We also walked up a giant hill to go to the Monatschlossl
(little month-palace). It was originally
built because a visitor to Hellbrunn felt that having a nice building on the hill
to look at would really improve the view.
So, one was built by the time the visitor returned a month later. Now it houses an ethnographic museum and has
a great view of Hellbrunn and Salzburg Fortress. We then climbed back down and caught the bus
back to Salzburg. 
My dad and I hopped off the bus a little early in order to
take a nice picture of the fortress. This
is also when we visited Nonberg Abbey and the Mozart Bridge that I talked about
in “The Sound of Music” post.
The next day we caught the train back to Vienna and then the
plane back to Sofia. We ate pizza again
at the restaurant near my house, but other than that, didn’t do anything too
exciting. The next day was my parents’
last day and we decided to see a little of Bulgaria outside of Sofia (which is
actually the best part of Bulgaria, in my opinion).
We weren’t really up for driving ourselves, so we found a tour
company that would take us to Rila Monastery and Boyana Church . Simeon, our guide and driver, picked us up
from the city centre and we were off. I
felt kind of bad because we were all
really tired so we didn’t talk to him very much and spent a lot of the time in
the car napping.
I went to Rila on my orientation trip when I moved here so
you can read about it in more detail here. The short version is: it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has played a vital role in protecting
Bulgaria’s history and culture. It is covered, inside and out, with amazing
paintings. It also has a museum with really,
really old church things including Rafail's Cross, an incredible wooden cross
featuring over 650 figures showing 104 religious scenes that took the monk 12
years to finish.
We ate lunch at a restaurant outside the monastery. We all had shopska salad and my parents tried
koufteta (I eat koufteta all the time, so I wasn’t interested). We then headed off to Boyana Church. Boyana is also a World Heritage site and was
started in the 10th or 11th century. The main part of the church dates from the 13th
century. The main draw of the church,
which has no windows and a tiny little door, are the many paintings inside from
1259. These paintings actually cover
older layers. The paintings are
well-preserved and there is even an air conditioning system that keeps the
interior climate-controlled.
After we finished, Simeon dropped us off at home and we
spent the rest of the night eating left- overs and watching TV. The next morning, at 5:30 am, I walked my parents to the front gate so they
could catch a cab to the airport. I was
then mauled by puppies on my way back to my house. There are worse things than a puppy mob.
