An Afternoon in Salzburg, Austria | Notes from the Archive
the sixth new-to-me country from my 2012 inter-railing trip!
*SHARED TO THE BLOG IN DECEMBER 2025.
ARCHIVE / aar•kive / (noun): a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
Welcome to a new Notes from the Archive post, a series in which I am sharing some of my old & well documented travel notes to the blog. I’ve been keeping detailed notes and journals from my travels abroad long before I ever started sharing that content to this little corner of the internet. For some reason, it only dawned on me recently that, although not as thorough as my note-taking and journaling of today, this information could a. be useful to someone out there planning a trip, b. offer a glimpse into my travel days of yore, or c. just be fun for me to relive briefly under the pretense of being useful — so I figured why not share them here!
If you have stumbled across this post on a deep-dive through the blog archives, hello! I have done my darndest to make sure every piece of information shared here is just as relevant today as it was the day it was scrawled in my journal. I would also like to take a moment here to apologise in advance for any poor-quality photographs. You have been warned.
Today’s Notes from the Archive post — An Afternoon in Salzburg, Austria — covers everything myself and my then-boyfriend got up to during our 2012 inter-railing trip. Salzburg was the ninth official city of the trip, in the sixth new-to-me country(!), and, although we were only in town for a speedy afternoon daytrip from nearby Munich, we both enjoyed the city. It seemed quite sleepy and peaceful, but charming.
Listed below is all the useful information I could garner from my trusty old journal, divided into the following categories for ease: getting there / where we ate / and where we touristed.
Enjoy, friends!
getting there
Here’s how we made the journey into Salzburg:
from Munich central station, München Hauptbahnhof, we took the train directly to Salzburg central station, Salzburg Hauptbahnhof. The journey time between the two cities was around 1-hour 40-minutes, and the scenery out the window the entire time was gorgeous: Alp-y, rolling green hills, large pointy mountains, etc.
from Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, we strolled an easy 10-minutes into the city.
DISCLAIMER: if you’ve been reading all of my inter-railing posts and counting along with me, we did not use our inter-railing tickets to make this journey, but instead bought return tickets at München Hauptbahnhof! At this stage in our trip, we only had one more day of train travel to avail of on our tickets, and we were saving it for an epic journey we planned to take to/from Paris, which would’ve cost a lot more than this journey!
where we ate
Okay, so technically we didn’t stop anywhere official to eat, but you better believe I devoured a handful of Mozartkugel chocolates! If you’re unsure what they are, allow me: they’re small, round morsels of joy, consisting of pistachio, marzipan, and nougat that is covered with dark chocolate. And they’re from Salzburg — so I’m pretty sure that counts as a traditional meal?
where we touristed
Walk of the Century, Salzburg Edition // unfortunately, we couldn’t find any free walking tours around Salzburg — so we were back on our own, doing the self-guided thing and figuring it out as we went. Starting and ending at Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, here’s everywhere we hit on our walk around the city, which is roughly 4.8-kilometres long:
Schloss Mirabell // aka: Mirabelle Palace and Garden, where we wandered around the gardens for a bit, enjoying the pretty flowers. Fun fact:
Marko-Feingold-Steg // the bridge we took to cross the river into Salzburg Old Town, also coincidentally a very cute and adorable love lock bridge.
Getreidegasse // the most famous shopping street in the city. All of the shops had a lovely old-fashioned and quaint feel to them, with cute old style signposts etc.
Franziskanerkirche // aka: the Franciscan Church.
Salzburger Dom // aka: Salzburg Cathedral, which was surprisingly ginormous, considering how unobtrusive Salzburg city as a whole is.
Fortress Hohensalzburg // this was intended to be our next stop — but we actually decided against it in the end. Basically: the fortress is the city’s most famous attraction, sitting atop a tall steep hill, looking very striking and majestic. However, we felt it was overpriced and therefore didn’t go up; opting instead to use our money to buy some Mozartkugel chocolates.
Mozartplatz // a square with a big statue of the main man himself, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Universitatsplatz // another fancy looking square, except this one had a bustling market scene.
Mozarts Geburtshaus // aka: Mozart’s Birthplace. I must confess, we were really disappointed with the people of Salzburg when we saw the bottom floor of the prodigy’s house had been converted into a Spar, but c’est la vie, I suppose.
And there we have it: An Afternoon in Salzburg, Austria! I hope you enjoyed this short-yet-sweet addition to my Notes from the Archive series. I’ll be back soon with the last stop from my inter-railing trip: Paris!
Until then,
Vicki xo
*Date of trip: 4th June, 2012*
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