July is not the ideal time to visit Europe: it’s hot and crowded, but a wedding party in Salzburg in mid July is how we arrange our travel. Scott meets Jacob fishing. Of course. He is one of the few who catch decent fish from the shore in Wellington, so impresses Scott.  In the time honoured way of travel romance, Jacob and his New Zealand partner Bec meet somewhere between Austria and NZ, and here he is.  We miss their New Zealand wedding 18 months ago, so can’t miss the Austrian follow up – that would be rude.  We aren’t the only ones flying in.  We meet ex pat Kiwis coming in from South Sudan (working for the UN Food Programme) Myanmar (teaching in an international school), Zurich (banking), Berlin (IT and marketing) and yes, Wellington. Jacob and most of the local men wear lederhosen, the traditional leather pants you never need to wash.  Bec and the women wear dirndls and the ones new to the traditional dress tell us they struggle to breathe.  Impressively, Jacob’s mother Kristina wears the same dirndl she’s had for over 30 years.

Salzburg is a glorious city, calm and laid back, with a fast flowing river separating the old and new town. To be fair, the new town is pretty old.  We get to hang out not just with Jacob’s welcoming family and friends, but as luck would have it an English friend, Anne, whom I first met on a felucca trip down the Nile in 1982, is in Salzburg with her husband visiting their son and his Austrian partner. 

So it is a week of get togethers, dinners, meeting old and making new friends, celebrations and a bit of sightseeing. Because it’s Salzburg we take a trip down the salt mines – a better choice than if we were in Russia, as we get to come out again. The tour takes through 2600 years of salt mining, from the Middle Ages to the Celtic miners of the Iron Age. Initially there’s  no sense of how deep we descend, as we ride a mine train several hundred metres into the mountain. After this, we walk through the tunnels and it becomes more apparent how deep underground we are. Twice we literally slide down miners’ slides, which is good fun for us but probably not so much if you have a day’s hard grind ahead of you.

The tour unfolds with AV displays, pieces of equipment, and dioramas of mining activity over the centuries. The deepest point we reach is 260 metres where the pressure of the rock lowers the ceiling by 1-3 cms per year. We don’t realise how close we are to Germany until we cross the subterranean border. We don’t mention the war.

And of course it wouldn’t be Europe without castles and palaces. Seemingly not content with one palace, those in power need more. Don’t they always? At least a Summer Palace, somewhere out of town as well as the every day work house in the city. Take Markus Sittikus, a wealthy and powerful man who is both a prince and an archbishop. But Markus is no boring stick in the mud. He has a vision of a place not previously imagined, let alone built. Hunting lodges are there for hunting, residences are to live in and to govern from – but hey! an archbishop just wants to have fun. What about a pleasure palace? For pleasure. While not exactly the Hugh Hefner of his time, the archbishop creates Hellbrunn, a palace with an extensive park and, as there’s a multitude of springs, why not build trick fountains? And grottos? And little water powered automats? It is full of surprises and enchanting trickery and so really is worth the visit.

Last but not least, the hills are alive with the sound of music. Yes the movie lives on in the hearts and imaginations of those not even born when the film was made. There are Sound of Music tours to all the film locations, but we limit ourselves to a wander through Mirabell gardens. Julie Andrews is missing in action, busy voicing Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton.