Discover Salzburg's mysterious sides

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Night watchman hike in Salzburg in autumn

Salzburg insider tip - Night watchman hike in Salzburg


Salzburg is a city with many faces. We found that out in the city on the Salzach. There is Salzburg Mozart's, the Salzburg of the Prince-Bishops and the Salzburg of Getreidegasse and Linzer Gasse. But there is also Salzburg, where you have to look deeper to discover it. We have that with one of our Austria Visits done and amazing things discovered. A Salzburg insider tip: we heard about the "Sellenen", were on the trail of a natural healer and looked at the tombs and catacombs in the Mönchsberg. What it's all about? Here you can find out: Discover Salzburg and that Salzburg country on a night watchman hike through Salzburg.

 

 

With night watchman Hans through Salzburg

What are the "Sellenes"? Night watchman Hans explains this to us in a pregnant and sonorous voice: "These are the pariahs, the outcasts of society, the kings of the night, but also the crap men and the night watchmen". We go with Hans and his wife through Salzburg on his night watchman tour, during which we visit well-known places such as the Sebastian Cemetery, Linzer Gasse and even Getreidegasse. This time, however, we take a completely different look.

 

 

Salzburg insider tip - The search for the "Sellenes"

He shows us the former gallows of the city, which appropriately stood on the main street between Salzburg and Linz - or as Hans says with a mischievous wink - between Salzburg and Austria. “Mozart was a Salzburg citizen,” he values. "Mozart would still recognize a lot in Salzburg today, just not the smell," he says with a smile. He points to the street sign for Königsgasse, which does not look royal at all and meanders tightly and narrowly away from Linzer Gasse.

The night watchman hike in Salzburg is exciting

“The kings this street is named after were the kings of the night, the bastards or garbage men. They roamed the city every night in the dark hours to collect the city's rubbish. If you walked through the Königsgasse during the day, you had to expect a "blessing" from above - sometimes with a warning, sometimes without - depending on how the person was who emptied his potschamperl over the street. "We learn a lot from the night watchman tour in Salzburg Hans and his wife.

 

Night watchman Hans with his wife on the night watchman hike in Salzburg
Night watchman Hans with his wife on the night watchman hike in Salzburg
Which kings are meant in this alley?
Which kings are meant in this alley? A Salzburg insider tip

 

Salzburg insider tip - listen to mysterious stories

With stories like this, Hans brings us closer to Salzburg and everyday life in his city over the centuries with a lot of detailed knowledge, a smile in his eyes and a voice that would do any actor credit. This voice, and his night watchman's outfit with a felt hat, halberd, his horn, which he does not show us ("I won't do that to you. It's too loud."), And the other aids that a night watchman would need it to tempt passers-by to join us.

 

 

You ask what kind of tour we are taking here through Salzburg. “It's coming to the old town,” Hans explains. "A night watchman tour through the city begins there." You can, however, register with Hans for a tour before your visit to Salzburg (and this night watchman tour Salzburg is worth it. You will get to know Salzburg from a completely new perspective.)

Night watchman hike in Salzburg
April 02nd to October 30th
and on the 4 Advent weekends
every Friday

Starting 21.00 pm
Meeting point: Salzburg Information Mozartplatz

Duration: about 1,5 hours

 

Goldenrod
Goldenrod

 

Salzburg insider tip - the legacy of a natural healer from Anthering

But not only the night watchman tour in Salzburg shows Salzburg from its mysterious side. Our next destination is no less mysterious: the SonnenMoor company in Anthering. Herbal blends, herbal creams, herbal oils, moor products and more are produced there according to recipes from Franz Fink, the father of the company's current managing director. “Naturopathy has been in our family for generations,” Siegfried Fink explains to me over lunch in the Ammerhauser restaurant in the seminar hotel in Anthering.

There you only serve moor dishes: moor beer, moor bread with spread, pumpkin foam soup with moor schöberl, char fillet with moor spaetzle, leek and radiccio, and even a dessert with moor: moor pancake with melon sorbet and elderberry. "All of these dishes are cooked with our original drinking moor," says Siegfried Fink. This is odorless, tasteless and dark. That is why all the dishes we try here are dark in color. “You get the taste from the other ingredients in the food.” It should be healthy, and we can see for ourselves that it tastes good during our meal in Anthering.

 

range of herbs
Herbal range - Salzburg insider tip from anthering

 

Father's "Trankl" is available from SonnenMoor today

“Today we sell the 'Trankl' that my father brewed and mixed from dried herbs from Central Europe all his life. First he used it to heal himself from illnesses and ailments, then his herbal mixtures healed my mother from her angina. My father worked on a chicken farm when he was young, selling chicks to farmers in the area. They told him about their ailments and had him put together herbal mixtures. Many of them were healed and word got around.

So my father lived forty years from collecting and recommending herbal tinctures, herbal teas, herbal oils and moor products to the people in his area and with increasing awareness throughout Austria and neighboring countries. ”Siegfried Fink tells me that his great-great-grandfather and his great-grandmother known herbalists. His father grew up with his grandmother and instead of going to the doctor, he was given a herbal drink if he was sick once. At a young age it was completely normal for him. However, as a young person, he was not interested in such things.

 

Moor bread
Moor bread is a real Salzburg insider tip and one Salzburg specialty special kind

 

So began SonnenMoor

It wasn't until he came home from the war with severe rheumatism that he began to be interested in it. His grandmother was no longer alive and had left no records. So he set about putting together suitable tinctures and mixtures according to herbal recipe books and the result was: nothing improved. Since he had experienced the healing power of herbs first hand from his childhood, he did not give up and dealt intensively with the effects of the individual herbs, which he then mixed together to make suitable mixtures.

These brought the desired results. Today these are recommended by alternative practitioners, clinics and doctors and can be obtained in drugstores, specialist medical shops, pharmacies and health food stores. Or you can drive by the SonnenMoor company and take a look at the production of herb and moor products in Anthering. There you can also test the oils, creams, moor products and herbal tinctures. In any case, the neck candy and the gargle brought quick relief from my cold.

SonnenMoor GmbH
Highway 14
A-5102 anthering
www.sonnenmoor.at

The Stiftsfriedhof St. Peter
A Salzburg insider tip - St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery - there are scary stories here

Salzburg insider tip - St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery

A highlight in addition to the night watchman tour in Salzburg is a visit to St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery. We are lucky enough to be able to take part in a guided tour through the St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery. Guided tours are usually strictly forbidden there. In this way we learn interesting and unknown facts about the people who are buried here. Crypts nestle against the rocks below the Mönchsberg rock face. Well-known but also inglorious dead are buried in it. One of them is Adolf Hitler's favorite sculptor. His tomb is easy to recognize because it is unadorned. No flowers adorn his grave.

Well-known Salzburg residents are buried here

Not far away we discover the grave of the Hagenauer family: "They were the landlords of the Mozarts," explains our guide Heidi. “They made friends with them and were closely connected with them all their lives.” A few steps further is the family crypt of the Fürst family, who invented the famous Mozartkugel. “Mozart was not always as well known as it is today. Especially not after his death. The taste in music had changed. Mozart's music had gone out of style. Reason enough for Paul Fürst to remember the musician with his chocolate ball filled with marzipan. ”His plan worked, and it wasn't just Mozart that got back into the conversation. He also started the success of his pastry shop, which continues to this day. The Mozartkugel belongs to Salzburg like Mozart himself.

 

Crying in the Stiftsfriedhof St. Peter in Salzburg
Crypts in St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery in Salzburg go well with the night watchman hike in Salzburg

 

Oldest cemetery in Salzburg

The St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery is Salzburg's oldest cemetery. The catacombs are located in the rock walls of the Mönchsberg. We also look at these during our tour of the cemetery. As in so many places in Salzburg is also here Music in the air. At the entrance to the staircase we find the commune call of Johann Michael Haydn, Josef Haydn's brother. Village is also the grave of Marianne Freifrau von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg, the Nannerl. That is how the sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was affectionately known in the family. At a young age she fell in love with a servant of the prince-bishops, whom her father Leopold, however, did not consider befitting. He forbade her to marry, and so after a few years Nannerl agreed to marry Freiherr von Sonnenburg, a widower who had already brought several children into the marriage.

Mozart's sister Nannerl

Nannerl bore him five more children, three of whom survived. But the marriage wasn't happy. After the death of her husband, she moved into a house on what is now the city market, where she lived blind for the last years of her life. It is said that Nannerl was just as talented as her brother, but there are no records of her musical works. As a woman, this was an indisputable career for her. Instead, her father got her first child in order to raise it to be another musical genius, albeit without success.

 

Hagenauer tomb
Hagenauer Gruft - A Salzburg insider tip

 

On the way up to the catacombs we discover a chapel set into the rock. Their Romanesque arches and faded wall paintings, on which St. Patrick can be seen among other things, remind me of the churches in Ireland. You don't know how old the chapel is. However, it is one of the oldest church sites in the city of Salzburg. The way up to the catacombs is also worthwhile because of the view of the St. Peter's cemetery, St. Peter's Church and the cathedral, whose domes tower behind St. Peter's Abbey.

 

Communegruft by Nannerl Mozart and Johann Michael Haydn
Salzburg insider tip Communegruft by Nannerl Mozart and Johann Michael Haydn

 

The entrance to the St. Peter's Abbey Cemetery is located below the Mönchsberg on the right of the entrance to Felsengasse.

Conclusion: which Salzburg insider tip is the best?

This stay in the city showed us that Salzburg is not just a city of splendor and splendor, which you can experience very well on these tours and in these places. It is just as exciting to get to know the other side of the city. Let yourself be whisked away into the history of the “others” in Salzburg. The Salzburg night watchman tour and the other city tours will show you.

 

 

Salzburg insider tips
Click on the photo and make a note of “Salzburg Insider Tips” on Pinterest

 

Source: Research on site. We would like to thank Tourismus Salzburg for the friendly invitation to this trip and night watchman Hans for the night watchman tour in Salzburg. Our opinion remains our own.

Here, she describes what Elena Paschinger experienced in the Almkanal in Salzburg and on the night watchman hike in Salzburg:
Behind the scenes of the city of Salzburg: Night watchman and Almkanal tour

 

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Text Salzburg insider tip: © Copyright Monika Fuchs, TravelWorldOnline
Photos Salzburg insider tip: © Copyright Monika Fuchs, TravelWorldOnline

Discover Salzburg's mysterious sides

Monika Fuchs

Monika Fuchs and Petar Fuchs are the authors and publishers of the Food and Slow Travel blog  TravelWorldOnline. They have been publishing this blog since 2005. TravelWorldOnline has been online since 2001. Their topics are trips to Savor, wine tourism worldwide and slow travel. During her studies Monika Fuchs spent some time in North America, where she - partly together with Petar Fuchs - traveled to the USA and Canada and spent a research year in British Columbia. This intensified her thirst for knowledge, which she satisfied for 6 years as an adventure guide for Rotel Tours and then for 11 years as a tour guide for Studiosus Reisen around the world. She was constantly expanding her travel regions, but curiosity still gnawed at her: "What's beyond the horizon? What else is there to discover in this city? Which people are interesting here? What do they eat in this region?" As a freelance travel journalist (her articles have appeared in DIE ZEIT, 360° Canada, 360° USA, etc.), she is now looking for answers to these questions as a travel writer and travel blogger in many countries around the world. Petar Fuchs produces the videos on this blog as well as on YouTube. Monika Fuchs from TravelWorldOnline is among Germany's top 50 bloggers in 2021. Find more Information about Monika and Petar Fuchs here.