One more quick thing...

I have a ton of cool standalone photos that I wanna post here, but this one is too cool to wait.

here's a statue of Mary in front of the Salzburg Cathedral

It's Mary!

A nice statue, but nothing to write home about, right? Well here's a picture of the cathedral, directly behind her.

It's a pretty big deal, both in importance and size

A pretty impressive cathedral right? But wait, it gets even better. If you look to the center of the picture, you can probably see a little gold object. If you're having trouble, I zoomed in on it for clarity.

What's this? A crown?

It's a crown, held up by angels. But why is it randomly hanging out in the middle of a cathedral? Unless...

Boom.

... It's actually just a clever optical illusion. Behold, Mary, Queen of Heaven. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

In Which I Finally Update This Thing

Hey...

Sorry about the whole not-updating thing. The last two weeks have been rather busy though, so I think my excuse is fairly decent. With that being said, here's a rundown of the last two weeks. Specific events being expanded upon at a later time.

I shall begin where I began, at die Institut St. Sebastian, the residence hall I'm staying at while I'm in Salzburg.

Home, Sweet Home

When I first got to Salzburg, I couldn't seem to figure out where my residence hall was supposed to be; the building in it's place was a church. Called St. Sebastian. It took me 15 minutes to figure that not only is my residence a hostel for university students, it's connected to a Catholic church. This particular church is run by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a traditionalist order whose charism is to celebrate the mass in the Old Rite (aka in Latin). I've been a couple times, but since I have almost zero experience with the Old Rite in English and even less with the current mass in German, I find it almost impossible to follow along.

One of the first things that struck me about Salzburg is that there are a ton of Catholic churches here. In Altstadt (the old city) there are 5 churches literally within sight of one another, The Cathedral, the University Church, St. Peter's, St. Michael's, and the Fransican Church.

The University Church

The Salzburg Cathedral

The Franciscan Church

So yeah, churches. They're everywhere. But Salzburg does have some cool non-church things. For example, there's the Lover's Locks bridge. For those who don’t know, the locks are locked there by a couple who’ve just been married, and then they throw the key into the river. These bridges exist all over the world.

And here's the Stern Braeu, one of the best beer gardens in Salzburg. I haven't been there yet, but I plan to before I leave.

And that's about it in terms of general information about Salzburg. I have posts in the pipe about Schloss Hohenwerffen, Schloss Hell Brau, and the Salzburg Festival for St. Rupertstag. Hopefully, I'll get them up either later today or tomorrow.

Bis Spaet! (See you later!)

Teaghan

In which I begin

Tonight is the last time I sleep in America until December 15th. Tomorrow, I'm going to fly across the ocean to Salzburg, Austia. I'll be living, studying, touring, drinking, thinking, and doing various other things in a city best known for the Sound of Music and being the birthplace of some classical musician guy. He's probably not that important though, so whatever; they probably barely ever mention him. Anyway, this blog will be my main connection with the outside world for these next few months, so feel free to join me as I explore one of the most beautiful cities in the world.