Salzburg Turmblasen at the Christmas Market

With the lack of snow and the windy weather blowing out the candles all the time, the Turmblasen at Schloss Anif had been a bit of a let down. However, a couple of people at work had said it was well worth the effort to go to the Turmblasen in Salzburg itself on Saturday night. So, after our champagne breakfast, the long walk to Hellbrun, and then a well deserved snooze in the afternoon, we got the bus back into town.

The Turmblasen wasn't due to start until 6:30pm, and so we had a bit of time to kill when we got to town. We went back to the little Greek bar and restaurant for a quick drink. It somehow seemed appropriate to be in Santorini on the year anniversary of when we set out on the travels that ended up taking us to live in Greece.

After a quick tipple we headed back to the main Christmas market in town, and the Turmblasen had started. There were three different brass bands on three roof or tower platforms around the town's main square. With the Christmas market in between them all it really had a magical feel to it.

The three bands were all composed quite diffently, so that one of the lower placed bands was all trumpets and high range instruments, playing twiddly pieces that we guessed were probably Mozart. Right up on one of the clock towers though was a band that had a good couple of trombones in it, and they were playing much more sedate and melancholic music in a lower register. The Turmblasen last for about half hour, with each band taking it in turns to play a short piece.

Whilst it was on, people were going amongst the crowd giving away free stuff which we eagerly accepted. It was only in the light of the next day we realised that we were weighed down with a load of evangelical German god-bothering stuff. So, dear friends back in the UK, you can expect a lot of god fearing postcards in the new year.

In order to further celebrate our journey's anniversary, we went out for dinner, to the Happy Chinese restaurant back over the other side of the Salzach. The food there was really good, although we could have got away with ordering half as much. The one bizarre thing about the restaurant though was that to get to it you sort of entered a residential block of flats type of place, then got the lift to the top floor, which opened up right into the middle of the restaurant. Very odd.