Trick Fountains 奇巧喷泉

June 10, 2022

The bus No. 25 took us to Hellbrunn Palace at the bottom of abundant water Hellbrunn Mountain, which Prince-Archbishop Markus Sittikus built for enjoyment and leisure. The center of the palace is the world-famous Trick Fountains, where spring water, coming from the mountain, jetted out from unexpected hiding places to entertain his guests over 400 years ago. While his people were trying to feed their families and have roofs over their heads, he used the tax collected from the people to build complicated water fountains and a lavish summer palace just for entertainment. He hardly stayed overnights in the palace. However, the Trick Fountains, water engineering masterpieces of the 18th century, are still very impressive and fascinating today. The tour to the Altemps fountain with the Star Pond was guided in English or German. The tour guide took us to a beautifully carved stone table with ten stools. As told, the Archbishop always sat at the north end of the table. While the guests were sipping the wine and enjoying the delicious food feast, the water jets would suddenly come out of the hole in the middle of each stone stool except his. Imagine how embarrassed all the guests would feel with the wet pants while the Archbishop was laughing at his guests. The tour guide let us try to sit on the short end of the table without getting wet. The waterfall and sculptures were stunning. The rest of the tour was an audio self-guided tour.

We visited 21 stations of the trick fountains in the fantasy world of Markus Sittikus. The water automats of five water-driven figures along the small stream amazed us with the technologies the engineers mastered to achieve. The motion was driven by water flow from the mountain, not an electric pump in the modern days. The Mechanical Theater was another masterpiece, although it was constructed in the later days. One hundred sixty-three water-driven figures depict the life of a small city, where people were working, shopping, and entertaining tirelessly. We could not catch up with all activities of each figure in the show. The Grottos was another fantastic wonder. Now the park workers have control over the fountain system. Usually, they warned us before turning on the water jet from hidden places. We had a fun experience and many unexpected. We highly recommend this place to visit.

From Hellbrunn Park, a trail led us through the forest to the Folklore Museum at Hellbrunn hill. The museum had a collection of traditional folk house items in Salzburg and the figures of Samson, Giant Heroic Figures from the 16th century. It was a small museum, but it was interesting to see how people lived back then in Salzburg. The museum offered an excellent view of the park below, the surrounding area, and the Salzburg Fortress in the distance. Hiking down from the hill, we wandered around the park. It was such a beautiful place to walk, sit and relax. There were some big fish in the pound. We learned that the white sturgeon could live up to 80 years and up to 4.5 meters long.  

We took our lunch break at the park’s café. Chicken salads, pancake beef broth, and dessert all tasted very good. Then we went to the Hellbrunn Palace with an exhibition about Markus Sittikus. At the end of our visit, we walked more around the beautiful garden and saw the “sound of the music” Pavillon. The gazebo was used in the movie and was presented to the city of Salzburg as a gift at the end of filming. The original filming site was in another park, and the pavilion was relocated to Hellbrunn Palace Park in 1991.

Left Hellbrunn Palace, we continued our day trip and took the No. 25 to the bottom of Untersberg. From there, we rode the cable car to the summit. Untersberg offered a wide choice of routes for hikers and mountain bikers. Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy, and the visibility was very poor to see much. From the top station of the Untersbergbahn, we did a short hike to the peak. We came back quickly because we had an early dinner reservation at 5 pm at Barenwirt, a popular Austria cuisine place where we couldn’t get a table yesterday. We had roast pork with a huge dumpling ball and fried chicken salad, both being their most popular dishes. The food is delicious. The dumpling tasted good but had too many carbs.

Another reason to have an early dinner was that we would attend a “Sound of Music” show at the Salzburg Marionette Theater, which is included in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. We did not remember the last time we watched a puppet show. The show was great, and it was better than expected.

第二十一天：时间过得很快，来欧洲整整三个星期了。前二天一直在萨尔茨堡城里的博物馆，城堡和教堂里转悠，今天换个环境去城外的海尔布伦宫放松一下。这座当时大主教的花园式避暑行宫不仅有迷人的花园，更以各种独具匠心暗藏的喷泉而出名。400年后的今天，这些喷泉仍然在给游客们带来惊喜。中午在花园餐厅用餐，色拉，煎饼丝牛肉汤和甜品都不错。下午去郊外的山头上，坐缆车上去的，因为云雾缭绕山顶，也未能看到城市全景。匆匆下山赶去旅馆推荐的火红的餐厅。昨天去过说是全满，今天的也满了，只能订上早早的晚饭，不过这正好符合我们需要。饭后要赶去看具有世界文化遗产的奥地利的木偶戏-“音乐之声”。点了烤猪肉，给了一大碗德国酸菜和一大个土豆面粉团，猪肉很不错，土豆团也还可以，酸菜就有点多了。饭店最有名的特色菜炸鸡味道的确不错，但垫底的蔬菜色拉和中午的相比就要差一截了。