Julie Andrews is dragging around half a dozen kids and Mozart-branded 2-in-1 shampoos and conditioner is in the supermarket. Where else?

As with other historic cities that have its main train station away from the centre, Salzburg let me down slightly as I stepped off the train. No Baroque splendour. No palatially beautiful gardens. No Mozart-tinted-hills-are-alive-coated chocolate. Julie Andrews would not approve. And it was raining. But I’m very forgiving… even if it took me over an hour and a half to find anywhere other McDonalds to eat.

One particular reason Salzburg will stay in my mind is that I attracted more than the usual quota of crazies that the lone traveller should expect to come across in such a short space of time. It was a designated ‘I’ve-gone-over-budget-time-to-sleep-in-the-train-station’ night for me, and I had found a little waiting room, making myself at home by drying my wet wardrobe on the 10cm2 heater, and taking advantage of the free electricity. 

Then, in walks Crazy No. 1. I recognise him as the annoying man from an earlier flight who held up the airport bus with an incessant and inane queries about Austro-German train timetables. Tonight, he was looking resplendent in his lederhosen – to fit in with the locals of course. It turns out that he is from Australia but living in Glasgow – like pigeons and talcum powder, Glaswegians get everywhere. He also ‘knows’ a friend of mine – on returning to Glasgow I asked my friend about him, and his face contorted at the mention of this man’s name, so you get the picture. One of the better conversations was him relaying, in great detail, the development of the very large abscess that he was lucky enough to possess on his backside. My soul died a little bit every time he stood up to adjust the bandages. There was a pervading threat of “would you mind…’ and I was prepared to go down with my ship.

Enter Crazy No. 2. Less crazy I guess, and more passively sexually abusive. He sat beside me, proceeding to get out his portable DVD player and flicked  - very openly - through his, seemingly, endless array of hardcore pornographic videos. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, so I went back to Crazy No. 1 and his abscess. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very much.

By morning Salzburg was being covered in a fresh coat of white snow, and I said my goodbyes to my new friends and made my way back into the Altstadt proper to see what it was like in daylight. And the result? Simply. Beautiful. Protected as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and with a history that goes back to the Neolithic Age, Salzburg is medicine for the eyes - especially covered in snow.

The city is, of course, steeped; marinade more like, in Mozart and his entourage of costumed imitators. Being a music student, it was obligatory to visit the Mecca of Mozart’s Geburtshaus. With the knowledge that these places are more often than not lots of near empty rooms with a naff few paintings and a jar full of ‘what may be’ the artist’s breath, I paid my entrance fee and went in. Rather than sacred oxygen, there was a lock of Mozart’s hair, which was probably the most interesting thing in the exhibition. The best part for me, however, was the ‘audio room’ where you are invited to sit in a smallish, pine and gold-leafed room, and let Mozart’s music waft over you while you contemplate his prodigious genius. Or that’s the idea I guess. I, wet and tired, with memories of hardcore skin lesions running through my mind, fell asleep. For quite a while. I awoke to stares from a completely new set of faces, had a couple of Mozart chocolates then dozed off again to the Flute and Harp Concerto. Bliss.

The rest of the day was taken up by climbing up the to Hohensalzburg Castle and its surrounding hills, getting lost in the forest, eating cake, flirting with old ladies in said cake shops (it’s an art than I am proud to say that I have mastered), wandering round the cavernous and often empty churches and cathedrals, walking along the river to the gardens of Schloss Mirabell, eating fresh snow (it wasn’t yellow) buying some new – thicker and snow appropriate – socks, trying to find the von Trapps and discovering that the €0.50 hot chocolate from the vending machine outside the train station is actually delicious, before catching my overnight train to Slovenia.

Whilst waiting for the train, I met some mid-teen skater ‘dudes’ who insisted on showing me, repeatedly, videos of them eating as many doughnuts in 30 seconds as they could. And of course, on the train itself Fate decided that would be sitting, in the enclosed space of a compartment (for which I usually laud European trains), across from a heavy breathing, extremely fragrant old man who kept putting his fingers through the hole in his trouser crotch and mumbling something at me whilst he did it.

But let’s be honest, it’s all part of the fun.