We got back to the downtown area right before 5:00 when the evening festivities began for Mozart's birthday. There was a giant crowd surrounding the entrance to Mozart's birth home (the Mozarts Geburtstag) and lots of guys dressed up in 18th century garb (the Salzburg Bürgergarde, aka the Civic Gaurdsmen). At the center of the crowd, I could make out an Austrian flag being held by one of the Gaurdsmen in front of a miraculous space where there weren't any people, which I soon discovered was a table with the sheet cake I'd seen earlier that day with a large portrait of Mozart on it. A man started speaking in German to begin the ceremony, and I couldn't understand any of it, but the excitement throughout the street was unmistakable and contagious. The German soon turned to English as the announcer welcomed "all the visitors from Japan, all of Europe, and the United States." Then, all of a sudden, I heard brass. Above my head. Out of the open windows of the Mozart Geburtstag came the celebratory music of trumpets and trombones (we even saw a trombone slide sticking out the window at one point). It was glorious. Everyone in the crowd was looking around at each other, at perfect strangers, and nodding and smiling, as if to universally express how awesome it was to be a human at 17:00 on January 27th, 2014 in Salzburg, Austria outside Mozart's frickin' birth home.
After the brass choir played a couple pieces, the Gaurdsmen started yelling orders and raising cerimonial gold septor type things and I saw movement towards a cannon that was placed in the square. Holy cow; no way. Yes way. They blew the cannon three times. I swear it got louder with each blow. But it was TOTALLY AWESOME!!
After the cannons and more music, the microphoned man announced in German and then English that the ceremonial cutting of the cake was going to commence. Now, while everyone had been drawn to the cannon, I had taken the time to move closer to the cake. All my friends had gone off to get food by the time the brass had finished their first piece, but I was dead determined to get a piece of Mozart's birthday cake. I don't know if I can describe how much I love cake; I still haven't forgiven my dad for leaving my cousin's wedding when I was 13 before the cake was cut.
There were probably a couple hundred people in the street, and there was no way the cake would feed more than fifty, so I was very skeptical as to how this would work. As far as I could tell, it was free, as long as you got there first. So I was going to get there first.
The cake started getting handed out (I saw a lucky couple leave the table and knew the cutthroat competition had begun). I was completely crushed from all sides, and I was hearing German, English, and Japanese all at the same time. I was getting closer, but I really had no idea how fast the cake was going. Finally, I could see it. It was over half gone, but there was hope. And then, all of a sudden, I was right there and I was handed a piece! And it was Mozart's face! I could just make out the corner of his mouth and where his chin grazed his collar. I was so incredibly ecstatic that I was basically jumping up and down and screaming when I found my friends to show them my prize. And it was delicious! It was a chocolate cake with a raspberry filling and some sort of crunchy crust along the bottom. BEST DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!
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