/ We're going to have some fun in Salzburg wandering up and down the little alleyways these are side lanes that go off from the main pedestrian lane. They are kind of like shopping malls nowadays but originally, hundreds of years ago, they were a little path that connected the front houses with the back houses. Salzburg has lots of these pedestrian lanes right in the heart of town and yet it would be easy to overlook them – in fact most visitors to Salzburg don't even notice them. But in this movie that's all we're going to do, is take you up and down, in and out through these little side lanes, and then back over to Getreidegasse which is the main pedestrian lane that runs through the heart of Salzburg.
There are more than a dozen of these little alleys that extend out from the Getreidegasse main lane, and they are really quite fun to walk through. You might easily overlook them if you are just walking along on Getreidegasse and sort of enraptured by all of the wonderful shops, the people, the sites to see along the main lane. Some of the entrances to the side alleys are pretty inconspicuous. But it's worth a walk to go down these lanes so we are going to take you on a little zigzag going back and forth, and back and forth again, and cover most of these little lanes in the heart of Salzburg right now to give you some idea of the situation, what it's like.
They are really kind of like little shopping mall alleys. Along most of them you will find some glass display cases, or signs pointing to nearby shops and restaurants. Sometimes there's just a blank wall, but usually there is something interesting to see as you walk along in these little side alleys.
Occasionally they open up into courtyards and you'll see the spaces that were created as far back as three or fourhundred years ago as the buildings kind of all grew together and merged. You can look up in the courtyards to the second level and third level, as this was the residential neighborhood upstairs. They had their shops down the ground floor. Even today there are some people living upstairs – there are some students up there and long-time resident. Some of these are rental properties, others are owned by the residents who live there.