Salzburg

Slice your own salami at breakfast, and add some pickles and onions
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Sunday. I’ve had trouble using my laptop for internet use here at our hotel in Salzburg, so I’m posting yesterday’s and today’s report this evening, and adding pictures to Friday’s report. I typed out Friday’s report on the hotel’s computer, which was a bit of a challenge for me because of the differences in the international keyboard, especially the reversal of “z” and the “y.” My initial draft on Friday made me sound like Zsa Zsa Gabor (“a much zeastier beer”) or comic relief in a Tom Stoppard play (“the verz elegantlz dressed crowd”).

Riding up the Salzach
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This morning we rode into town for mass in hopes of hearing some Mozart. No Mozart, but a dramatic Messa di Gloria by Puccini with live orchestra and chorus at the Franziskanerkirche. Listening to this terrifically Romantic music with full brass fill the huge Gothic space, smelling the incense, and watching the priest perform the mystical rites, I fleetingly wondered why anyone would ever become a Protestant.

Quintessential Salzburg

A bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists
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The city is filled with live music, even apart from festival events. There’s a Mozart piano recital every Friday and Saturday in one church, the Mozart Requiem every Saturday evening in another, countless organ recitals, and then there are the lunches and dinners with musicians dressed in period costume performing Mozart’s greatest hits while you eat. (How far are you willing to compromise your artistic vision to make a living, Nathaniel?) There’s also a Sound of Music dinner with singers and band performing songs from the movie while you eat your schnitzel with noodles and warm apple strudel.

Near Bad Duerrnberg
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I was afraid I might find the city unbearable, particularly when I read that the town receives an annual average of 36 tourists per inhabitant, a ratio that rivals Venice. But in fact I find it delightful. The geographical situation is stunning, and it’s completely bicycle friendly. Then, too, I enjoy just sitting in a cafe on the river and watching the festival goers show off their plumage. There are some who wear traditional Tyrolean costume and other couples dressed in finely tailored Italian suits and long silk gowns. It’s not the Marlboro Music Festival! or even opera or theatre in New York for that matter. These people are so far out of my league, I don’t even feel inadequate. It’s like watching a different species parade by.

Suiting up for the salt mine tour
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After this morning’s mass, we rode south up the Salzach River and then up into the Alps (a punishing climb) to the old salt mine at Bad Duerrnberg on the German border. Before this trip, it had never occurred to me that Salzburg gets its name--as well as the wealth that created its beautiful city center--from the central role it played in the medieval salt trade. We took a 90 minute tour of the mine (it closed in 1989), which was a bit kitschy but also fun and informative.

Rain this evening. We got back to town in time for a bowl of goulash at a cafe overlooking the river, then moved inside during the thunderstorm for coffee and sacher torte. It was the quintessential Salzburg cafe inside: dark wood paneling, chandeliers, and soft rose-colored banquettes against the walls. Rode back to the hotel in the second thunderstorm, which we hope passes by before tomorrow, when we leave for Burghausen.