Salzburg

I started this day with a really big flashback to music history lectures. Although there were other opportunites for shore excursions that day, I couldn’t have missed the trip to Salzburg without losing my self-respect as a retired music history professor. So Judy dutifully joined me and we boarded one of the busses for Salzburg, two hours away.

At least we had a rest stop on the way. On a clear day, the view would have been staggeringly beautiful. As it was, it wasn’t bad, just a little gray. The countryside, the mountains, the lake—all reminded us that we weren’t in Kansas any longer. Or in Alabama, for that matter. Not one unkempt square foot in view. Beautiful houses, beautiful landscape, beautiful lake.

Then we got to Salzburg itself. The bus had to park across the river from the old town, probably a good thing, given the number of tourists per square foot we encountered later. The first place we visited was the Mirabell Palace, for a short concert by one of the grandchildren of Baron von Trapp that we all know from the musical—:and movie. In fact, it seems that more than half of the publicity and tourist interest in Salzburg is now tied in with “The Sound of Music,” the movie. I have to say the concert was really good. She sang and accompanied herself on guitar. In the little Mirabell Palace Chapel, she probably didn’t need the amplification, but from the back row, I really appreciated hearing her guitar playing. Some Northern Indian infuences, some occasional Flamenco influences, but most of all just good, effective playing. It would be hard to fault what we heard, and part of the reality of that could be seen in the number of people from the River Beatrice who bought CDs after the concert.

After the concert we started the real tour of Salzburg, beginning with a walk through the rose garden. Once again we had a great guide, who walked and talked almost non-stop, in a most wonderful way. We left the water-front area (the Inn flows through Salzburg) and made our way to the main shopping street. Check out the Salzburg Photos page. Take a look at the long shot of the city, with the interesting shop signs hanging above the doorways. If you take a close look at one of them, you’ll see that in spite of the legal requirement to maintain the appearance of traditional hanging signs, the golden arches have invaded Salzburg.

The walk continued, and we saw Mozart’s birthplace, the Cathedral, the new concert hall, and many more places than I can remember. Eventually we left the walking tour, having noted the time and place to meet to return to the bus, and made our way through further parts of the town on our own. We just missed getting entrance to the Cathedral for an organ concert, and that would have been fun. We wandered a bit, looking in here and there, and even browsed through an antique store for a while. Downstairs there were small objects, upstairs there were larger pieces. I probably should have expected it, but there were an awful lot of cuckoo clocks there, ticking away. And cuckooing one after the other.

Eventually we made our way back to a restaurant that had been pointed out earlier in the day. Simple food and good beer, enjoyed outdoors in what had turned out to be an almost clear day, the best weather of our cruise so far. We enjoyed the company of a Canadian couple from the River Beatrice we hadn’t spent time with before, and we made it to the meeting point for our return with time to spare.

Here’s my “take-away” from this visit.

• Salzburg has more tourists and tourist-oriented shops in the old town than most of the cities we’ve visited in thirty or forty years of traveling.
• The pedestrian bridge we crossed on the way to the old city was decorated with padlocks from one end to the other: love locks. Given the size of Salzburg and the number of locks, most of them were brought by those crowds of tourists.

Over all we enjoyed the day and found a lot of charm in the city. Next time, we’ll be sure to have more time to stay and arrive with tickets in hand for some concerts.

The bus ride back to Linz and the ship was uneventful, though it might have been better with a rest stop. As it turned out, the best part of the day was dinner and a really pleasant evening with our friends the Gladwins and the Roberges. After dinner we went up top to look across the river at the citiy library. Its lights change color frequently, and someone even told us it was possible to plug an mp3 player in and have your music control the lights. We didn’t do that, but we did enjoy the show for a while, before Judy and I left to bed down for the night.