A Rainy Night in Salzburg

I'm about to spoil the order of the telling of my trip, but I can't help it. I feel for some reason that this post must be written before others that chronologically came before it. What can you do- the heart wants what it wants, amirite.

Ah...the convenience of snapchat

Our second dinner in Salzburg was right in Mozartplatz, the old town, which boasts the oldest restaurant in Europe. Something like that. But it was a very nice sort of place, and I was dreadfully under dressed. I had taken the minimalist approach to packing, you see, and hadn't packed any nice things to wear.

They had forgotten about us vegetarians, although our tour guide assured us that he'd spoken with them twice about it. It didn't matter; I wasn't in any hurry to eat. When a dish of vegetables and rice was finally placed in front of me, I still wasn't hungry.

There was a show going on outside- a taste of what was to come in the next few weeks during Salzburg's festival of the performing arts. While I was waiting I made myself comfortable on the ledge and watched the actors. Later, when I'd lost interest in picking at my food, I again repaired to this ledge, and hung out the window to watch the crowds disperse.

A bevy of girls tripped gaily by, tossing their bright heads and chattering enthusiastically. Behind them followed their grandmothers. Some of them had covered their hair demurely with scarves. Impulsively, I leaned out a little more and waved. Amused by the friendliness of an American and a tourist, they waved back. I watched them all disappear past the archway.

Some time passed. I must have spent it without thinking of anything of note, because when my name was called, I found myself staring into space. All of a sudden the room was too warm. There was a touch of overripeness and something bloated in there. My friends seemed strange to me, but they weren't. I was the one being strange.

I couldn't stand it. The expressions on the servers' faces were grotesque in their amiability.

I fled.

Left the private dining room we were given, turned left. Then left, after a series of open doors. There was another window and another ledge- a bigger ledge with a heater in front of it. I flung that window open and clambered up beside it, a process made much easier by my sensible clothing (the ledge was pretty high, and some people had changed into dresses). I don't know how long I sat there, leaning wearily against the window frame. Ten minutes, maybe. 

<-- I meant Salzburg (in the video)

The sky was a funny mix of gray and pink, and the light that pierced that glorious gloom wasn't quite golden like it is back home. I blinked and missed the moment when pink began giving way to violet. It began to rain. Slowly, and then in earnest. Fat raindrops hit the cobblestones and drummed against the rooftops. Music to the ears of a drought-weary Californian.

The rain cooled the air, made it breathable. I no longer found myself stifled. Just in the nick of time, too, because I was joined by a girl I'd met on the trip. We sat and talked about something we found very important at the time, and then returned when informed that desert was ready.

Later, our group split. I followed the bigger half to watch some traditional dancing, a story for another time. Before that, we went for drinks on a terrace.

The walk to that terrace was steeply set into the hillside, with uneven cobblestones beneath our feet. It was the very picture of romance, what with the warm cloak that fell with dusk, the old crumbly (but stout still) buildings, the perfume of green things. Just after our breaths became labored-mine, at least- it began to rain again.

Do you not think that there is something of the divine in the first rain drops that fall before the deluge? They are the first to burst through the dam up in the skies while their eager compatriots squirm in cloudy prisons. They fell and kissed our cheeks as they fell. Soon the ground was filled with their falling bodies. We made it to the terrace before the rain really came down, to my consternation.

I was still feeling odd, so after my group found a table beneath some umbrellas, I fled again. I left by way of another terrace, climbed some stairs, hiked up a ways beside the road. I let myself get drenched, let the water cool my feverish cheeks and wash the paint off my face. My mascara is made of blackberries, and their sweet scent floated to me as the stuff ran down my face and was gone.



I liked the way my skin looked by streetlight, a glimmering, greenish bronze. Some others had followed me, and we spoke very seriously for a while. A different madness came upon me, the kind accompanied by mysterious smiles and a wild kind of gladness. Perhaps it was the rain.

When we returned, we found everyone crammed at a table removed from the reaches of water. Pity. We had our schnapps like children tasting cider for the first time.

Boo.

Festung Hohensalzburg

Imagine that you stand where I stood, that you feel the breezes move strands of hair like tracing lines on a sheet of music. The light has just begun to fade and the heat has begun to lose its intensity- just a little. It's nearing suppertime, and somehow, empty bellies make for greater views. 

On July the 17th, we crammed ourselves into a funicular bound for the Hohensalzburg Fortress, situated on the crest of the Festungsberg. I remember that I pressed my cheek against the cool metal pole, and wrapped my burning arms about it. I need hardly to describe the animal heat to you. I welcomed it, although I greeted it with considerably less enthusiasm when the funicular began to move and other people's sweat dripped on me.

There was a vague discontented hum brought on by the stuffiness, and here and there were gasps of delight as people looked out through the glass. Louder still were some people's silent awe at the trees that stood stoutly below us, the rock of man meeting that of the mountain. 

           

We burst into the late afternoon gratefully, flinging ourselves away from our neighbors. It was rather like a tin of sardines, remember. We hiked our way to the entrance of the fortress, and were confronted by a formidable staircase. Pause. Regroup. Reconsider. Disperse in search of water. After finding some friendly bartenders who filled our bottles free of charge, we made the trek back to the place at the foot of the stairs.

What a view. Not even at the highest vantage point, either. Salzburg lay below us, spread like a tapestry. There was the old town, from whence we came; there was the new. And splitting them was the river, the mighty Salzach. The bridge above it, by the way, was heavy with locks and the waters swollen with keys. Just like in France, although not nearly as full. 

So we went up that staircase, and halted within the walls. After threading the wires of the audio guides about us, we followed the tour and scrutinized many, many men in red. This one ordered the fortress built, that one spiked the salt trade, that one was an idiot. Many expanded the walls, raised them ever higher. It's funny that they did that, because the Hohensalzburg was never breached. It was that intimidating, I guess. I did hear a funny story about how when besieged by a peasant mob, the prince-Archbishop paraded the same cow painted different colors to dishearten them. It was a ruse to convince the rabble that their stores were so great that cows just rambled about on the battlements. It worked, and the peasants went home discouraged.

How on earth does one go about painting a cow? 

The best part, I think, was climbing to the very top and looking out. Especially since the torture room was essentially a glorified storage room, and never used for torture at all. Alas, our fascination with the abomination remained unsatisfied

We passed through the cemetery on our way back.

Tomorrow I think I will tell you about the rain that night, and St Gilgen another time.

Land, Ho: Salzburg

The day was balmy when we arrived in Salzburg. It was unusually warm, in fact, although the rains still swept through in the evenings and washed the stickiness from the air. By this time I was used to the layer of sweat that clung to me like a second skin, and the disregard for air conditioning. I kind of liked it actually; something about walking and sweating made me feel travel-worn and productive, like when a good pair of boots wear down and become covered in dust.

So the train lurched to a stop, and we lurched with it. Filing off, we congregated in the vaguely cooled station. Our first taste of Salzburg was laced with the salt of sweat and flies and impatience. We took a bus to our hotel, the Castellani Parkhotel. I really did like that hotel. Maybe I'll dedicate a post to it, because it fulfills some forgotten fantasy of mine. I'd like not to forget that.

Mozartplatz part 1

Mozartplatz part 2 

             
We set off in search of lunch, that enticingly simple meal of market fruits to be washed in local fountains and pretzels, in the old town: Altstadt. We followed the path along the Salzach River, whose roar was dimly felt. It was robust and brown and, on the other side, sat the mountains with their whispering trees and laughing brooks. I never thought a river could be beautiful unless is was clear and blue.

It was very hot. Sweat slid between our shoulder blades and those carrying backpacks shifted the weight from shoulder to shoulder, revealing darker patches on their shirts. It was a kind of glory, you understand, to sweat beneath the Austrian sun. To sweat and think about food and feel excited by our ignorance of a new place.

Wolfgang "The Stud" Amadeus Mozart

We found the old quarter, called Mozartplatz after the city's resident darling, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We were left to our own devices for a while, with languid instructions to meet back at some hour I can't remember for our tour.

My chief interest was not food; while abroad, I didn't have much of an appetite. Although the pretzel was good, although the peaches were plump and sweet, I had to force myself to eat. Perhaps it was the excitement.

Our guide was named Philipp, a mild mannered history teacher who seemed so quiet in comparison to our burly Markus in Munich. Not once did Philipp pound his chest and cry "Salzburg!". I didn't mind, though. I liked him too; something in his voice reminded me of an old grade school teacher, who read to us as we cooled off in the air conditioned room after lunch.

In the cathedral (which we entered gratefully after the heat of the day), we sat somewhat irreverently in the pews and listened to our guide. When he finished, I concluded to myself that Mozart must have been great fun to be friends with. He threw grandiose parties, and spent his money like water. He did not, Philipp assured us, live as an impoverished musician (common misconception), but was at times quite wealthy.

Mozart was a genius, granted, but it was his father who recognized his son's talent, and coaxed it out, cultivated it, presented it to the world. Had little Mo been born in the mountains, where there was no need for something as frivolous as music, perhaps his genius would have remained buried. I liked listening to that part.

Casa Mozart

When we left the cathedral, my skin was cool and dry. The hot air became merely a curiosity after the stone-chill inside. We saw the house Mozart was born in, a yellow structure with a system of wires outside acting as doorbells. We passed a gajillion shops selling the famed Mozartkugel.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the fortress, and maybe St Gilgen. 

The old town, with the formidable Hohensalzburg Fortress towering from above

The Train

So we said our farewells 

to the jewel of the German South

and boarded a charcoal monster

that flew ever lower on the map.

Eyes wide in wonder,

cheek pushed against palm

like a prisoner captured

by sunlight for the first time.

Lieblich. 

I wrote this on the train that took us from Munich to Salzburg. In between bouts of childish imagination and pages of The Immoralist, I watched what flew past the windows.

My friend told me once that the German countryside is the stuff of fairytales. But there is something ever so slightly twisted about the faerie folk, don't you think? Something altogether too dainty and pretty- beautiful, but full of guile. No, the sun-drenched meadows fringed with trees as eyes are with lashes came from gentler stuff. The lullabies sung to sleepy babies, the scent of robustness drifting from wildflowers clutched in chubby fists.

There were little cottages with stone foundations, and neatly plowed fields. And there were streams that glistened as they danced over the rocks and muck. How funny it is that the land should look so different than my desert sands back home, yet the light is the same. The very same.

And lord, those mountains. I have never seen anything half so honest as the giants who bent and grazed the heavens with their spines. It seems to me I've forgotten too many of them, although they cried out to me like old friends. What a jolly group, those mountains are, like old men gathered around a circle of glasses.

I didn't even have a window seat.

I wish I'd realized then, as I held an idle pen, what glory there is in trains. Perhaps when I am older I will not remember this. Perhaps I will forget how carefully I tucked my ticket in my journal, how glad I was to find the car nearly empty. Perhaps I will forget the jovial faces of my companions who sat around me.

But I got a window seat on the train that bore us dizzyingly to Vienna.