salzburg

When I was young, my family would day trip to the coast to visit my grand parents. My mum and I discovered that the trip was about the same length as the entire score of The Sound of Music, cover to cover. I've always had a soft spot for the movie. I do enjoy films with intervals.

I came to Salzburg with every intention to re-enact the entire script, which I didn’t do, and to sing some songs – inevitably badly -- in tree-lined alleys and atop mountains spotted with lakes, which I did. This was a matter of necessity for me.

 

Cycling around the city on tour with a Sound of Music enthusiast proved satisfyingly dorky. I got through the disappointment that the guide wasn't wearing an exact replica of one of Maria's outfits from the movie or being trailed by seven sweet Austrian children. Just. It was called Frauline Maria's Bicycle Tours. You understand my disappointment. Aside from the low-down on the filming of the movie, we got a bit on the history of the city. The oldest restaurant in Europe (we’re talking 7^th century here) is tucked away in the corner of a cobbled square, and there’s a bakery still run by monks in an old watermill beside the cemetery. There’s a fairy tale castle on the hill. We managed to climb to the top of this hill twice in one day without actually making it inside the castle. Don’t ask me why because I’m still not even sure.

The white turreted castle and the blue river all criss-crossed with walking bridges and the narrow cobbled streets of the old town make the place quite magical. Salzburg’s buskers are some of the most talented I’ve heard, and their music rises above the stone and pretzel stands (giant pretzels covered with chocolate and nuts that look and smell so delicious it’s painful). They do things here like hold organ concerts in the baroque cathedral. That should say it all.

This is a city leaning heavily on the past. Horse and cart rides, Julie Andrews and Mozart are the drawcards it plays. Oh, and pretzels shaped like treble clefs and cute signs on the public toilets. That said, I’m not sure what else it’d go with; from what I saw of the club strip on a Wednesday night they aren’t getting close to selling themselves as a social hub. It had that disco lights on an empty dance floor and thudding music with no bodies to absorb it and that why-even-bother-paying-your-bar-staff kind of feeling, you know it. In many tourist towns every night is the weekend. I can't judge for sure, but I don't know whether the weekend would change much for Salzburg except the number of shops open in the old town and the quantity of photos being taken in the cathedral. This place is a city that feels like a small town. Luckily, it has enough of Julie Andrews and Mozart to hold its own.