Hopscotching Around Central Europe—Part I

I have to be perfectly honest. I grouped these cities together because these are the places that made the least amount of impression on me. It's not their fault. By this time we were halfway through our European stretch, and we had hit a sort of plateau on the excitement level. A lot of these places were starting to look the same. We'd visit the old town in each place we went, and lo and behold—a church, a square, maybe a bridge of some sort—you get the idea. We were cultured out. Also a lot of these places we had to hurry through because we had in it the back of our minds that we had to be in Istanbul by a certain date. We spent a great amount of time dilly dallying through France and Italy. Because of this Central Europe had to suffer. Germany and Czech Republic in particular I wish we would have devoted more time to. Anyway, this stretch of the journey was by no means regrettable. We did happen to have our fun, even though my cold was steadily morphing into a sinus infection, and the weather continued to harass us with rain. First up on our journey East—Austria.

The Sound of Music

The scenery was fabulous on our Munich to Salzburg stretch. I was happy to see that Austria was indeed “Sound of Music” country. The hills were alive with something. The whole part of our trip was based around this musical, thanks to Chris. I married this guy, not realizing at all he was such a huge fan of the film. He knew the words to just about every song, and shared knowlege with me that I otherwise wouldn't have known; such as the story that the youngest actress, who played Gretel. She was terrified of water, and when they did the canoe scene, they had to redo it again and again, because the poor girl was in tears at every take. See, I wouldn't have known this. Chris hummed tunes throughout our sojourn in Salzburg, though I had a hard time finding any elements of the movie there.

Salzburg may advertize “Sound of Music” tours and such, but the city seems more rooted in Mozart and other composers of that era. It is an oddly stiff city. Everyone seems just a bit uptight. Walking through the streets you can see that everything is on the formal side, and for backpackers like us, way too expensive. We were out of our depth here, wandering the streets like dirty hippies (well, we felt like dirty hippies). On the first day, we got out of the old town fairly quickly after checking out the prices, and just sat on the banks of the river. The day was sunny and we had a nice snooze. But when we woke up, we're like “Where do we go?” Chris acted the tour guide, and we headed to a park which he claimed some of the scenes from TSOM were filmed. The park did look slightly familiar, though the whole place smelled like manure. People were checking their shoes to see if they stepped in dog poo. It must have been the fertilizer for all the flowers.

We ended up in the old town again in the search for food. The only place we could see that would serve such scruffs as us was the sausage stand. We downed some beer and brats, standing at a portable bar. We watched children chase pigeons around, the pigeons flying into us many times. I would like to say that being a pigeon in this part of the world is not a bad thing. The bread Austrians use for sausages and the like is incredibly flaky. In fact it was a good thing we were eating on the street. Half the bread ended in flakes on our laps. So I didn't feel too bad for the pigeons that were flapping about. They could have flown off for good, but they knew that there were crumbs a plenty once we stood up.

That night we stayed in a dorm room that slept about ten people. After the cute comfortable room in Fussen, this one seemed quite sterile. Nobody talked to each other, coming and going without a word. If you said hi to someone, they would look at you like you were crazy. Everyone went to bed and got up at different times, and this was hard for me, as I like the light on and off at my will. One guy got up at 2:00 in the morning and we had to hear him shuffling about. Chris and I were fairly early risers, so we had to be as quiet as possible as the others slept around us. I knew that by giving up camping, we'd have to sleep as cheaply as possible in Europe. I couldn't complain. Still it wasn't nice. There was a lot to be tolerated. I was starting to feel my age.

The hostel had a redeeming quality in that it served up a fantastic breakfast. This meant a deviation from the standard bread and tomato slices. We actually could help ourselves to hard boiled eggs and canned peaches. This is exciting stuff in hostel world life.

The weather was gray and dismal. How do we spend a day in one of the most expensive cities we've been to, without any standout sights to see? Well I had done my homework, on behalf of my hubby, and found that some scenes from TSOM were filmed in a place called Hellbrunn, just right outside of town. We could catch the bus there.

Hellbrunn exceeded any expectation that I had (I didn't have any to be quite honest). It was a rural setting, the mountains lumbering in the background. The grounds were massive. I couldn't particularly see TSOM other than the pavilion that was used in the “16 going on 17” scene (it's the authentic one). Hellbrunn was delightful with its ponds and swans and jovial statues. We had bought tickets to something called the “Trick Fountains.” It was a guided tour of some gardens; gardens with an extra kick to them we were to find out.

I instantly fell in love with our tour. There were only five English speakers in our group, but the tour guide took the time to interpret to us. The gardens at Hellbrunn, we were to find out, were actually a sort of waterpark for the rich, back in the hot summer days of another era. The duke would invite guests to dinner in his garden, they'd all be sitting there eating their duck consume or whatever, and then have water squirt up through their seats into their arses. Oh you could imagine what a chuckle that would give as all the ladies yelped. The duke's chair wasn't rigged as the others were, so the duke stayed dry.

The gardens were heavily rigged, and you never know when a squirt of water was coming your way. The tour guide seemed most bent on squirting the kids of the group, and then me. I had water shooting at me every which way. It was a drizzly day as it was, so we were bound to get wet, but there's something so enjoyable about getting squirted with water. It was good fun. More than the fountains, the gardens were full of playful spectacles, such as the mechanical village. Operated by water, a little village came to life with tiny figures going round about on wheels. It was a cuckoo clock times a thousand. We also walked through grottos and watched statues come to life. It was playful and witty and thoroughly enjoyable. The Sound of Music it was not. It felt like we had discovered something better.

The mansion itself is filled with oddities. The duke was a collector, and each room was themed. It was alright. We passed through relatively quickly and continued on to the museum at the top of a hill. It was a folklore museum displaying different masks and susperstitions items of the peasant population in Austria. It seemed comical, especially in comparison to Salzburg, which took itself too seriously.

We followed some paths, not knowing where they would go. We came across a place called Theaterstein which was a theatre cut out of rock. We had approached it from the back, and before we knew it we were climbing the rocks. It appeared to be a theatre for dwarfs, or maybe the rock had been worn down with time. It was very hard to squeeze ourselves around. We continued down the path and came to a viewpoint, looking out across the Alps. There were benches and a few couples sat there. Nobody talked; we all just took the view in. No words are needed in times like that anyway. The scenery speaks for itself.

Hellbrunn had proved itself a good trip out of the city. We returned to Salzburg with a smile on our faces. And if that wasn’t enough, it was Sound of Music night at the hostel. That means that at 7:30, the movie was played in the lobby. At first it was just me and Chris and few others who were in the lobby for the wifi. But then a group of young girls moved in, Australians, who it appeared were on a school trip. Their chaperons joined them, and everyone watched it quietly. If I laughed at a scene, someone would turn to glare at me. Of course I was drinking wine, and Chris was drinking beer, so we were a bit more jovial than the others. But some of the chaperone moms were drinking wine as well, so as the movie moved on they began to sing along with the songs and whatnot. I've always said it—booze makes everything better. I've never watched TSOM half-drunk before. It was quite nice. It was also fun to point out the places we recognized, such as the fountain in the square, or the park scene, or the yellow walls at Hellbrunn. It was a nice evening, and a great last impression of Salzburg.

Blue Danube My Ass

Our next stop, only a three-hour train away, was Veinna. I feel bad about this, but I can't remember much about Vienna. My sinus infection was causing me concern, and I was trying to stay out of the rain as much as I could. I was blowing stuff out of my nose into kleenexes; stuff that I had never seen before. It was so fascninating that I would have to show Chris. It was like something you'd find inside the bun of a Burger King Whopper, that mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise (and yes, this has put me off Whoppers for life). Anyway, sinus infection aside, Chris and I were tired. We ventured out into Vienna anyway. It had a completely different feel from Salzburg. In fact, it had a completely different feel all together. We were starting to get the sense that we were in the East. Something on the edge of Soviet perhaps; it's hard to tell what we detected. But Vienna definately had a different feel to it.

We set off with a map but that didn't help much. We didn't know what there was to see. I told Chris I had to see the Danube, as there were so many waltzes from Viennese composers about this beautiful river. We passed through the old town, turning down flyers for concerts handed to us from men in wigs. This was Mozart central, but once again we found ourselves not giving a crap. Nothing wrong with Mozart. We just couldn't afford anything that had to do with him.

We came to a ribbon of water outside of the old town that I took to be the Danube. But it was brown and ugly. We walked down some steps and followed it for awhile, but the graffiti and garbage were taking away from any beauty it might have given. Where was my Blue Danube? I still don't know. But I was sure the tourists didn't come here to see it. Perhaps we were walking beside a tributary. Whatever it was, it was dismal. We turned back to the town.

We did happen to come across some pretty impressive buildings. Vienna had that old world elegance to it, like you could feel that it was a significant city at one time. The buildings were a bit on the dirty side, as if restoring them wasn't a top priority in this city. The size of them were impressive enough, and I spent about a minute trying to envision the glamour and culture that existed here at one time. But then Chris and I gave up and headed back to the hostel.

Where the buildings had failed to impress us, the street performers stepped in and grabbed our attention. The first was a dance troupe of witty, but rough, breakdancing teenagers. One of them had the ability to spin on his head at different speeds, and this was impressive enough to me. They entertained us for about a minute or so, then we walked down the street to find a group of people just standing around this guy with dredlocks, supposedly levitating in midair. Everyone was bewiledered by his little trick. I wasn't as taken with him as the others. I saw something like this before in York, where some guy seemed suspended in midair, with just a stick in hand to keep him grounded. Obviously it has to be something to do with the stick. People were waving their hands around below him, as if there was an invisible chair there. In contemplating this trick, I see that there's probably some kind of brace there to hold him up. Granted the stick would have to be grounded fairly good to hold the weight, which leads me to think of these street “performers” and when they set up. They'd have to do it when no one's around, right? I mean you can't have the trick given away from people standing around watching. So do they set up early in the morning or what, and just sit there all day? That's the real mystery to me.

If there was more to Vienna, I don't remember it. Forgive me Vienna, we probably didn't do you justice. Chris and I were grappling with our impression of Austria as it was. The Austrians seemed like a serious bunch, not really extending a friendly hand or even a smile. They spoke German, but it wasn't Germany. The Austrian culture, I just don't get it. I like to think of Hellbrunn though, and the playfullness of the gardens there. There is fun in Austria, you just have to go out and find it.