Just – too many notes !

( me and Wolfgang both, I’m afraid – this is not a short post).

Wednesday 25 March looks like last dry day  before the weather breaks, so time for a rail trip to Culture.  “Ich bin ein Salzburger ” – for the day, at any road.

 

It’s a very smooth journey east to Salzburg. Alps to the south, open valley to the N ( the German border). I had planned a gentle walk round the old centre, but that’s before I got there and appreciated the dramatic topography of Salzburg. 

All the pretty, baroque, churchy bits are in a flat valley around the wide, shallow Salz,  but then there are improbably vertical walls carved out of the rock outcrop just to the SW, on top of which is ye olde Festung Hohensalzburg ( or “Fortress of Raised Sodium ” , see evidence at  St Augustiner. ) And I couldn’t miss THAT. Hence the odd  elevation  profile of the walk ( in turquoise, at bottom of map above).

Mirabel Palace Gardens

So starting from the station at North of the map, first stop is  the location for iconic yodelling film scenes.

The gardens are full of intricate flower displays and statuary of cavorting dwarves. ( Best not to examine them). Moving hurriedly on to..

Altstad (Old Town)

A stack of impossibly photogenic baroque towers, churches, grand squares , and narrow ginnels – stacked up against the crazy vertical sides of the castle rock above.

While my guidebook notes rave about the architecture , I’m more moved by a small plaque on the wall of the Residenzplatz. It is in remembrance of Nazi book-burning in this very square in 1938,  and accompanied by a well-known quote :

Where they burn books, they will eventually burn people.

Heinrich Heine, Jewish-German poet

Thank heavens that in our enlightened age no-one is destroying learning or threatening the right to hold different opinions.  Eh ? 😔

Dom (Cathedral)

I was persuaded to splash 9 euros on admission to the Dom, as there was a lunchtime organ recital.  Now, I’m not talking one organ. Not even a pair.   They possessed AND DEMONSTRATED no less than  5 ( FIVE) of the pipey buggers. 

4 of them were identical, and spaced at 90 degree intervals  round the base of the enormous dome. 2 organists took turn to play them in pairs,  “Duelling Pianos”-style.

Then a grand climax on “The Great Organ” (fnaaar) down the far end of the main hall-y bit (I’m sure you will know the proper churchy name for it – Nave ? Apse ?  Mall ? Episcopalia ?).

And then there was the CRYPT. Most bizarre. They had excavated down to find previous prototypes, all running at different angles from the current floor plan. But rather than leave them just as an interesting set of foundations, they had decorated them with a random display of spooky shadow puppetry. No explanation.

The Fortress / The Rock

Probably my favourite bit was walking along the top of the rock from the fortress.

Fab views down over the city, and southwards to the Alps, from the rock on which the fortress is built. Unlike somewhere like Edinburgh, this means the castle is not in the middle of the town, but stuck right on the edge. Looking down towards the river, you realise the city builders have just sliced through a whole chunk of natural rock extrusion, leaving a most effective defensive wall between them and the Alps .  But I’d hate to lug my groceries up from town every week. Maybe that’s why they built a funicular up, and got tourists to subsidise it ( not me, obvs).

Anyway, we need a few words about the city’s favourite son …

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Born here. Hated it. Left. Stayed away.

Despite this, he has been cynically repurposed as a tourist magnet. I glimpsed his humiliated ghost trying to hide behind a shop door, aghast at the crass exploitation of his image.

After all that culture stuff, I was in need of refreshment.

St Augustiner Brewery / Beer Hall

The Augustiner Brewery is a no-nonsense, get-it-down-yer-neck place.  It has four or five large beer halls,  and aims to supply all the major food groups in one sitting :   beer, carbs , fat and salt.

A group of experienced-looking blokes were clustered round the locked entrance as I showed up, all thirsting for the 15:00 opening time. Following them in, I was faced by a wall full of ceramic tankards ( litre and half-litre variants). System is to grab one, pay for a couple of drinks tickets at a cash-only till, then hand tankard+ticket to the barman who sploshes a quantity of your chosen bevvy into it. With the tankard being opaque, a rapid delivery technique, and a thick head on the beer, it felt like I was getting less than a full 500ml. There didn’t seem to be any Weights & Measures appeals process, so no point worrying about it.

Then I headed for the food counter.

It was, basically , meat.

Large chunks of pork, some general sort of meatloaf, and other pink/brown stuff, no labels.  I pointed to the roast pork, expecting a few slices , but the server simply split the huge lump in two, and then shredded my half. Big dollop of mustard, optional sauerkraut, 3 wooden forks stabbed into it, that’s your lot.

I tried to ask about veg/potato options and was waved away down the corridor – where I added some potato wedges slathered in salt for the full gourmet experience.

Plonked myself down at a table and spent an hour wrestling with the crackling , and feeling my arteries stiffen. Very out of practice. Both beers I tried were good ( Märzen and …summat else. Not lager).

The rain started just after I got back to the train – A grand day out !