Holiday in Austria, Part VI: "Reminiscensing"

The following morning I woke up at 6 a.m. pretty much on the nose. I went for a walk again, as slowly as an elderly lady due to the exercise of the preceding day, and enjoyed it. Breakfast was nice again, and after it we piled into the car and set off for a long journey around the places where Papa has lived. The first place was a town near Lambach and the farm on the Traun River where Opapa and the children once raised pigs (-> sausages) and cows (-> milk) and sheep. The second place was Salzburg, where the family lived for four months in relative poverty and on rations, if I remember the tale correctly, of sardines and grey bread.

This time the scenery was so immensely idyllic that from time to time it was difficult to grasp that it was real and not imagined. First we meandered around a mountainside to reach the Attersee, and once there saw before us a picture-book view of a vast spreading lake, perfect green hills loosely scattered over with snug farms, and bright villages clustered at the water's edge. Later the land just lazily sloped down at either side in similar perfection, and at the crest of one mountain I was surprised to recognize a scene that I had seen in a dream. In that dream there was also a tall hill overgrown with sunbleached grasses, and a forest of pines or firs reaching over the crest a little to the left and more to the right, but leaving an unbroken gap of blue sky between them. Whether horses or cows grazed on the field in the dream I don't remember; in real life it was cows.

Because of the constantly threatening rain and the fact that the abbey appeared to be closed we didn't linger in Lambach, though said abbey is apparently well worth seeing. Instead we drove off into the countryside straight away, and with a bafflingly precise sense of direction, Papa navigated a series of apparently featureless fields and found the farm. This farm is now embowered in a tall rim of trees, through which the cornfields, Traun, etc., are brokenly visible; the field at the river is overgrown by deep grass; a dusky reddish hollyhock grows at the house; and the house itself is big and, though as far as I could see its floor plan would probably be a classic square, complicated-looking, but not at all luxurious. It is, so Papa and later Aunt L. said, lamentably run down. The car tucked behind the house had a Linz license plate, which would also appear to indicate that the present landlord or -lady is considerably absentee.

Then we went on to Salzburg. As is unsurprising given the fact that I had slept around six hours after a very demanding day, I drifted off to sleep. Upon waking I found that we were essentially at the destination, and Papa curved up the roads to the church of Maria Plain, which had the effect of being a well-kept open secret. We parked there and walked up to the church proper, a summery edifice in a yellow, white-trimmed, and black-roofed colour scheme and in a hilltop setting that reminded me forcibly of the chapel my friend and I visited in Würzburg last summer. At the corner, at the top of the path from the parking lot, there is a white marker to commemorate the 80th birthday of one of the Austrian emperors — Franz Joseph I, perhaps. A lawn runs down toward the city of Salzburg and, off to the right, the abruptly rural villages, forest-steeped, in its orbit.

Salzburg turned out to be a littler city than I had anticipated. Its population, as a certain online encyclopaedia informed me later, is around 150,000. From the vantage-point of Maria Plain we saw the grassy expanse of airport to the right, the swell of Hohensalzburg with its wide crown of pale medieval fortress and immediately underneath and to its side older and elegant buildings, the mountains rising heavily above, a curve of the Salzach River in the centre, and then lots and lots of unappealing modern housing and industrial construction. The Hohensalzburg was luring but the rest of it was a major disappointment, probably because I've been carrying around a mental image or impression of the city for a while, which was perhaps fixed by my trip to Munich, and whatever I expected was certainly not that.

With our feet hastened by the dark grey raincloud that was pouring down from the mountain behind the city, we returned to the car and drove into the city. Papa manoeuvred a little tentatively around the streets at the left, past Brutalist apartment buildings that spoke of impoverished city suburb and past tidier houses with gardens that evoked Berlin-Dahlem a little, and near the tracks of the railway we came across the house in whose ground floor Papa had once lived. We only rolled past, but were pleased to have found it, especially considering the fact that we didn't have a proper map. Then we followed the railway track, and once again there was a scene that I recognized from a dream, not in its details but the general effect, and it was just an odd scene of urban wasteland.

At length we were curving around the streets of the old quarter, which underwhelmed me. There were tour buses, taxis, and everything was a bit chaotic; the apartment house façades were lacklustre and altogether inferior in originality and beauty to many of the ones I could see in Berlin just by walking down the street; the modern architecture looked, or so I thought, flamboyantly and soullessly ambitious; and it just wasn't especially pretty. We passed the entrance to the Mirabell Palace, which did look nice but I only caught a glimpse of the gardens through an archway. At some point we also saw the house where Mozart once lived, which looked more like a gift shop than a residence to me, and which was surrounded by a loose ring of tourists who had to hold back because a foreign dignitary was coming to visit it. There were six security men in navy-blue uniforms and berets at the entrance, and as we drove on a cavalcade of black compact cars and vans, sandwiched between two police vans, passed us. J. saw the flag on one of the cars but we haven't properly identified it yet.

Then we wound up past the Salzburger Festspielhaus, which I didn't see properly because I was on the wrong side of the car, so I only got the impression of an equine mural in pastel colours that didn't really speak to me, and I don't even know if that actually was the Festspielhaus. I did see a poster for a concert with Christine Schäfer, though, which is something . . . I guess. (c: Anyway, what was gripping was the rock face that rises above it and going through the mountain tunnel, which one doesn't precisely expect to find in the heart of a city. Based on my express desire Papa tried to find the parking lot for the Hohensalzburg fortress, so that we could explore it a little, but it was in vain. I think the parking lot is actually tucked away in a recess of the mountain. The others were eager to get something to eat and go home, but I thought that it would be nicer to take a little more time so that the experience wouldn't feel throwaway and rushed and so that the visit to Salzburg would end on a good note. Ironically I think it was the tedious to-ing and fro-ing around that occupied the next half hour or so that did help make the experience feel less rushed. In any case, we were frankly all grumpy and eager to get out of Salzburg.

What did make the trip end on a good note was our crossing of a bridge over the Salzach at a remove from the city centre, where the forest began again and isolated mansions that must have been built in the 18th century or so peeked majestically out from the tree crowns, and where the river itself looked tranquil and beautiful. If I return to the city I will try firstly to explore the old city by foot, which should be much less awkward than by car, and secondly to find the serene spot at the riverbanks again. And I might try it in autumn or winter.

Anyway, we drove back to Bad Goisern, which took an hour or so, and every time a pub or other eatery would come up and then recede into the distance someone would deliver a eulogy to the probable deliciousness of the foregone meal. I was fuming for various reasons, not least because of my eatery-related hang-ups. It's difficult for me to eat at a restaurant unless I know or otherwise trust it, just like when I was little. Secondly, being served makes me extremely uncomfortable, except in the rare cases where the waiter or waitress is naturally hospitable and enjoys his or her job, and where the fact that the customer is paying for services rendered and that there is a nasty element of classism about it slips one's mind.

The other major objection I had was that, if it makes sense, there are some luxuries that feel necessary (e.g. the trip to Austria and the integral gasoline, and car and cottage rental, costs) and others that really don't (e.g. a restaurant meal when we could have eaten delicious and filling and less expensive food at the cottage). I've trained myself not to buy unnecessary luxuries, and I've even trained myself not to want them. (It feels unhealthy, and if it weren't for the years of guilt about not having a job I don't think it would be endurable, but that's the way it is.) So it annoys me, until I reason myself out of the unworthy feeling, when others don't exercise as much self-restraint. Either way, I didn't express these thoughts or talk much at all, except to say that we were certainly not starving so there was no reason to fuss; I was in a glum mood and, though fairly certain that I was being ridiculous, didn't know how to snap out of it.

Back in Bad Goisern we went to a pub where the others (minus Papa, who stayed at home to play the cello and relax, and me, who was fast asleep) had gone on the first evening, and had a hearty meal of beef broth with parsley and shreds of egg frittata; beer or mineral water or sparkling apple juice (in Austria that mostly isn't called Apfelschorle but Prickel-something); the main course; and a tall glass of vanilla ice cream, whipping cream ("Schlagobers" in the local dialect), fudge sauce, and twin wafer pipes; and coffee. The main courses were a "Fitnessteller" of salad (chicory, lettuce, grated carrot, corn, etc.) and fried chicken; a pan of sauerkraut, ham, and fried potatoes with an egg, sunny side up, on top (this is what I had); a Wiener Schnitzel, turkey or pork, with buttery potatoes and what looked like cranberry sauce, as well as the choice of salad from the bar; and semolina dumplings. Altogether the food was hearty and geared toward those who want a solid meal without frills. As for the ambience, it was rather nice. One feature that amused me is the blue-trimmed cloth coverings for the lampshades that hung from the ceiling, which much resembled one leg of a Victorian bloomer.

By the time we went home again I was in a better mood.