Thursday, April 19, 2007

This post is adapted from a note I started writing while in Salzburg, thus my sitting on the bank of a river during the writing.

I’m in the midst of my second expedition outside of Konstanz, this time in Salzburg, Austria. I arrived here yesterday with Chaz, a B-section guy I hadn’t met until getting to Germany. Classes were cancelled this Wednesday, and we were the only two people from the Kettering group who didn’t have class on Thursdays, so we decided to make the most of our extended weekend. It was only by the skin of our teeth that we made our train yesterday morning. The train left the station in Konstanz at 5:26 in the morning, meaning we had to walk most (if not all) of the way to the train station because of the limited bus service at that hour. We had planned to meet outside the main residence building at 4:30am in order to have ample time to walk the entire distance. Unfortunately, Chaz decided he was going to get extremely drunk the prior evening, and didn’t get out of bed until I came into his room around 4:55 and threw cold water on his face.

By the time we finally got on the road, we only had 20 minutes to cover about 2.5 miles. I didn’t think we had any chance, since we were lugging backpacks and I could tell Chaz was still quite intoxicated, but never the less, we started running as fast as we could. I think I stopped three or four times to give a couple dry heaves (if I had eaten breakfast, it certainly would have been on the sidewalk). When we got to Zähringer Platz, the main shopping and bus transfer station north of the river, I saw a bus on the other side of the large intersection getting ready to pull out. Much to the displeasure of my stomach and bowels, I sprinted for it and managed to hit the door button just as the bus was beginning its forward motion. Fortunately, the doors opened and the bust waited for us. I was again glad that I hadn’t eaten, since that last burst of effort would have made me vomit on the woman sitting in front of me. The pain ended up being worth it though, since we did successfully catch our train.

Six hours and some change later, after a couple train changes and about an hour layover in Ulm (which, by the way, has a ginormous cathedral, the history of which I should research (along with pre-1066 British history, and the history of the fortress in Salzburg), we finally arrived in Salzburg. [After my return to Konstanz, I found, via Wikipedia, that that cathedral actually has the tallest church spire in the world, standing 570ft high.]

The first stop, after checking into our hostel, was Mozart’s birth house. Hmm… what to say about it? Well, it’s a house, and Mozart was born there. They had some interesting artifacts there, but the collection was sparse, and many of the paintings and documents in the house (if not most) were reproductions. Who wants to pay to see a photocopy of a score written by Mozart? I think we got taken by this tourist trap.

Next up was a climb to the top of the hill on which the city fortress is located. After fighting our way through what seemed to be an Italian middle school fieldtrip group, we were able to pay our admission and enter the fort. It was a fairly interesting structure, but had disappointingly few informative markers. All the buildings had plaques inscribed with the name of the building and the year it was built, but if you wanted to know more than that, you had to drop 1€ into an information machine to get any sort of real description. Chaz and I split the cost of one of these (since there are two telephone receiver looking earpieces for people to listen to), but we decided it probably wasn’t worth the 7€ it would cost for the full tour of the place. On our way out, we also discovered that that admission we had paid was for the museum that must have closed just as we entered the fort, since we never found said museum (probably behind some large, closed metal door), and also saw a sign on our way out that said admission was free after the museum closed. Lame.

We then had dinner at some little restaurant/carry out place, where I had an overpriced chicken schnitzel (which I found out is actually just a fried chicken patty), and then returned to the hostel and watched The Sound of Music (shown every night at 8pm!). I think if I lived or worked in this town, I’d get tired of hearing about Mozart and The Sound of Music pretty quick. I guess they’re good for the local economy though.

Today mostly consisted of hiking up another hill, touring a couple churches, and hanging out on the riverside, which is where I am currently. At the top of the hill, there was some old looking building that, according to some sign, used to be an artillery emplacement, but I said to Chaz that it was probably some overpriced restaurant. Lo and behold, I was exactly right, though not terribly surprised, due to the presence of two restaurants in the fort we toured the day before.

After being chastised by the lone waiter for lounging about the patio and not ordering anything, we got some overpriced cheese and bread, and ended up talking to an English couple, who remarked that they had ordered drinks because they too had been scolded. I asked them what cities to see if I went to England, and I think their general recommendations were Devon and Cornwall, and Oxford if I had time.

When we returned to the hostel in search of some cheap dinner at the cafeteria, we found a Korean looking guy had joined our room, but I was quite surprised when he introduced himself as “John from Australia.” I’m used to Asian people having American and British accents, but Australia is a new one for me. Anyhow, Chaz and I talked to him for a while, and we all decided to go down the Irish pub later that evening to check out the live music there. (Since there seems to be an Irish pub in just about every city I’ve ever been to, I would be exceedingly delighted if in Dublin there were a German pub.)

John, it turned out, was from Perth, and was living in London on a “working holiday” visa, meaning he worked for six months, then would take that money and spend the next six months traveling. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. He had stopped off in Salzburg on his way to some ski resort in the Austrian Alps that was owned by a friend of his, and after deciding that Chaz and I were pretty much the coolest Americans he’d ever met (I’d venture a guess that he hasn’t met many Americans), he invited us to come along with him, since he could probably get us a discount on lift passes. I had already decided I was going to head back to Konstanz, since I had come down with a bit of a cold, and figured I should take the rest of the weekend to recuperate, and Chaz also declined, since he didn’t bring any clothes suitable for skiing and had already made plans to meet some other Kettering guys in Vienna. After a few more hours of talking and Chaz and I both mentioning that we’d like to visit Australia someday, we also found ourselves the recipients of a standing invitation for free rooms at John’s place in Perth if we ever found our way out there. I’ll have to remember that, since I’m sure I’d take him up on it if I had the opportunity.

The next day around noon, Chaz and I got to the train station, with him headed to Vienna, and me going back to Konstanz, by way of Radofzell, by way of Ulm. To be honest, for a six and a half hour trip, it’s really not bad at all. Time seems to go by much faster on the train, certainly compared with being on an airplane. This can probably be attributed to 2nd class trains actually having a tolerable amount of legroom, as well as changing trains giving you a chance to really walk around and stretch a bit.

Upon returning to Konstanz around six in the evening, I was under the impression that I would head straight home and take a nap, preferably one lasting until the next morning, but instead, I ended up taking a long walk from the mouth of the Rhine along the edge of Lake Konstanz, around the cape, and through another of the several forests in the area, back to Jacob-Burckhardt. There are two Romanian girls, Maria and Claudia, who I’ve become friends with, and I suggested to them last week that we have a picnic this weekend, so I figured I should scout the place for suitable picnic locations. Sadly, for as many natural wonders as Konstanz contains, beaches – at least the real kind, with sand – it has not. All the beaches here consist of big rocks that look terribly unpleasant to walk or sit upon. Oh well. Discovering this other forest still made it a worthwhile venture, not to mention that the walking is good for keeping me from getting fat, since I’ve discovered that the 0.60€ ice cream that is sold everywhere in this city is extremely yummy and a good way to rid my pockets of unwanted change.

Okay, that’s all for now.