Salzburg Pictures Are Up!

Sorry everybody for the slow posting here. The Salzburg, Austria pictures are now up on the photo site, so you can click on the link on the right hand margin, or HERE to see them, as well as the old Budapest photos for any of you laggards out there. As with the previous set, once in the photo site, you can select "slide show" to see the photos on a roll, or click and and advance each photo seperately, which allows you to read my marginally coherent commentary and comment on the pics yourself. My overall impressions:

- It's a beautiful city on a river ringed by the Austrian Alps-- in other words, everbody's dream version of an old European city, except this one is real. To steal a line from Douglas Adams, it's the kind of scenery that makes you want to break out in spontaneous applause. As nice as these photos turned out, the real thing is even more pretty.

- Despite it being touristy, I really liked Salzburg (and B was absolutely bananas ga-ga over it-- this must be how I look at an auto show). It's a really charming small city with things to see, places to go, and things to do. It was Mozart's birthplace and primary residence for many years (this is referenced everywhere you look, to almost comic levels), and it's a music lovers' paradise-- there's a free concert being put on almost every day of the year, usually by world class musicians.

- If you're not there for the fact that it's Mozart's birthplace (and if you didn't know it beforehand, you sure as shootin' will know within about 10 minutes after arriving in town), then English speakers are obviously there for The Sound of Music, which was largely filmed in Salzburg and the immediate area.

- Interesting thing about The Sound of Music: Most Austrians have not seen it. It was only about 9 years ago that this film was dubbed into German. The Von Trapp family story is known in Germany and Austria-- but through a different movie, the beloved German film Die Trapp Familie. The Sound of Music, an English-language musical with a (mostly) British and American cast, was immediately discounted as a pale imitation, and with the time lag between its initial release (1965) and its eventual dubbing into German (2000) is also very late to the party. Rest assured though that everybody in Salzburg has seen it-- 44 years after its release, the film still draws literally hundreds of thousands of fans a year to the city. This may break a few hearts but the movie took MANY Hollywood liberties, far too numerous to explain here-- another reason the Austrians don't care much for it. And the song "Edelweiss" is not an old Austrian folk song; it's something Rodgers & Hammerstein cooked up for the play and movie.

- Prepare yourselves for a bit of sticker shock. The Euro exchange rate is as bad as ever to the US Dollar, but some of the prices from the downtown stores bordered on price gouging: €7.40 for a 4-pack of AA batteries, and €2.70 for a small bottled water work out to $9.90 and $3.60 for all my American friends. Like I said, it's touristy. But reading up and being smart goes a long ways. It's a college town, and the locals sure aren't going to pay top dollar for their apple streudel (the local delicacy; the secret is in the sauce BTW)-- figure out where the students and local residents eat and shop, and you'll find better food and realistic prices.

Barring a quick 3-day jaunt to a close-by German city in the interim, our next scheduled trip will be to Dublin, Ireland in June-- but that's a month away. In the meantime, click on the links and enjoy the photos!