Observations of Austria...from someone else

I stopped into our neighborhood library the other day when I had some time to kill before the next tram and just grabbed the first book that caught my eye. It's called Neither here Nor there and it's about an American journalist's travels through Europe.

I immediately flipped to the chapter on Austria and some parts had me laughing, while many had me nodding my head saying, "totally". The book is from 1991, but so many of the author's observations still hold true, of course. I'm gonna share some excerpts with you. It's nice to have someone else do the writing...someone who is an actual writer...and who has been to more places in Austria.

At times he can be harsh, and in my opinion, sometimes tries too hard to get a laugh (believe me, I know about this) but he is honest about what he experiences (all over Europe...not just in Austria).

And, by the way, I love going to the library. We have sort of abandoned this idea in America...at least I had in favor of a trip to Barnes and Nobles and a stop inside the Starbucks. This is budget-friendly and there's a certain fun and sense of nostalgia in going to the library. The building's pretty too:




So here we go. In the words of Bill Bryson:

"Innsbruck really is an ideal little city, with solid baroque buildings and a roofscape of bulbous towers. It is carefully preserved without having the managed feel of an open-air museum, and its setting is as near to perfection as could be imagined. At the end of every street you are confronted by a towering backdrop of mountains, muscular and snow-peaked beneath intensely clear skies."

Innsbruck {photo from here}

"..one of my first vivid impressions of Europe was a Walt Disney movie I saw as a boy..The Trouble with Angels. ...what made a lasting indent on me was the Europeanness of the background - the cobbled streets, the toytown cars, the corner shops with a tinkling bell above the door, the modest, lived-in homyness of each boy's familial flat. It all seemed so engaging and agreeably old-fashioned compared with the sleek and modern world I knew, and it left me with the unshakable impression that Austria was somehow more European than the rest of Europe....for the first time in a long while, and even on this trip, I felt a palpable sense of wonder to find myself here, on these streets, in this body, at this time. I was in Europe now."

"This is the down-side of Austria. The same impulse that leads people to preserve the past in their cities leads them also to preserve it in their hearts. No one clings to former glories as the Austrians do, and since these former glories include one of the most distasteful interludes in history, this is not their most attractive feature."


Salzburg {Photo from here}

"I travelled the next day to Salzburg. I found it hard to warm to, which surprised me because I had fond, if somewhat hazy, memories of the place. It was full of tourists and, worse still, full of shops sellings things that only a tourist could want: Tyrolean crap and Alpine crap and crap crap and, above all, Mozart crap - Mozart chocolates, Mozart marzipan, Mozart busts, Mozart playing-cards, Mozart ashtrays, Mozart liqueurs."

"...The streets of the old town, crammed into a compact space between the River Salzach and the perpendicular walls of the Mönchsberg mountain, are undeniably quaint and attractive, but so overbearingly twee as to bring on frequent bouts of dry heaving...When I crossed the river to the more modern right bank, I found I liked Salzburg much better. A long, quiet street of big houses stood overlooking the Salzach and the views across to the old town were splendid: the ancient roofs, the three domed spires of the cathedral and the vast, immensely heavy-looking Hohensalzburg fortress sinking into the low mountaintop at its back. I had a coffee in a Konditorei where every entering customer got a "Grüss Gott!" from every member of the staff. It was like on Cheers when Norm comes in, only they did it for everybody, including me, which I thought was wonderful."

There is actually more I want to share, but I'll stop with the long paragraphs for now and come back later.