Wherein DF travels to Mitteleuropa and recounts his merrie adventures to his adoring broad readership.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Easing up in S-burg

Br.Rdrsp.:

When planning this trip, I thought of it in three parts: language school in Berlin, a tour through the regal capitals of Central Europe, then...undecided. I suspected that by the time I was done with the big trifecta (Prague, Vienna, Budapest), I`d be ready for a change of pace, and this turns out to have been spectacularly true. Being in those three cities was great, but a trifle exhausting, as I pounded the pavement nonstop in order to make sure that I wrung as much out of each day as possible.

Thus after BPest, I decided to return to Austria, and to Salzburg in particular, where I imagined there would be far less to do. And, following the six-hour train voyage from the BP to the SB, I arrived to find just that: not a lot. Don`t get me wrong, Salzburg is gorgeous, a picture-postcard town that has both retained the character it developed during its time as an indpendent archnbishopric in the Holy Roman Emperor and come into the modern world gracefully. But after taking a quick spin around the old town, I had done pretty much all the main stuff there was to do (save for the castle, about which more later), and could relax over a long dinner and then watch a european world cup qualifier at a sports bar (Faroe Islands 0:2 Ireland) without feeling as though I should have been doing something else in order to savor all the Salz that this particular Burg had on offer.