So from Switzerland I found myself heading further east and a little north as I made my way to the picturesque Austrian town of Salzburg. I arrived in the early hours of the morning as the sun gleamed through the trees and I found myself in a quiet town of ice cream coloured Pastelle Buildings. Salzburg attracts surprisingly large crowds of tourists most of who are here to see t Mozart's birth house and later living quarters. What i found particularly charming about Salzburg are the craft markets along the riverside and the Fresh food markets in the city squares. There is also a beautiful castle on the mountainside as well as several Austrian Baroque churches, which have a unique appeal.
SO looking at the map of where I was I noticed that Munich really wasnt that far away and would even provide an easy detour to get to Vienna. Munich is the capital of the Bavarian region of Germany, and it was with unexpected delight that I would come to know the Bavarian people. The jolly Bavarians are rather friendly which is no surprise as they clock in an average of 1.5l of beer a day each, and i found myself personally escourted to my hostel by a kind Bavarian Oupa who was utterly chuffed that I was from South Africa and pointed out his house far across the distance should i require any help. That night I slept twelve hours straight and woke up to find Munich come alive on its 849th Birthday with mini concerts and Oktober fest-like Beergardens everywhere.
Ofcourse, while I paint you a rosy coloured post card, there also bad experiences in between like being harrased by the big-as-a-brickhouse Bavarian police for not having a metro ticket. Naturally the only way to ease out of such a tight situation is to play to dumb naive tourist, smile alot and pretend to have no money at all. After all none of the information is in English and it took and German lady ten minutes to explain the strange way the Munich metro system works to myself and some French tourists. DEspite all the festivities and the wealth of history that Munich ahs to offer, I managed to fit in time to travel to Nuremburg for the day to look at the anitquated city centre and walk through the oriniginal Nazi rally grounds. Nuremburg was the propaganda mill of the thid reich and has some of the only remaining Nazi Architecture as well as a somewhat disturbing, yet truly fascinating Museum.
With such a rich taste of Germany it was hard to believe that Munich was actually a convenient transit point on my itenary as my original destination was Vienna. In its hay day Vienna was the musical Capital of the western world and houses the graves of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert just to prove its impressive case. The city centre has a wealth of old architecture, scultptures and impressive geomtrically aligned parks. And yet here it the cultural heart of a foreign land was where I found my closest encounter with home. While at the Cannes film festival i received an email from a guy who said he had studied through AFDA and was curently living in Vienna and encouraged me to come through at some point on my travels. We continued to mail back and forth and as it happens, the week the I was arriving co-incided with a Richard Linklater Retropsective at the local film museum where Linklater himself would be giving talks after each screening. I was lucky that Manjo had booked us both a seat, and we spent an evening listening to one of my favourite directors of all time, talk with added skepticism about his career. Linklater is a surprisingly down to earth man from the unique artistic environment of Austin Texas which he spent much over the talk reminiscing about.
Vienna was a strange addition to my travel experiences in that it has a wealth of cultural experiences to offer and yet it lacks atmospheric presence of its own. It is possibly the most self contained city I have come across in Europe and as a result I have to say it left an impression that had much to be desired, and yet I hope to give it another chance again some day.
