It’s a Von Trapp!

Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Julie Andrews, the list of prodigious Austrian musical talent goes on and on and nowhere exemplifies her harmonious heritage more than our second destination. Following a few drinks over the ice hockey in the western town of Feldkirch, we spent a couple of weeks bouncing around Bavaria before re-entering Austria in the most melodious of cities: Salzburg. The country’s fourth largest, to say she has a rich history in music would be a monumental understatement. Birthplace of the aforementioned Amadeus, home of the largest classical music festival in the world, and, of course, set of the 1965 lyrical blockbuster The Sound of Music which, until recent times, was greatly unpopular with the majority of Salzburgers.

Not one Lowri Hancock. Or indeed the other three hundred thousand tourists that follow in the footsteps of the Von Trapp clan each year. Having somehow managed to avoid watching the film every Christmas for thirty-three years, my partner would no longer facilitate such heresy, sitting me down and forcing Edelweiss upon me with great gusto. After more than three hours of crooning kids, I can safely say that it is not one of my favourite things although it did start to grow on me towards the end, like a mouldy cheese. What is certainly true is that it does heighten one’s curiosity for exploring the different filmsets located around the city and surrounding hillsides including the particular hill which comes alive to the sound of you know what, which we couldn’t be bothered to climb.

With film poses mimicked and photographed, we could absorb the rest of what is a quite charming and youthful city given the three universities and the large number of students it comprises. Street cleanliness, for which I have found Austria to be particularly keen, is at its intimidating best in Salzburg with the dread of dropping a crumb or deserting a muddy footprint on her salubrious streets a genuine phobia. Fearing banishment when the structural integrity of my Viennese apfelstrudel was called into question before a whole section abandoned my quivering grip and hit the deck, I dashed to a nearby Mozart-themed café, of which there are thousands, and awaited a pigeon saviour to cover my crumby tracks. After none appeared (because an Austrian pigeon is rarer than an Austrian panda), a stern street cleaner, of which there are also thousands, deposited my dessert into his bulging bin to the gasps and huffs of locals all around.

Hohensalzburg Fortress, atop Festungsberg ‘mountain’, dominates the Salzburg skyline and can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. At over two hundred and fifty metres long, it is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe and, according to residents, unequivocally the best. Explaining to them that I come from a country where we have far more impressive castles at the bottom of our gardens that house the local bat and rat populace, the possibility of banishment only increased. Clearly, they hadn’t beheld a Caernarfon or a Kidwelly or a Castell Coch at their fall floodlit finest.

Jumping before we were pushed, we returned to the road and began the rising route towards the iconic Austrian village of Hallstatt. As it was getting late, we pulled into a layby about ten kilometres shy of the settlement and ordered a hot dinner from a shed-cum-café by the side of the road. Room for no more than three diners and a pug, we were afforded the most welcoming of welcomes by the fiftyish couple who presumably owned it while being plied with some homemade spiced jam and a plethora of trip recommendations for the forthcoming decade. They also approved our overnight stay in the car park and granted us permission to marry any of their children. We politely declined.

Arising the next morning in the Austrian Leigh Delamare was slightly more pleasurable than its British equivalent while also more convenient as it was just a short drive from Hallstatt: a place that everyone at some point has seen a photograph of. Traditional alpine houses and an impressive church sandwiched between a glacial lake and imposing mountains; the epitome of a nation is here. Unfortunately, van parking is not and so, after being warned by the angriest Austrian who’s ever lived (well, apart from that one) to keep on moving, we could only catch a glimpse of the village from around the corner, down the lens of my fifty-megapixel wide-angled Samsung which was, by all accounts, not quite what we were hoping for. Terrorised by tourists, who can blame them? I’ve attached a stock photo below my own to show what we would have seen had Angry Arnold been more palatable. Let’s get to Graz…

J