On our second day, some of us got some sleep for the first time since our flight. We took a bus to the Austrian city of Salzburg. Many of us were surprised by the lack of customs or formal border station as we crossed in to Salzburg. As we drove to Salzburg, the city featured in the movie "The Sound of Music" and the birthplace of composer Mozart we will amazed at the shear size and beauty of the Bavarian Alps.
We took a walking tour of Salzburg and saw many of the locations where the Sound of Music was filmed. We also visited the childhood home of Mozart which was also a museum. One of the most impressive sights at the museum was Mozart's childhood violin. Parts of the city were build into the side of a mountain.
After our tour of Salzburg we went to Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat known as the Eagle's Nest. The long bus ride through the winding mountain roads of the Alps was truly aw inspiring. From the base of the mountain to the top and back this was the most profound bus ride any of us had taken. We went through a tunnel and got on an a gold elevator to the summit that sat at a moderately high 1800 meters. The Eagle's Nest has been converted to a restaurant and museum.
We then finished our day at a beer garden in the Northern side of the city.
In Salzburg
Joe posted this great rsunopsis of the day in Salzburg. Given his gracious humility, he left out the part about how much he taught us about German cars as he sat in the front of the bus on the autobahn, tour guide's microphone in hand, providing commentary of each car and motorbike that sped past us. Joe was also the most attentive listener of all the tour guides, soaking in as much knowledge as he could capture. We enjoyed looking at the signs hanging from shops in Salzburg's narrow, traditional streets. We observed that despite a century's old regulation regarding the sometimes extravagant signs jutting out to represent the craft of the shop, global brands have managed to fit their symbols within this very traditional and unchanging form of marketing. In the space that had a brewery from 1580 to the 1980's, McDonalds now occupies the space and the golden arches are embedded in an elaborate cast iron hanging. Next to McDonalds is a Sushi restaurant, similarly squeezing it's "trade" into the historical cast iron overhanging the street. A chinese restaurant, then, doing the same. We noted how such a traditional street accommodates globalization, and our tour guide explained that the chinese restaurant was the very first in Salzburg, starting when American troops stationed in the area after WWII wanted Chinese food. So geopolitical realities were drivers for the globalization. But not we also see the globalization of products ranging from clothing to food, watches to coffee. But everyone now and then we glimpsed a local shop mixed in with the global brands: chocolate shops, salt shops, and, of course, traditional dress such as Lederhosen and Dirndl.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Joe, for giving a great synopsis of the day.