Monday 11th October - Day38

The internet here has been a bit unpredictable here so the blogs have been a bit sparse. In fact I can't persuade it to upload photos today either, so no piccies.
Anyway it's Monday and today has been superb. I went into Salzburg for the first time and wandered around the old town looking around and taking it fairly gently. I had no choice because yesterday I drove over to St Gilgen which is a village on one of the lakes in the Salzkammergut which really is an area of outsdanding beauty. I took the cable car up to the top of the mountain - the Zwolferhorn and walked down the mountain back to the village. It was a brilliant walk - 'lovely views' as they say, but the last part was really tiring along paths with uneven stones and quite steep in places. It took about three and a half hours in all. But being all downhill it meant I used muscles that hadn't had a really sustained outing since skiing nearly two years ago with the result that I the legs were pretty stiff today. The problem was that I didn't really know until I tried to walk down steps in Salzburg this afternoon - bit of a delayed reaction. I was glad I had my two walking sticks though; I'd have looked out of place without them because almost everyone has them. The style seems to be to fully extend them and have a really good workout - arms as well as legs. I used them more as a brake.


To be more precise St Gilgen is on the shore of the Wolfgangsee which is one of many very large lakes in the area. Its claim to fame is that Mozart's mother in law was born there and that's where young Wolfgang Amadeus got his name! Not many know that; not many care, I suspect.


There is much to see and do in Salzburg so I hope to be back there at the crack of about 10.30 am tomorrow to continue my explorations. It's odd how every city latches on to its former notable citizens. It's all Mozart here, everywhere you look. The fact is that he couldn't stand the place. He described the Salzburgers as 'peasants with a frightful accent.' After he had an argument with the archbishop about his contract he upped sticks and went to seek his fortune in Vienna. Seems like the archbishops of Salzburg were a pretty tough lot; one of them, Archbishop Wolf  Dietrich, built a palace for his mistress, one Salome Alt. Their progeny ran into double figures. Still, at least it was out in the open in those days! I imagine the current archbishop of Salzburg would have to think very carefully before embarking on a similar project. The palace, Schloss Mirabel, is now privately owned.

Thursday 7th October - Day 34

Vienna to Salzburg.

The weather seemed to be changing today. After many dampish days in Vienna I was on the road at 9.00 am having now cracked the whole business of organisation and packing up. The drive was really good but for the fact that I got severely delayed on the road from Klosterneuburg to the motorway. It's only 25 miles, but it's on backroads through villages. I still didn't fancy the idea of trying to find the motorway by navigating through Vienna. Even coming back from the cemetery yesterday I got stuck in a loop and couldn't find the exit from the motorway to get back. There were three exits in very quick succession and you had to be in the correct lane - it wasn't straightforward, honest  - and that was with GPS. Vienna is complicated.  Unfortunately there was an enormous agricultural vehicle of some sort that took up the whole road and and was limited to 20 kph. It meant that it was 10.30 am before I got to the motorway to really start the journey.

However I have now arrived in Salzburg. The city is only 15 minutes on the bus. The surrounding area looks great - Sound of Music country -  and I think I will stay here for 9 days and not bother with Innsbruck. I need to investigate the motorway from here that goes directly to Venice.

Salzburg Camp site



On Friday morning the sun is streaming through the trees. time for a coffee and then some exploring..................

Wednesday 6th October - Day 33

The weather forecast says that the weather is better to the south and west so I think it's time to move. Yesterday, Tuesday, I went to Vienna again and saw the ramaining things that were on the list. Top of the list was the house where Beethoven spent several years. It is by what was the city wall.  It's a very fine building still and probably a really expensive place to live now and then. As the lady on the cas deskl said you could feel his soul in the house.  

The house where Beethoven lived
4th floor, top left



The other thing yesterday was the St Michael's Church which is next to the Hoffburg which was the Kaiser's palace in Vienna. Now much of it is occupied by Government offices. St michael's church is the one where Mozart's fundral took place and where the first performaance of the 'Requiem' took place. His story was really one of riches to rags. After the superb appartment in Vienna next to the cathedral, courted by princes and with plenty of money and support, it is thought that Mozart took heavily to gambling. Whereas he could often get rich friends to lend him the money it did hit the buffers finally. He died penniless.

There was not much pleasure in walking around in the damp weather but I persevered and ticked off the remaining things on the list then back to the camp site.  



Beethoven lying next to me!

 On Wednesday I almost called it a day in  Vienna and headed for the sun. However I still hadn't been to the Central Cemetery in Vienna to see the Musicians Corner. It would have been a pity not to do this. So on Wednesday I drove there - about 15 miles - to the other side of Vienna. It is an enormous cemetery and in pride of place there are several of the musicians who were key to life in Vienna. Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert make up a central threesome with Brahms and others around the edge. I'm glad I made the effort; it would have been a mikstake not to have. Interestingly there are lots of people on a similar 'pilgrimage' as me.



Monday 4th October - Day 31

The weather today was not brilliant. It was grey and a bit on the cold side. I was going to make it an admin day but went out to look at the local area here. Klosterneuburg is dominated by the monastery up on the hill. It is a functioning monastery with 50 Augustinian Canons basically managing the wine industry in the area. It is a very old foundation. It goes back a thousand years and has been built and rebuilt over the years. It was the Kaiser who founded it and invited the Augustinians to set up there as well. I decided to go for the guided tour. I was the only one when the time came so the guide was happy to do it in English. Then after we had started three Germans joined in so that was the end of the English. The Kaiser also had appartments here and they were very find and well worth seeing. It would have been foolish to come here and not see the splendour of the monastery up on the hill.

Good news about the Ryder Cup but it wasn't the same watching the live updates on Sky.

However, not a day for photos particularly. I don't know where the good weather is at the moment. It says on the news that it's up to 25 degrees north of the Alps in places - but not this place. 

Sunday, October 3rd

Beethoven to his published, Hoffmeister:

' I am out in the country and live a little lazily, just so that I can live much more actively later on. '

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Today has worked out very well. After a not very successful day on Friday I spent yesterday working out exactly where I should go, what to see, and crucially how to get there. This morning therefore I was off at 9.15 am with a clear agenda.  Sunday is a good day for looking around because there is less traffic and the parking tends to be free.

My first stop was Heiligenstadt which is 7km from here.  Beethoven used to spend the summers out of the city and came mainly to Heiligenstadt or Modling both of which are now suburbs of Vienna but used to be a good day’s journey from the city.  The man had just turned the key in the lock of the first house at 10.00am so I had it all to myself.  This was the house where Beethoven wrote a letter (the Heiligenstadt Testament, http://home.swipnet.se/zabonk/cultur/ludwig/beeheil.htm) to his brother in which he made clear that his hearing was becoming worse and was driving him crazy.  The house has an inner courtyard which cannot have changed much at all in the last 180 years. The other house is in the square next to the church and is now a ‘Heurige’ which is a sort of restaurant with the focus on drinking rather than eating. The square would have been better without all the cars parked by people in the church  but it was Sunday after all. And there were other bits of interest in Heiligenstadt............

After that it was back in the car across Vienna to Modling. Modling is a fine little town with old world Austrian charm and but for the fact that it was really cold would have merited more time.  It has the house where Beethoven stayed for several summers  – the Haffner house and where he did some really significant work.

My final place for the day was the town of Eisenstadt. This is where Haydn was employed in the palace of the Esterhazy princes as ‘Kapelmeister’ ie. In charge of music in the court.  I was expecting something on a much more lavish scale from the Esterhazy palace.  I think the family must have fallen on hard times and sold everything except the family silver which was on display. The purpose of the tour is really to see the theatre in the palace which is very fine and in which the court orchestra played and operas were performed and indeed it is still used for concerts.  The lady doing the tour was Hungarian and apologised to the group for her accent not that I’d have noticed but the Austrians and Germans presumably would have. She did her best with a fairly mixed bunch of individuals. The foreigners in the group had a written explanation of the main points. But there were unfortunately a number of individuals – 3 couples to be precise – who kept talking while she was explaining things. I got fed up with it in the end, huffed, puffed, tutted and blurted out in by best German ‘this is impossible.’ It quietened down a bit after that.  These foreigners have no idea how to behave! I said to her afterwards that she needs to tell the likes of these to button it until she has finished. She agreed.

One interesting bit was that I’ve always thought of Atilla, the Hun as not a very nice chap, not one you’d want to come across on a dark night. However he was well up in the social rankings with the Esterhazy’s and she talked about him as might a guide in England talk about Nelson or Wellington. Shows how wrong you can be.

So, I’ve now accomplished a lot of what I wanted to in Vienna. Tomorrow will be a quiet day. There are other bits and pieces to do in Vienna itself but otherwise I can say that I have seen what I wanted to see. From now on everything else will almost be a bonus.

I'll sort out some pictures tomorrow when there is a bit more time.

Friday October 1st - day 28

Vienna is big and frankly complicated!

First complication how to get in there? It's not as bad as buying tickets for trains in England, but there are various combinations and possibilities depending on the number of days and whether you want reductions to concerts etc. When it came to it I just went for the one day 'shopping ticket' which was not the cheapest way. The other thing is that you need two tickets because Klosterneuburg is not part of Vienna. So you need a ticket to Heiligenstadt and then another from there to Vienna. So transport for the rest of the week has yet to be decided. Heiligenstadt however is a name well know to all music students. It's where Beethoven was staying when he wrote his will. But that's another story to explore.

The second complication is that I didn't have a decent street plan. The one in the book didn't have the names of all the streets; the one with the names of all the streets was made of thin paper and fell apart rapidly. So I got  the train in to the central station and then walked -  a lot. It was about 40 minutes from the station to the old town.  I had decided to do a fair amount of walking today to get a feel for the place and I had hoped that in walking there would be lots of things to drop in and see. But Vienna is not quite like that. There is a lot to see but it's all quite far apart and it wasn't along the route from the Franz Joseph Station to the old town. So there is no option but to get my head around the transport system and get the right ticket!

However, on the bright side I visited the 'Mozarthaus' near the cathedral which I stumbled on by accident though would have found eventually. I got a reduction without having to lie about my age - the girl at the desk had no idea about the difference between 57 and 60!

Lots of talk about the cathedral but I found it disappointing. Mass was about to start the first time I tried so the main part was closed. The organ was trundling  through several verses of  'To Jesus' Heart all burning' which I haven't hear for a very long time, fortunately. The organist was, I think, bored with it in the way he was playing it in the way I would have been if I'd been playing it. It was as though he was reading the paper at the same time or thinking what he was going to be doing over the weekend. That's a phenomenon well know to organists! I could only think that it had more 'whizzy' words than the version we used to sing 40 years ago otherwise why bother?

There are people dressed as Mozart trying to flog tickets for concerts. One of them tried to interest me in a ticket. They are 'tourist concerts' with scratch orchestras of people dressed in costume playing 'excerpts' from things. I said I was more interested in proper concerts of Beethoven, for example. He said Beethoven only lived in Vienna for two years and he was German. Wrong on both counts but it's true that there is little or no sign of him -  it's all Mozart and that's not why I came!

So, the sun has shone all day though it has not been very warm because all the buildings are tall and the streets are mostly in the shade, but nice all the same. My homework now is to decide exactly where I want to go in the coming days, and how to get there. The good news is that because I did not stamp my ticket for Vienna transport system (I didn't realise I had to) I've got it to use again. It was explained to me by the lady in the information office at the underground station, so it's official.

Now - starters, steak and mushrooms, cheese and a few glasses of wine.  That's all till tomorrow.