Salzburg by road

I may have mentioned once or twice my love of road travel (see here). No crowded airports, dependence on schedules or faff about luggage and weight restrictions. Just throw all you like in the back of the car and drive to your own tune.

In Schengen Europe sans frontières, country borders tend to whizz past quite frequently, and with nothing more to mark them than a discreet sign on the roadside; blink and you've missed it.
So the week before last, taking in eight countries in eight days was less frantic than it sounds, involving a leisurely, unhurried pace by car.

Remich, Luxembourg, in the wine-making Moselle valley

Leaving London at lunchtime on Saturday, I was in Luxembourg, via France and Belgium, by late afternoon, for a night stop-over in picture-pretty Remich, on the bank of the Moselle river and vineyards.

The next morning we were in Germany in under 5 minutes, driving south-east ... bypassing industrial Karlsrühe and Stuttgart ... taking the ring road around Munich (sadly, it's been on my bucket list for ages) ... to Salzburg - only about 10 kms across the border of Bavaria. We've crossed the Moselle, Saar, Rhine and Danube in one day.

First impressions: entering the city in a summer rain shower through this extraordinary archway cut into the rockface was my first indication that Salzburg would not disappoint.

The setting is rather fairytale: there's the Salzach river (the old transport route for the salt that was the source of the city's wealth) with the domes and spires of the Altstadt ...

View of Salzburg: Altstadt, river and fortress from the Mönchsberg

below a 900 year old fortress, the Hohensalzburg, and a circle of Alps as the backdrop.

 There are the expected tourist icons: Mozart everywhere (fair enough, it's his hometown), fiakers with pretty ponies, baroque palaces and fountains, dirndls in every shade and style in shop windows ...

but no tackiness, an authenticity preserved

The Getreidegasse, smart shopping street, with original shop fronts

leads to the DomQuartier, home of princes and archbishops, where Mozart played some of his first concerts as a child prodigy

and from where you get a birds eye view from the roof

to the Residenzplatz circled by palaces

the Altermarkt with outdoor cafés 

and a fleet of waiting fiakers.

At the cathedral around the corner is the font where baby Mozart was baptised. Later he served as organist here.

Hills and mountains are the backdrop everywhere you look

View to Hohensalzburg fortress from the Grosses Festspielhaus - both concert venues

Love locks on the pedestrian Makartsteg bridge

Fiaker on Residenzplatz

And parts of the city are built theatrically into rockface

as here at the Mönchsberg, where a lift whizzes you way up to the top, to the Museum der Moderne

with the most fantastic views of the city

Back down in the Alter Markt there's Café Tomaselli, supposedly a favoured haunt of Mozart back in the 1700s and von Karajan (also a native Salzburger) some two centuries later  

for coffee and sachertorte.

Following Mozart's haunts definitely gets you brownie points here, one feels. He is after all the city's most famous and favoured son

But don't mention the Sound of Music - 

Warning in a fragment of an installation in the DomQuartier, part of an exhibition exploring Austrian identity (Raum, Zeit, Identität). 


Salzburg, Austria, July 2016

To Europe with love

Because I'm bloody gutted and angry and heartbroken that today my right and privilege to be European has been taken away from me ...

I'm compelled to post on a little city in Europe's heart, and close to its capital.

The fact that it's called Ghent, and also Gent, and Gand, depending on whether you are speaking English or Dutch/Flemish or German or French expresses to me perfectly the whole point and beauty of the European Union - that it is possible to maintain our uniqueness while appreciating and benefiting from our combined value.

As everywhere in Belgium there's no shortage of high-end fine dining here

Vrijmoed Restaurant, Gent

but there's just as much concern with the quality of ordinary, everyday food 

Belgian beer and frites

Belgian waffles, of course

Sole with garnaaltjes (crevettes), the small grey shrimps from the North Sea, with ... frites, obviously

And less traditionally, the new vegan venture of Alain Coumont, founder of the world-wide Le Pain Quotidien - one of my most favourite places in London to stop in for a bowl of decent coffee and good Belgian bread and patisserie.  

It's called Le Botaniste, and the combination of old apothecary interior and delicious organic vegan food has been replicated in a second opening in New York recently. (Will he want to bring it to London now?)

I'm sorry, Europe, that we've forgotten the lessons of history and fractured our union

forested suburb of Gent

that we've allowed a discourse of 'us versus them' to blind us to the fact that we can celebrate what's uniquely ours while enjoying our differences

that mistrust and fear and stupid politicking have prevailed over solidarity and sharing of  resources and languages and culture.

the beach at Ostend

But most of all I'm sorry that we've diminished ourselves.

Bayreuth

Bayreuth will forever be associated with Wagner. But the driving force behind the beauty and cultural reputation of this town was actually a pretty extraordinary woman who lived a century before him

 Markgräfliches Opera House, Bayreuth. 

... the Margravine (Marquess) Wilhelmine, daughter of the King of Prussia, who survived appalling physical abuse as a child to become a composer, writer and painter of apparently enormous energy. She also transformed Bayreuth from an ordinary town to an intellectual and cultural centre of Germany, founding a university, constructing buildings and rebuilding its opera house (above), all before dying at only 49.

The architecture, palaces and parks of Bayreuth are mostly Wilhelmine's design, and even on a grey winter's day the place is undeniably impressive.

Wilhelmine's Neues Schloss, front and back views above and below.

The Hofgarten next to the palace is a peaceful place of ordered trees and lakes.

It was Wilhelmine's opera house, the Markgräfliche Opernhaus (in the first photograph), all rococo red, gold and blue with frescoed ceilings, that she commissioned the Italian architects of her day to construct, that drew Wagner to Bayreuth. He had his sights set on it as the most impressive venue in Germany to stage his work.

As it turned out, Wagner decided that the 500 seat interior was too small for his operatic creations, so he built his own Festspielhaus on the edge of town which 100 plus years later is the centre of the annual summer festival.

And he built his own house, Wahnfried, peace from madness or delusions, on the edge of the wooded Hofgarten ...

a grand neoclassical house in golden coloured stone at the end of a line of trees, where he and his wife Cosima, Franz Liszt's daughter, lived until they died and were buried in the garden.

A bust of mad king Ludwig graces the entrance - appropriately enough, since Ludwig bankrolled Wagner through many financial crises ...

Beside the house is the Richard Wagner Museum, which had only just reopened after a long renovation when I was there.

No need to be a Wagner fan to appreciate this fantastically well designed and presented museum built in contemporary style with interactive scores and multimedia displays

Bayreuth, Germany, November 2015