Sounds like Muzac

So Salzburg... We arrived last Sunday evening in the old salt city and made our way to the hostel. Actually it was a youth and family hostel which was quite fun. It had several large families staying across from us, a communal TV area where Sound of Music was playing and a bar. Helen watched the movie, I too tried to follow along out out of my one good eye. The next day we did our own sound of music walk, which is actually quite easy since the town is only about 30 min walking time across and all the sites are easily discernible on the stadtplans (city maps CK). We found the ivy covered tunnel that the Von Trapp family airplane danced through, we found Mirabell gardens, the gate, the nunnery and the Hohensalzburg Fortress. We also stumbled across Mozarts birthhaus and other rezidenze, which were both very drab. Later we found a cool little cafe selling a pan global fusion mix of Japanese curry with chicken and vegetables served over couscous..delicious! All in all Salzburg was very nice.












Next we made our way to Fussen in southern Germany. Fussen is the site of the Neudisneylandenstein castle and is apparently a top listed attraction for Chinese tourist. No kidding, we found a gasthaus (guesthouse CK) to stay in for the night and were shocked and awed to discover the next morning at breakfast the the place had slept 27 people that night..about 20 of which were Chinese. We then ventured into town and up to Schloss Neuwaltdisneyenstein to take pictures and waste money on the guided tour. It turns out the castle is apparently the inspiration for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty´s castle. What´s funny about the castle is that it was built by mad Konig Ludwig in 1869 or so in an apparent attempt to recapture some lost German Medieval romance. In 1870 castles were useless and quite out of place in the modern world, this castle was ridiculously anachronistic (out of time CK). Keep in mind that in 1870, among other things, the world had just entered into the Industrial revolution, The US had just had its civil war, and Darwin and Marx had published their seminal works decades before. The castle is itself a fairytale, it even has its own fairytale cave built inside that looks very much like the fake caves of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland and such. I wonder if Walt Disney didn´t get the whole idea for a fantasy land from touring the site. I also wonder if its this link to Disneyland that attracted so many Chinese to the area.

From Fussen we continued north along the Romantic Road (which itself is a post war contrivance aimed at driving tourism into the heart of Bavaria) to several old romantic Bavarian burgs ending up in Wurzburg.


Wurzburg was apparently leveled in WW2 by allied carpet bombing but was rebuilt again shortly after. All the buildings, forts, palaces, and churches were rebuilt in original baroque magnificence. They are stunning, they are grand, but again, because I know the back story they seem fake again..a romantic fantasy, a simulacra; again, much like Disneyland.













This seems to be a recurrent theme with our adventure so far..Disneyland. I don´t know if its because we´ve been reared on TV and everything seems like simulacra to us, if its because we came with fairytale visions in our minds, or if its because life does truly imitate art but we´ve had a hard time getting lost in western Europe. We can´t seem to go native, everything is too easy, packaged for our consumption, no danger: Mozart chocolates, Italian salumis (no, not salami´s..look it up CK), corner cafes, churches that charge admission, museums, thousands of Europeans who all speak perfect English..Argh!! And now it´s raining and is supposed to rain for the next 10 days. Brilliant. We´ve resigned ourselves to shopping in sports stores for quick drying trekking gear (my newest obsession) and internet cafes (hence this long @ss blog). Tomorrow we´ll try to head to Heidelburg then up into the Koblenz-Koln-Trier areas for some German wine tasting then off to Paris and then backdown through Switzerland to visit family, then finally to north Africa where even the one legged beggars are dangerous.

I should end by saying that it´s not like we´re not enjoying Europe, we are having a blast: Europe is very photogenic, the bathrooms aren´t that bad, and the beer really is cheaper than the water. I´ve even been contemplating buying and running a hostel during the summer months over here..the economics of it seem to work out (i.e. 27 people a night at 20 euro each during the 3 months of tourist season..you do the math.)

anyway...time for a kaffee i think.