Musings on Austria
Taken as a whole, going from Switzerland to Austria was an abrupt change. Instead of going to look at imposing mountains or sparkling bodies of water, we began walking through fortresses, gigantic cathedrals, palaces and parks.
Salzburg was our first Austrian destination. Its castle on the hill was fascinating, intermixed with a peculiar marionette museum and delicious hot chocolate interlude. The old town was magnificent and St Peter’s Cathedral wowed me in a way I haven’t been wowed since seeing St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. I’m not a religious guy, but the most consistently dramatic architecture in our European travel has been religiously inspired. It drives one to read more about the effect of Christianity throughout Europe, which is something I’ve not considered seeking out until now.
Random shout out to Linnea for being our erstwhile travel companion from Versailles to Vienna! Walking buddies rock, and she encouraged me to cause probably permanent nerve damage to my feet every day she was around. However she was also cursed with a perpetual aura of Los Angeles weather, which made this part of our trip obscenely sunny and hot for no good reason. So yay for her company but good riddance? I kid and, in truth, it was nice having her join us for part of our magical European odyssey.
Vienna was remarkable: enormous, sprawling, with an “old town” that felt as large as all of Salzburg. Palaces beyond compare! The Schonbrunn & Hofburg featured a level of opulence I hadn’t seen in ages. Velvet tapestries intermixed with artifacts & sculptures in room upon room of sweat-soaked tourists and lack of air circulation. Inspiring! Seriously though, having not been inside of Versailles in over a decade, the summer and winter palaces of the Habsburg royals did not fail to impress.
The entire city had such a sense of being a former imperial power throughout, with eye-catching statues on countless buildings & scattered throughout every park. I felt the weight of that history most potently in the Austrian National Library, the oldest and grandest of its like I’ve ever encountered. I now plan to enthusiastically nose around every city from here on out, to sniff out every baroque library I can find. The way societies preserve their knowledge is fascinating to me and, at least from those that I’ve seen, the way the Austrians do it has been most impressive of them all.
The Jess-Linnea-Ian adventures were a grand bliss of broken feet, heat exhaustion, fun and attractions innumerable. But now, as we begin delving into Eastern Europe (heading first to Prague), things will slow down. We will begin spending longer than just a handful of days in each place. Instead of vacationing, we will try transitioning to living here and there as somewhat lackadaisical nomads of a sort. I hope that this will permit my writing on our journey to get correspondingly more reflective and revelatory. Not to mention a bit more frequent after so long a break in between Rouen and now. So here’s to a new chapter of Hares On Holiday. From Central to Eastern Europe, to living abroad, and on to new travel habits!
