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Chestnut tree conviviality

In the last two weeks in Austria, I noticed that every time I was truly struck by the conviviality of a place, I’d look up and see chestnut leaves.

An old-time vested waiter brings me a tall apfelschorle (apple juice with soda water…standard hot summer drink here for me) as I ponder the finest view in Vienna. Framed under chestnut trees in one direction, the majestic city of Vienna sits solidly on a grand bend in the Danube. And in the other…forested hills which kick off a mighty range of mountains that don’t stop until they tumble into the sea at Marseille in France…the Alps are born.

Days later, I’m in my favorite Austrian alpine village, enjoying a second helping of the sweetest saurkraut you can imagine (you can get loopy for good kraut over here…many do) at the lake-side restaurant in Hallstatt. (It’s forever etched in my mind for the wonderful evening Anne, Andy, Jackie and I enjoyed here a few years ago when we took our annual family Christmas photo–which I still see on the office and breakfast room walls of my favorite little B&Bs around Europe.) Swans, imported in the 19th century to please the Kaiser and his Empress, glide by for a little genteel begging. Rustic tables line up as if to provide a dinner concert of scenery…a peaceful lake interrupting the power of the alps. And all the action is under one massive chestnut tree.

The next day, in Salzburg we parked our bikes at the Augustinian monastery where, once upon a time, the monks (must have been the most popular monks in town) brewed a heavenly beer. Stepping into their beer garden, it seemed half of Salzburg had gathered (all generations, enjoying fish grilled on sticks, radishes artfully sliced into long delicate spirals–with salt they make the beer taste even better–and tall grey porcelain mugs drawn from old time wooden kegs)…under a chestnut tree orchard of conviviality.

There’s a unique Austrian word for that “under the chestnut tree ambiance”…gemutlikeit. A cozy conviviality that can make you dream in lederhosen and dirndls.

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Pharmaceuticals…just say no

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, I do my best to “just say no.” I rarely take any pill or medicine. The kind of drug abuse that seems unnoticed in our society is that which is advertised everywhere we look. But for this trip someone told me about Ambien. “Take one and you sleep eight hours straight and wake up feeling sharp and crisp.” When dealing with jetlag, for me, staying up on the first day isn’t that tough. The problem is that I wake at about 4:00 the next morning and then I’m beat that next afternoon. So, on this trip, I popped one Ambien the first night and, on day two, I woke up after nearly eight hours to the memory of my alarm clock ringing. One point for pharmaceuticals.

I was “on camera” from the get go, and now our two week film shoot is over. No more wardrobe concerns. It’s so great to spill on my shirt and not send out an SOS for fizzy water. (A great remedy for oil and sauce splatters–a fact of life in European restaurants for someone as well-mannered as me.) I can change my shirt whenever I like–rather than wearing the same one for five days in a row as I do when making a TV show (to minimize “continuity” concerns when filming). I don’t care if I get a cold sore (I’m fever blister prone only when I’m over stressed and working too hard…which I only am and do when I’m filming). I don’t care if it rains (which is a major headache when making a TV show, as sunshine brings out the colors and the people and simply carbonates whatever we are featuring). When filming in cloudy weather, we work twice as hard for half as long. I don’t care if the schnapps pub is empty (last week, in Salzburg, it was, and I had to holler “free schnapps” to get those rustic faces laughing and twinkling around the bar). I don’t care if street musicians are disturbing the peace (last week I had to politely pay a bad flute player to be silent…tough to do diplomatically…but every bad flautist has his price). Simon and Peter (my Biblical named film crew…director and cameraman) flew from Munich to Seattle with some precious carry-on baggage: about 20 hours of hi-definition video film from which two dynamite programs–Vienna and Salzburg/Austrian Alps–will be edited this month. (Our new series airs this September across the nation on PBS.)

As they flew to Seattle and I flew to Madrid, I felt thankful to be able to collaborate with such a talented, hard-working, and committed-to-quality team. Working hard with the right people is a joy. Next stop…Spain!

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Steves’ Pet Peeves in Europe

In the very early days of our tour company, a group once made a theme of mimicking me for saying “This is reeeeely great” (like the fat dork in Animal House) every time I’d park the 9-seater mini-bus at a new sight. I guess twenty years of trying to make people happy on your tours turns you into an almost annoyingly positive cheer leader for happy travels.

While a key to happy travels certainly is a positive attitude, I do have my pet peeves while traveling in Europe. Just between you and me, here are a few things that I don’t find reeeely great:

Museums that show photocopies of documents and photos giving you the sensation of reading a book standing up while walking from page to page (as I just tried to enjoy in a Mozart museum in Salzburg today).

Americans who talk twice as loud as anyone else in a restaurant or public place in Europe and carry on oblivious to the peace they are destroying.

Concerts that charge $50 for a seat and then $2 for a program so you know who and what you’re listening to.

Americans who complain about heat and no air-con (when Europeans believe the typical person from our southwest consumes more energy to stay cool in the summer than arctic Norwegians do to get warm in the winter).

Museums that post “don’t do this” and “don’t do that” signs in English, but provide no English descriptions of their exhibits (when half their paying public speaks English either as a first or second language and doesn’t understand the displays).

Hotels that serve orange drink rather than orange juice and skimp on light bulb wattage to save a few bucks.

Over-earnest British people (especially on British Air) apologizing for something more than once and saying mind your head every time you near a low doorway.

People at security and check-in lines who recognize me from my guidebooks and TV show…and then say, “Can I see your ID?”

Seeing twice as many than necessary highly-trained TSA professionals (2) guarding each exit corridor at US airports.

People who tell me “I love your show on the Travel Channel.”

Sweating all night in hotels that put rubber mats under the sheets to protect mattresses from getting stained.

The rumble of a herd of rolling suitcases crossing a tranquil cobbled village in the evening.

Getting one meal ahead of my needs when surrounded by a cruel abundance of fine food and not being hungry for days.

Sandwiches at places like airport and train station kiosks that are deceptively packed with lots of good stuff spilling over the bread crusts and almost nothing inside.

So there…I just had to get that off my chest.

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Joyful Exuberance in Salzburg

 

I’m in Salzburg, lying in bed about 100 meters from Mozart’s dad. He’s just outside my window in the graveyard of St. Sebastian church. When in town, I generally sleep within easy earshot of its bells. The bells of Salzburg ring with a joyful exuberance. They wouldn’t if its citizens didn’t like it that way.

Yesterday, in a tiny village church, I lingered, but it felt lifeless. Suddenly the dozen or so tourists loitering around me burst into a rich, Slavic hymn-—invigorating the church. They were a folk group from Slovakia who explained, “We can’t be in a church without singing.”

This morning here in Salzburg, I went to the 10 o’clock mass at the cathedral. As hoped, a choir and small orchestra filling the loft turned the back wall into a wall of sound. I was with my camera crew, in a dizzying perch, high on the side, enjoying a privileged birds-eye view of the musical action. Far below me a thousand people faced the altar. I faced the loft, where for 2 years of Sundays, Mozart served as organist: baroque scrolls, dancing cupids, conductors’ batons, swirling the icing on a musical cake.

 

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On the 250th year of his birth, the musical genius of Mozart is still powering worship. Walking home, a woman on a bike artfully towed a tiny wagon under the spires. On it was a tall, triangular, black leather case. I said “Wow, only in Salzburg…a bike, towing a harp.” She looked at me and added, “A Celtic harp.” At the ATM a few minutes later I met a woman from a Sweet Adelines choir. She said “We traveled all the way from Pennsylvania to sing here in Salzburg…the people love us here.”

Music seems to weather the storms of modernity very well. It wouldn’t, if the citizens didn’t like it that way.

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Can I cook you a good fish?

I discovered many of my favorite “back doors” thirty years ago. Back in the 1970s, places like Hallstatt (south of Salzburg, the gem town on the gem lake in a region of Austria where lakes and Alps are shuffled together like a game of 52 card pick up) were truly “Back Doors” – untouristed. Today, many have become not only touristy…but economically addicted to tourism. I’ve noticed, more than ever, they appreciate the business my guidebooks generate. In Paris, the mayor of my favorite Rue Cler neighborhood threw me a party in the local palace – all the hoteliers, restaurateurs, and shop keepers were there…best macaroons ever. In the Cinque Terre this spring, I was hanging out on the Vernazza harbor-front listening to the town troubadour sing a folk song – not knowing I was in the lyrics. When my name came around he turned to me and cranked up the volume. In Reutte, just over the border from Bavaria’s fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein, I was recently invited into the local knighthood. (You must be present to be knighted…so it’ll have to wait.) And yesterday, here in little Hallstatt, another of my headliner “discoveries,” my friend who runs a restaurant there welcomed me with Hallstatt’s standard “let me cook you a fish” greeting.

I sat under his wall full of big fish heads mounted like deer – gills spread like antlers. I stared at a tour group from Yokohama which filled a restaurant that once fed only locals. As the group headed out (they’ll be in Vienna in 4 hours), the waiter – in his ancient lederhosen – (which always remind me of a permanent wedgie) said “Japanese groups are very big this year.”

My challenge these days, along with finding untouristed places, is to find vivid cultural traditions that survive in places now well-discovered…like Hallstatt.

The next morning, as the sun rose late over the Alps towering above Hallstatt, the guy in the nearly rotten leather shorts took me for a spin in his classic boat. It was a ‘fuhr,’ a centuries-old boat design – made wide and flat for shipping heavy bushels of salt mined here across shallow waters. As he lunged rhythmically on the single oar, he said “an hour on the lake is like a day of vacation.” I asked about the oar lock, which looked like a skinny dog chew doughnut. He said “it’s made of the gut of a bull…not of cow…but a bull.”

Returning to the weathered timber boat house, we passed a teenage boy rhythmically grabbing trout from the fishermen’s pen and killing them one by one with a stern whack to the noggin. Another guy carried them to the tiny fishery where they were gutted by a guy who, forty years ago, did the stern whacking. A cat waits outside the door, confident his breakfast will be a good one. And restaurateurs and home-makers alike – whose dining rooms are decorated with trophies of big ones that didn’t get away – line up to buy fresh trout to feed the hungry tourists, and a good fish to cook for a special friend.