Salzburg - My dinner is a complimentary box of MozartKugeln washed down with sparkling wine that I find in my hotel room. There is nowhere to go and eat after midnight in Salzburg they tell me when I check into the Hotel Neutor. Mozart-Kugeln are the local delicacy, so I am delighted that within an hour of being in Salzburg I’m getting a taste of this historical Austrian town – there wasn’t much to see during the 15-minute ride from the airport. MozartKugeln are super-sweet and rich; dark chocolate enrobing a thick layer of marzipan. I can’t eat more than four.
My saccharine-loaded introduction feels commonplace when I discover in town the next day that you can’t move five metres without encountering the characteristic bold red wrappers and advertising material promoting MozartKugeln. Entire shops all over town are devoted to selling this chocolate speciality that evokes the name of the town’s most famous resident, Mozart.
It’s not just Mozart’s legacy that is being flogged; every single aspect of this town’s history is being exploited and packaged into an experience for tourists, who bring in the bulk of the income into Salzburg. There are more museums and tourist sites than in Rome, is my guess. It feels as if Salzburg has been laid bare, that there is little chance of stumbling on to something undiscovered. Has Salzburg become a caricature of itself to live up to its quaint historical persona, I wonder.
The Altstadt (Old Town), the historic heart of the city that flanks one side of the Salzach, the river that divides Salzburg, is frozen in time. The streets are narrow and mostly cobbled. The mix of Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque architecture lend the area its old-world flavour.
Curlicue signs in wrought-iron hang above shops – even Zara and H&M boast these old-fashioned touches. No doubt it’s part of the rules of trading in this area – it has been declared a World Heritage site by Unesco. As a tourist it’s hard to begrudge these characteristics; this is the slice of old Europe you have come to see.
You want to own it immediately, photographing almost everything within sight; every vista of Altstadt promises to be a photograph of a quaint European village.
You start to believe that the term picturesque must have been coined by the first English-speaking visitor to this town. But you can’t overlook that its historic character is perhaps in part contrived, and its distinctiveness is slowly being eroded by globalisation. That Zara and H&M stores are located in Salzburg’s historic centre is proof that this has occurred.
McCulture is the term I use to refer to this phenomenon. Salzburg boasts a number of McDonald’s and other global chains, but it hasn’t been completely swallowed up by McCulture. Apart from the abundance of MozartKugeln shops, there are stores where you can pick up a pair of leather lederhosen and other items of traditional Austrian dress.
The Altstadt district that lies at the foot of the Mönchsberg, an imposing mountain that boasts an 11th century fortress known as the Festung Hohensalzburg, also denies a total acquiescence to McCulturation, if you will. This fortress, which passed through the hands of a number of paranoid archbishops who kept extending security measures to fend off attacks, evokes this town’s historical origins.
Like Paris, Salzburg’s whole identity is tied to its idealised past. This makes Altstadt, in particular, attractive to tourists.
It’s the height of summer and the narrow cobbled streets are heaving with people. The Salzburg Festspiele (Festival), which runs from mid-July to the first week in September, has also contributed to the foot traffic.
It is what has brought me to Salzburg. Princess Zinzi Mhlongo, a rising South African director, is in town to present Trapped, her first play, and I am here to record its European debut as part of the Young Directors Project.
The Salzburg Festival is primarily centred on opera and classical music – new operas debut here each year – and, of course, being the birth place of Mozart, there is always a large production of an opera by this famous Austrian composer. This year it’s The Magic Flute.
The festival attracts a moneyed Austrian and German audience, who are quite obviously not only here to indulge in a love of high-culture, but to be seen. In the evenings they congregate around the entrances to theatres. The more affluent are deposited outside by chauffeur-driven luxury vehicles. They’re an older crowd – in their late 50s, 60s and older. The women are svelte – it’s their deeply lined faces that give their ages away.
Many of the garish dresses I have seen in shop windows are animated on bodies. Some women dress modestly, but many wear plunging necklines, drawing attention to their crinkled cleavages. These women aren’t keen to acquiesce their object status. This notion is supported by cameramen and photographers who hover on the fringes, waiting to shoot famous faces.
A pre- or interval theatre snack is an incongruous combination of champagne and sausage, which is served with a round bread roll and dollop of mustard on the side, and can be bought from branded stands outside the theatre that are manned by staff in crisp white shirts and black waistcoats. It’s not easy navigating a 20cm sausage into your mouth with a plastic fork, while appearing elegant. I have to dust breadcrumbs off my black evening number before joining the throng at the theatre’s entrance.
Mhlongo’s play is showing at the Republic Theatre. A venue associated with contemporary music – something that is hard to come by in Salzburg during the festival – so it is apt for the young playwright’s debut.
Outside I run into Pat van Heerden, who is producing a TV documentary on Mhlongo for SABC. She has been documenting Mhlongo’s journey. It’s part of a campaign to introduce SA viewers to careers in the arts. I point out that Mhlongo’s career path hasn’t by any means been conventional: few young theatre practitioners get to debut the first play they have written at an international festival of this class.
Montblanc, the sponsors of the Young Directors Project, have secured Teri Hatcher, the star of the American series Desperate Housewives, to attend the opening. It was an easy match, explained Ingrid Roosen-Trinks, Montblanc Cultural Foundation director. Hatcher apparently has a soft spot for Salzburg. It is easy to see why.
Naturally, Hatcher arrives by limo. A thick circle of paparazzi surround her when she steps out. They have been waiting for her. At a festival associated with high-culture the attention seems misplaced, absurd even. Few theatre-goers seem interested in her arrival. Her presence feels like an intrusion from a parallel world. It’s like the existence of McCulture in this historic town.
Mhlongo’s play is an utter disappointment. This isn’t a worthy example of South African theatre. It’s a series of one-dimensional vignettes, berating the superficial pursuits – fame, wealth and beauty – of South Africa’s new middle class.
While Mhlongo remains a talented director, it’s clear writing is not her forte. Has she been set up to fail, I wonder – no one’s first stab at playwriting should be scrutinised and performed at this level.
A few audience members slip out early, but largely the audience seems appreciative. Is this the quality they expect from Africa? As is the custom here, they beat their feet on the floor of the makeshift stand when the play ends. Their effusive response is puzzling.
The following night, at a production of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, directed by Irina Brook, the daughter of the renowned theatre and filmmaker Peter Brook, the mystery is solved in part. Peer Gynt is rumoured to be the top theatre production at the festival. It’s showing in a disused warehouse outside Salzburg in the nearby town of Hallein. Off-site usually means off-beat, so I’m excited to see how Brook will interpret this Norwegian classic.
It’s a pleasant coach ride to Hallein. We pass emerald green fields and flawless wooden chalets with carved wooden shutters. Cerise flowers spill over the edges of the flower boxes on all the balconies.
Peer Gynt is a truly multicultural production: the lead actor, Ingvar Sigurdsson, hails from Iceland, and the leading lady, Shantal Shivalingappa is a Madras-born Parisian. The rest of the cast are from different parts of the world. The only problem with this happy Benetton-like picture is that none of the cast are able to relax into their English-speaking roles. Being able to speak their lines takes precedence over their delivery. The performances are wooden. Gynt, the stubborn character on whom the play is centred, is given a modern twist – he is cast as a rock star. This facilitates a number of musical inserts.
At the conclusion, the audience, once again, grind their feet into the stand, although it’s an uninspiring, if not facile, production. Perhaps the quality of the acting went unnoticed as they read the German translations of the dialogue on a screen above the stage. Like Trapped, the play evinced the empty trappings of egotistical pursuits. It seemed ironic that theatre driving this point home in such an obvious manner would appeal to such a well-heeled audience who engage in a pantomime of appearances outside theatres.
Maybe it is because of this.
Nevertheless, the plays are never unsettling enough to challenge the status quo. Here, theatre seems to be an easygoing distraction between drinking champagne and eating sausages.
Primarily, the festival attracts opera lovers rather than seasoned theatregoers with a taste for edgy work. Opera is everywhere; even if you don’t have tickets for a show you can find a seat in a courtyard where a large screen shows the opera inside the main festival hall, where the acoustics are so refined you can hear the musicians turn the pages on their music stands. The outdoor music events are not as acoustically encompassing, but you get to watch the shadows move across the Gothic façades as the sun sets.
It’s the musical dimension attached to both plays that has also secured them a place at this festival. Music is an inseparable part of Salzburg’s identity. Mozart initially contributed towards this, but the festival itself, starting in the 1920s, and then the whole Von Trapp phenomenon after World War II reinforced this identity.
The 1965 Hollywood classic, The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews undoubtedly cemented this view. The film was based on the lives of the Von Trapps and was filmed in Salzburg. My conception of this town is indebted to this film. I am embarrassed to admit that the opening scene showing Andrews flitting across a verdant mountain top while engaged in song was one of the main motivations behind my visit to Salzburg.
Naturally, locals are aware of this fact and there are a number of “Sound of Music” tours. It is tempting to join one of these and lose myself in the Hollywood myth of the Von Trapps, but instead I opt for a sobering injection of reality that a visit to the Panorama and Von Trapp museum will provide.
Largely, the material in the museum debunks the Hollywood rendering of this titled Austrian family, who exploited their musical talents to generate an income when they lost their money and then later relocated to the US.
The Von Trapps didn’t want to continue living in Austria after Hitler and the Nazis took it over during the Anschluss, but they didn’t quite escape during the night with soldiers on their tail – as the Hollywood ending has it. According to the museum records, it was a planned and less dramatic exit: the family applied for visas and travelled to England before boarding a boat for the US. In the final scene of the Hollywood movie you see the family stumbling along the upper reaches of the Alps towards freedom. In fact, the mountainous area near Salzburg would lead them closer to where Hitler established his Eagle’s Nest, his elaborate retreat.
The Von Trapps adventures were first canonised by Wolfgang Reinhardt, who produced two German films, in 1956 and 1958. His tales about the family were based on Maria Von Trapp’s autobiography. It was conceived as escapist entertainment to cheer up the German public after the war. Text in the museum suggests it fulfilled the same role for Americans – the release of the American rendition coincided with John F Kennedy’s assassination and the start of the Vietnam War.
A copy of the American script is on display in the museum. It includes a description of what the opening scene is envisioned to look like: “A lovely, lovely neverland”, it reads, reinforcing the product’s function as a form of escapism.
Undoubtedly, while Altstadt is charming and old-worldly, it doesn’t quite evoke the “lovely, lovely neverland” pictured in the film, which consists of verdant Alps and pretty lakes. The sort of setting that prompts one to burst into spontaneous song.
Naively, I want to discover if such a place exists around Salzburg. The glimpses of the countryside I spotted on the way to Hallein suggests that there was a reason why the Hollywood filmmakers shot the film in Salzburg instead of constructing the scenery at the back of a film lot.
I join a tour dubbed “Mountains and Lakes”, which is lead by a loquacious Austrian woman wearing a Tyrolean hat with a feather trim. Cheap knockoffs of this traditional accessory can be found at tourist stands and shops for €9 (R95). Our guide provides some interesting facts; it is usually raining in Salzburg and the environs – this explains the lush vegetation. For some reason she is adamant about apprising us of all the available accommodation on the way, pointing out how much cheaper it is than in Salzburg. There is quite a price difference – accommodation in Salzburg is expensive. A decent room costs around about €75 a night, while along the country roads you can find a room in a cute chalet for €30.
An enjoyable holiday could be had in one of these rural towns without having to go into Salzburg for entertainment.
There aren’t any museums here; the natural beauty of the area is the attraction as well as the architecture, which could only be described as quintessentially alpine: wooden structures with slanted roofs and carved detailing around windows and doors that mirrors the curlicue embroidery on the leather jackets that are part of Austrian traditional dress.
Fuschlsee is our first stop. It’s a large lake encircled by mountains. A wobbly wooden jetty leads out into a transparent blue lake. Someone is out in the middle in a wooden boat. To preserve the silence, no engines are permitted on this lake (or “see” as it is called in German).
We embark on a ferry that circles Wolfgangsee, a larger lake along which small towns are dotted. Like Fuschlsee, it too is set in a mountainous landscape. This is a good place to unwind during the summer. Along the banks are small clearings where modest tracts of land along the shore are marked off to accommodate chairs, tables and loungers. Wealthier families have wooden sundecks on their plots.
We disembark at St Wolfgang, a small historic town which, like Salzburg, clearly survives on tourist trade. Every building is home to a hotel or a tourist shop selling locally brewed schnapps and other products embossed with Austrian motifs or names. There is nothing original to be found; all the shops sell identical goods that hail from the same factory that supplies the stores and stands in Salzburg, so the thrill of discovering and owning a special memento is lost.
Fortunately, there is an Italian food market down one of the main streets, where some homemade goods can be purchased, like an array of Italian doughnuts filled with sweetened cheese. One stand isselling ciabatta the size of a small table. Italian cuisine is popular in Austria – and Germany – so the existence of this weekly market is not unexpected.
I snap up a cherry strudel from a small bakery – I want a taste of Austria not Italian-Austria. Austrians have explored every possibility with strudel; but it’s the cherry one I keep returning to. Not that the cherries in these parts need sugar and a pastry casing to be edible; for days I have been eating large, plump and sweet cherries that are available in abundance at the food market in Salzburg.
During our “Lakes and Mountains” tour I don’t get a chance to stand on the top of a mountain and discover my inner Maria Von Trapp channelled through Julie Andrews. I have to make do with looking up at the mountains that flash past as we hit the highway that leads back to Salzburg. We pass a McDonald’s nestling at the foot of a picturesque set of mountains that no doubt take on quite a different character during winter when it snows. McCulturation has made deep inroads everywhere.
This is prime skiing territory, our guide informs us. She constantly refers to the topography during the cold months. She marvels as we travel down roads she says are normally inaccessible and points out structures and natural features that are concealed by a thick carpet of snow.
Salzburg feels like a bustling metropolis after my countryside sojourn. I take refuge from the heat and the crowds in quiet artgalleries and museums.
Tourists seem more interested in other historic sites like the Mozart museums – there are two.
It is an exhibition dedicated to John Cage, the American musician and artist, that keeps me returning to the Museum of Modern Art, which is set on top of Mönchsberg. Part of the attraction is its seeming inaccessibility. From street level it can be reached only by using a lift whose shaft passes through the rock of the mountain.
It’s no surprise that during the music festival an exhibition documenting the art of Cage would feature. There is a musical slant to everything here.
Instead of taking the lift back down to the busy centre of Altstadt, I wander along the pathway that snakes around the top of Mönchsberg. It is from this vantage point that you can take in both sides of Salzburg; the old and the new, divided by the Salzach River.
This is a balanced view of a town that is clinging to its past while gradually accommodating the culture that defines the present.
I walk along the back of Mönchsberg past a five-star hotel in an old Schloss (castle), following a narrow path through a forested area. There are signposts every five metres, I concede that nothing has been left to discover, that I am simply following in the footsteps of millions who have come before me, searching for something different, a journey of their own that isn’t mapped out in a guide book.
The paths through Salzburg are well-worn for the simple fact that this is an ideal travel destination. It makes sense here to follow the crowds. - Sunday Independent
* Mary Corrigall travelled to Salzburg as a guest of the Salzburg Festival