Capuchin Monks, Mozart & and a dear old friend and his family. Where in the world .........

Call it a lesson in deductive logic or geography, but I'm NOT just going to tell you where I am, LOL.  

As soon as I check in to my hotel in a Priesterseminar, I ask the reception staff where I can find a store that sells wine.  The lovely woman tells me with a smile:

 

On the way back from the stoer, I notice something ALMOST at the back wall of the priest seminary:

New Prices; New Girls?  WTF? LOL

sunbathing at the banks of the Salzach river

There is a Burg (castle) on top of the hill ....

No-one can accuse me of NOT gesticulating enough, LOL

7:15

Time to explore the breakfast that comes for free with the room in the priest seminary building.  There is an e-mail from Zu and I joke about my Priest Breakfast that I’m not actually having a priest FOR breakfast but breakfast LIKE a priest, although I must say that if this is how priests have breakfast, they don’t have such a harsh fate ;-)

and go for a short exploratory walk.

The brass of the love-locks lets the curving bridge glow in the morning light.  An amazing view.

NAP.  I’m exhausted. But then I was traveling ALL DAY yesterday and topped it off with lots of booze.  And the 5 days before that were not exactly relaxing stationary days either, LOL.

I walk the kilometer to Salzburger Kunstverein, a place for the exhibition of modern art.  Seamus is the curator here and we agree to meet at just after noon.

When I approach the main entrance a gay couple with an age discrepancy leaves the building.  I get repeated looks from both of them.   Good to know.  After yesterday evening’s less than flattering pictures taken by Jemma I was starting to resign myself to the thought that I had lost it, LOL.

 

I wait on the outside terrace/Cafe of the Kunstverein ....

and order an Aperol Spritz again and through that beverage (Spare Mom’s favourite) and the memory of the love lock bridge earlier think of the TWO most important people in my life who BOTH died 3 years ago.  I’m probably still in the middle of a Forest-Gumpesque period of running, but I console myself with the thought that I’m not doing too badly at the moment, sitting here on a lovely deck by the banks of the Salzach.

12:32

Even factoring in the usual 8 minute Seamus-delay factor, I’m getting restless. He should be here by now.

The buzz caused in my head by the Aperol Spritz prevents me from ordering another one.

Seamus arrives with Ruhan(Rowan?) and it’s time to eat and drink more. Apparently there is no Don’t drink and stroller-push rule  ;-)

I eat a leek-cheesecake (That’s what the Austrians call a Quiche, LOL).   Life is so extraordinarily slow and relaxed in this town that I still can’t believe that it hasn’t turned into a Disney Land yet like pretty much all other scenic and nice places around the world.

I'm walking with Seamus along the river.
A roller-blading woman blades towards us and passes from sight behind us.

'Would that woman technically be classified as a dwarf?" Seamus asks loudly.  At exactly the same moment I notice that the woman, who was quite short and had certain facial features that gave cause to Seamus' question, had done a U-turn RIGHT BEHIND US to get to the lower path along the river and had most likely heard the question.

I point this out to Seamus and mention that he might have hurt her feelings or worse.  He seems to understand that and then adds this one:

"She was TALL for a dwarf though", Seamus adds in some kind of puzzled tone.

 

WTF?

Could that be because she was ON FRIGGIN ROLLER BLADES, Seamus ?????

15:00
I get back to the hotel, check my e-mail, and see what new happened in the world.   And I'm SHOCKED. 

Chris Cornell died today.

At a young age.  Alan and I just saw & heard him in October 2014 at the Bridge School Benefit.   
He was one of the GOOD GUYS.  And he was only one year older than I am now.

18:00 
Time to leave the hotel again to meet Seamus on Mozartplatz.  

My hotel door, LOL

WE are everywhere !

21:15
Back in the hotel.

5:30
That's enough sleep.  I check my e-mail and feel very strange for a moment when one is a notification about the place where I'm staying tonight.  I'm going to be WHERE?   AGAIN, LOL?  Yes, spoiled bastard, I know.  

 
I perform travel triage again.  The remaining instant coffee in its heavy glass container will stay here.  I know that my new hotel room will have instant coffee waiting for me and I know where the store is where I can buy more !

10:00
I'm sad to leave the Priest Seminary, but a last-minute discovery lessens that regret considerably.
Yes, it is a priest seminary but it also is a hotel, charging full hotel prices.  

So when I discover that the Wifi in this place refuses to connect to a website and throws up a pop-up window saying "This website is BLOCKED: Adult & Pornography Content" I feel like raising my middle finger at the nice and demure crowd in this old place and say "Oh Fuck Off, you sanctimonious bastards !



10:00

Not only do they don't want you to watch porn, they also want you to leave soon. Check-out time is 10 am.    What's next?  Self-flagellation ?

And that is THE THING about these sanctimonious types.



I don't think it's a wonder that the makers of The DaVinci Code portrayed a devout Catholic performing self-flagellation (NO, not the word YOU are thinking about, LOL) in a way that is at once disgusting, disturbing, but also, I hate to say it, sexy.

Anyhoo, you probably get the idea why I'm quite happy NOT to be catholic, LOL. And I didn't even mention Residential Schools and choir boys yet ;-(

10:00

 I head down to reception to check out. Some priestly-looking man (is it the black shoes, the strange jeans, his hair-do, or his whole sanctimonious demeanor?) decides to occupy the woman at reception with priests-booking-dates for 10 minutes.  I guess here not the guest is king, but the business ;-)  Just why the man can’t stuff his kleinkarierte boxer-shorts PROPERLY into his designer jeans is beyond me, LOL.   So after the no-porn policy of this ‘hotel’, this is the second example that Barmherzigkeit is spelled in the lower case around here.   Only yesterday I taught Seamus the GREAT German word scheinheilig.   It covers a LOT of the situation that would see a middle finger image in this blog.  Seamus googled it and the English word sanctimonious popped up.  And it perfectly describes what I think of the Priesterseminar right now ;-)

After all that Christian abuse I'm just a shadow of my former self !

   

A bike! A bike! My kingdom for a bike! is my next thought. I have already done some research on the subject ;-)

Time to walk over to Salzburg’s PROTOTYPE Grab-a-bike system.   There is only ONE station, so the idea to pick up a bike at A, cycle to B and just drop the bike off there doesn’t even get off the ground.  Your route must be circular so you can drop the bike off here again.

But prices are decent.  One-time registration fee is 1 Euro.  The first hour of bike rental is FREE and the second hour costs 1 Euro, but the hourly rate goes up the longer you keep the bike.

All good, but given that this is a Prototype station, which means it probably hasn’t been in existence for that long, the bikes are in APPALLING condition already.  

 Adjusting the seat height?  Mechanism already buggered up by idiots.   

 The screw holding the chain guard went missing a while ago.  The whole contraption rides as if I had been boozing for days and was carrying heavy luggage.  Hang on!  I was and I am.   

What I’m trying to say is “Get some decent bikes, because the ones you have are NO FUN to use!”.  I promise myself to be riding a Speed-Pedelec the next time I visit Salzburg.

fancy living quarters

10:30

I’m sitting in the Kunstverein café and looking at the mountains on the other side of the Salzach over a glass of Aperol Spritz. Two hours until Seamus gets here, so I might as well sit HERE, where I can booze and smoke, and try to fix the Tunis-Sousse-Tunis blog post draft that the lousy Blogger.com editor has fucked up beyond any recognition (it LITERALLY is FUBARed, LOL).

11:30

I brought back the bicycle.  Oh, I don’t have any hopes for the Salzburg automatic bike rental program. These bikes SUCK.   At least this way I didn’t have to carry my backpack all the way to the Kunstverein ;-)  A sign of the times:  When I ask the waitress at Kunstverein to leave my back pack there while I return the bike, she says “As long as it doesn’t make ticking noises”.   I repay her when I come back by saying “The stupid thing still didn’t explode? NOTHING works anymore these days !”.

It’s WEIRD. Here I am sitting on the sunny & tranquil café deck by a tranquil river in the tranquil town of Salzburg, waiting for a very good friend, whom I have known for 25 years, and in 6 hours I’ll be in a plane to somewhere completely different.  It’s weird, but I like it ;-)

Seamus arrives with Rudhan.  By now the kid is used to me and does something, which I documented in a beautiful sequence of photos but Seamus begs me NOT to post them.  

Hint:  The kid liked opening my cigarette package and pulling out cigarettes..... The Do-Not-Publish probably says less about the kid than about the Wife and the state of their marriage!

LOL..... they still have them in Austria

 

We head over to Seamus's house..... beautiful attic apartment in an old house .... maybe climbing those stairs all the time will help Seamus with his high blood pressure

a pristine Goddess (Citroen DS, in French pronounced DeEs, 

almost like déesse

= Goddess

 

Seamus accompanies me part-way to the airport.....

 We have a Gin & Tonic somewhere close to his kid's kindergarten ..... Apparently, the IN-CROWD now prefers sliced cucumber to sliced lime.... After trying it, I must admit I prefer lime...  Happy to NOT be part of the IN-CROWD !!!

And I definitely do NOT like the price of 13 FUCKING EUROS per drink ! 

From the bar/restaurant, I take a public transit bus to the airport:

 

YES, that is ALL my luggage