Impressions and Sound of Music

September 27-October 7

Vienna is very efficient.

The people are the same, but it isn't a smiley place; at least not for strangers.

Things are expensive, but the pricing is more honest than at home. Any taxes are inside the price. If a price is e4.5 then you pay 4.5.

Viennese people are slender, and dress well. Jeans are somewhat rare on locals. Pants are worn close to the leg, both by women and by men. No guys walk around showing off boxer shorts here. No tattoos, either.

Hairstyles are generally short as well. For men, similar to what a young Canadian lawyer might have. For younger women in Canada, 95% wear it long. In Vienna, 95% wear it short; many as short as the men, but with feminine flair.

Scarves are everywhere as a stylish accessory.

They identify us as tourists before we say a word. Our pants are baggy, or we're wearing runners, or a baseball cap, and have no scarf in sight. We could pick out tourists just as easily. Helen could pass, as she is sharp, but I certainly did not.

The only thing that detracts from the Viennese stylish presentation is the overuse of makeup by women in their twenties and thirties. It isn't heavy eye shadow or garish lip colouring. It is a heavy slathering of flesh tone material all over their faces in general. Even the most perfect colour matching of such products does not reproduce the semi-transparency of real skin. They look like they have pealed the faces off of store mannikins and glued them over their own. They look quite lifeless as a result. This is nor present in Viennese men.

Phones are everywhere, just like back home, but they seem to use them more for voice, not for texting. I don't think I saw anybody thumb typing.

We arrived on a Sunday, and left on the next. We Rode the Ubahn to the Westbahnhoff, and hopped right aboard a Salzburg bound train; paid for tickets on board.

It was an ordinary train for these parts, but still went licketty split and was smooth as silk over the perfect rails. I think it took about 2.5 hours. We had wifi on board, and I watched our progress live on Google Maps.

We got a little lost walking from the train to our hotel, but not bad. Once settled into our room, we did the kilometre or two walk to the old town.

Salzburg is nothing like Vienna, except that most of it is very old. We wandered the old town a lot over the next few days. Including the date of our arrival, we slept there three times.

The movie Sound of Music was set here, and much of it filmed on location. A minor industry exists catering to film fans. We took a Sound of Music bus tour. It was very well done, with a very happy guide-and-driver team.

Not understanding how the train system all works, I popped over to the station one morning ahead of our departure to sort it out. When we'd arrived, there were a number of Syrian refugees being housed there. I saw maybe a hundred boarding a train, leaving their little camp empty.