HALLSTATT, Austria \u00e2\u20ac\u201d We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a number of kilometers from the spot I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be on this day, but the pleasant weather makes us regret nothing at all. As we left Las Vegas for our summer trip overseas, that took us from Albuquerque, to Dallas, to London, then to Prague, in the Czech Republic, I expected to be in Salzburg today, savoring every note Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ever wrote.<\/p>\n
But instead, there are often delays and changes in plans. Instead of a concert hall in Salzburg, Austria, where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expected to savor \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Marriage of Figaro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Magic Flute,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in a tiny tourist town, Hallstatt, in the middle of the Austrian Alps. I exaggerate only slightly when I say the sun rises around 9 a.m. and sets at 3. And that happens because towering mountains surround every direction from our Bed-and-Breakfast. The lofty peaks and the deep valleys make it almost necessary for dogs in this area to wag their tail vertically.<\/p>\n
Getting here was definitely not half the fun. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sample:<\/p>\n
After everybody had boarded the packed trans-Atlantic jet, the captain got on the horn to explain, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re experiencing slight difficulties . . . \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc And we all know, those preliminaries never bode well. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been locked in, seat belted for an hour before the announcement that ground crews had discovered leaks on the ground. After three hours of waiting, we de-planed, lulled around the terminal until the announcement came that we could reclaim our original seats \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but in a different plane, identical to the leaky one.<\/p>\n
Before that, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had flashbacks of movies like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPlanes, Trains and Automobiles,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and we imagined the four of us, including our youngest son Ben and his wife Heather, struggling to find airport benches that would allow us to sleep. Airports purposely avoid providing comfortable benches \u00e2\u20ac\u201d precisely to prevent passengers from copping a few zees.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Our first stop, Prague, convinced us all the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tourists had chosen that city in which to convene. We discovered, among a host of observations, that people simply bull their way through crowds.<\/p>\n
No disrespect intended to any of the myriad ethnic groups in the capital of the Czech Republic, but those with a smaller frame but a bigger hurry pushed around my 200-plus body. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wimpy or a featherweight; I just didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know the rules: in Europe, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever say \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or need to say \u00e2\u20ac\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcexcuse me.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I tried it, both when I made my way through a family blocking the street to take selfies, and when I myself got nudged off the sidewalk. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter: People seem unable to acknowledge or demonstrate any attempt at courtesy.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I call the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLas Vegas acknowledgement\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in which we give some kind of sign to acknowledge somebody else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions. For example, if someone lets us jaywalk near Charlie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll wave or nod. If someone allows another to pull out safely from the angle parking on Douglas, there might be a honk or a wave.<\/p>\n
But in Prague \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and more so in central Europe, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned not to expect any gesture at all. As tourists, newly arrived in Austria, we walked to the local city park, nodding at pedestrians. No response. Is that because the natives resent strangers\/tourists? Did their mommies ever tell them it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unsafe to talk to or wave at strangers?<\/p>\n
This week, while in Hallstatt, we plan to ride the funicular, an extremely long cable railway, to reach possibly the tallest mountain in the region. The cable car appears to climb and descend at a 45-degree angle. The single rail arrangement becomes a dual rail halfway up, to allow the other vehicle room to go around, like a railroad spur.<\/p>\n
The ride, for eight passengers, including two little ones, is expensive, and amateur tourists such as us don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always realize what kinds of coins are acceptable. We used only kroners, worth about 20 per U.S. dollar, earlier in Prague but needed to convert them to Euros, worth about three to two American dollars, when we arrived in Austria.<\/p>\n
One particular funicular that we hoped would take us down the mountain had a single ticket box that accepted only a certain size of kroner. Our son Ben, the most athletic among us, needed to race up several stairs, three times, to get the proper change.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always effective, as the store clerk \u00e2\u20ac\u201d who knew exactly the size coin we needed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d continued to require a purchase, and twice gave Ben the wrong size coin. I think it was deliberate.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Without getting to hear Mozart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcJupiter,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 or his \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPrague\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Symphony, how can this European tour be complete? The deadline for this column is three days before we leave Austria, so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still hope.<\/p>\n
Therefore, more accounts on the search for Mozart may have to wait for the next column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HALLSTATT, Austria \u00e2\u20ac\u201d We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a number of kilometers from the spot I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be on this day, but the pleasant weather makes us regret nothing at all. As we left Las Vegas for our summer trip overseas, that took us from Albuquerque, to Dallas, to London, then to Prague, in the Czech Republic, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}