salzburg - Schloss Leopoldskron

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destination salzburg
Dom cathedral, opera performers
call me a yokel, but the opportunity rarely presents itself – for me, at least – to
share breakfast with a Nobel Prize winner, be treated to lunch by a descendant of one
of the last century’s greatest novelists, have dinner cooked by a French film star and
meet for an intimate chat with a ravishing classic stage actress and one of Britain’s
most esteemed playwrights.
I fervidly object to name-dropping, but for the reader’s benefit, I will enumerate:
Pamuk, Kafka, Depardieu, Redgrave and Hare. And to elaborate further: Orhan was
staying at my hotel; Franz’s grandniece manages it; Gérard was celebrity chef-ofthe-month
at a local restaurant; and Vanessa and David were giving a talk on art and
politics at a city cultural festival. Even if my celeb-studded first 12 hours in Salzburg
were pure coincidence, they nevertheless suggest that there is much, much more
going on here than merely Mozart and Maria von Trapp.
We all know the stereotypical Austrian, don’t we? A yodelling goatherd in a
bonny getup of tight beige shorts, leather braces and a ruffled white shirt; when
not eating apfelstrudel in a mountain pasture, he is sat at a heuriger downing an
earthenware stein of potent brew and playing an alphorn. Nearby, his cheery wife
is whiling away her day singing and dancing down mountainsides, her flowery,
technicolour frock billowing in the Alpine breeze. >
CARA MAGAziNE oct/nov 2008
Festung Hohensalzburg and St Peter's Church
Schloss Mirabell