Europe 2002 Trip Reports Part 12 Salzburg Part 2

This is the 12^th of a series of posts recalling my trip to Europe, using e-mails sent at the time. Unlike later trips, I didn’t e-mail people everyday. Trip reports are largely as I wrote them at the time with two exceptions: 1. I was usually pretty rushed due to Internet fees in Europe, so I’ve cleaned up my e-mails to make them more coherent, which wasn’t a priority at the time. Also, in some blog posts I’ll add additional thoughts with the hindsight of nine years later or to add further clarification. I’ll use “NOW” in such cases.

This 12^th report covered most of the rest of my time in Salzburg

Decided I have to e-mail despite costs. Need the human interaction.

Due to some confusion I ended up getting bumped to a different room twice and then a different bed once more. Originally was to have good chatting roommates but ended up with a couple who wanted to keep to themselves. And I lost my view.

[NOW: And the chatty people seemed to think that I was in the wrong room due to my fault instead of the hostel’s and thus seemed creeped out by me afterwards.]

Spent E9 washing and drying. Hand washing not enough since big problem was sand in socks.

[NOW I took a page from, if I recall correctly, Rick Steves’ advice on breaking the language barrier and drew a washing machine to indicate I was looking for a Laundromat. It didn’t work at all. I can’t recall how I finally found one.]

I bought a new camera because the old one wasn’t working enough. Not focus free but good enough.

I went to the castle which was mostly intact compared to most. That was actually a problem because a lot is closed up and there’s less space to walk around in. But I still liked it.

Salzburg’s McDonalds has an ornate sign outside it like it belongs in a long ago century. I didn’t eat there though. Trying to curb that habit (which is harder than you might expect when homesickness strikes).

Forget to mention; Venice can get real crowded at times, a drawback.

Munich tomorrow. I may have to pay more for a place due to 27 age limit on most hostels.

[NOW: As you’ll see, I didn’t have to pay as much as I expected.]

BONUS

The following was from a later e-mail on things I forgot to mention earlier, which relates a bit to the above:

A couple of thoughts from before:

Already mentioned to one person, but Salzburg is so obsessed with Mozart that they even sell Mozart perfume (no this is not a bad joke but the truth; I even took a picture of the ad).

Starting to notice that the cheaper the wine (comparing store bought to presumably more expensive restaurant wine) the better I like the flavour.

I'm noticing that stereotypes tend not to hold true; I have encountered a number of unhelpful and very helpful people in most towns. As I expected before starting the trip, there’s more differences between individuals than groups.