Weather, Kicking Around the Town, Etc.

We've stayed fairly close to home for the last couple of weeks, partly because the weather has been mostly, well, I suppose "crappy" would be the precise term (sorry, Mom!). There are some pictures, but you'll have to be patient!

Last night, for example, I set off for home on my bike (a 15-minute ride) just as a wet, sleety, snowy mess started to fall. It stopped soon after I got home, but I was more or less soaked--and the ride is considerably less pleasant when the mountains are hidden by clouds and your glasses are covered with water and your pants, gloves, and assorted other parts are getting steadily wetter.

This morning I had to go in for an early class. I swear that it started to rain between the time I left the apartment and when I got my bike out the door--even harder than yesterday. My pants were completely soaked, and of course I arrived not at home, where at least I have dry clothes, but at my office, where I have no spare clothes at all.

This afternoon, things looked a little better--the sun almost came out for a few minutes--and then, yes, just as I came out the door to go home it started to rain again. Fortunately M. found rain ponchos today and brought one by for me in one of the drier interludes, and with its help I got home merely damp!

Otherwise, things are going well. I met all my classes this week, and as far as I can tell they're proceeding well--it'll be sort of nice to get into a more regular rhythm with them now (we have solid classes the whole month of April, then several brief holidays in May). After my seminar today several of the students came up and told me that they'd rather not do presentations because I have so many interesting things to say and they find listening to each other boring. I took that under advisement, but it was nice to hear anyway.

We did go on a couple of outings last weekend (when the weather was actually quite nice for a couple of days). Saturday we walked up onto and around on the Kapuzinerberg, the little mountain that sits in the middle of town, just across the river to the north from the Monchsberg and the fortress. A good many of the photos of Salzburg that you see are taken from the Kapuzinerberg, I think; there are fine views of several parts of the city from various spots. It's rather steep to get up, but there's a fair bit of hiking on the upper level that isn't too steep up or down. We had coffee and some delicious nut cake at a little restaurant that's now in the Franziskischloss, which used to be a sort of gun emplacement, back in the days when a wall ran all around the city. It's on the left here.

The next picture is a view looking sort of southwest along the river. Our place is somewhere not far past where the river curves to the right.














And here's the Fortress and the Old City from just across the river.















On Sunday, the weather was fine again and we decided that we'd better not waste it, so we took the bus to Berchtesgaden, which is in Germany, about half an hour to the south. It's a beautiful little town with the mountains all around it, lots of skiing and tourism. Every second or third house said "Zimmer Frei," which means "room available," though not "Room for free," unfortunately.

We took another bus to the Konigsee, a long, narrow high mountain lake. We wandered around a little there (you can take a boat ride) but we put that off for another time, because Marlyce really wanted to ride the cable car to the top of the Jennerberg. The snow was pretty much melted at the bottom, but by the time we got to the top (a 20-minute ride or so) there were skiiers all around us. There's a little restaurant at the top, a terrace where you can sit outside and contemplate the Alps all around, and ski runs going off in various directions. I took some photos on the way back down, and made sure to get the lift cables in so that I would have proof that we really did it.

If people know about Berchtesgaden, it's usually because of the Hitler connection. Apparently he only visited the famous "Eagle's Nest"--which sits right up on one of the highest ridges--a few times, but he did have sort of a southern headquarters nearby at Obersalzburg. There's not a lot left there, but you can go through the tunnel complex (another thing we didn't get done this time). A friendly local woman did point out the Eagle's Nest to us from the bus, and coming back we saw its windows glinting in the afternoon sun. I took this photo, and blew it up some later . . . it'll be easier to see if you click on it. The tours up there only run in the summer months, so that's another reason to go back, I suppose.

When we got back to town, we were hungry and tired from the walk back, but had to walk up some more hills and around a few corners before we found a restaurant open. It turned out to be a nice place, though, with big bowls of soup for a bargain price and yet another view of the mountains from the patio.

All of this helped us take our minds off the one bummer of the weekend. We had bought tickets for a concert on Friday night at the Mozarteum, the conservatory in town, and when we came down to get our bikes and ride down there, we found Marlyce's missing. We got the bus and made it to the concert (a wonderful duo--two German-Japanese sisters on violin and piano, playing Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens, and Beethoven), but we were not all that happy about the bike. The next day we told our landlords, and they insisted on taking us to report it to the police and driving us around town to look for another one, though by then the bike shops were pretty much all closed. On Monday we did find another used one for a bargain price; it's not as nice as the first one, but we're hoping it will serve. We still don't know how the bike got stolen--it was in the bike room in the bottom of our building, and you have to unlock three doors to get in there. It's possible that somebody left the doors unlocked . . . anyway, we are still checking every day or two on the wishful theory that it might somehow reappear, but we're now putting our bikes in another location which we hope will be more secure.

And that's the news from Salzburg . . . keep those cards and letters coming! We miss you all!