Starting this post right in the middle of Super Bowl week. I listen to a lot of football talk podcasts and this week has been all about deflated footballs. My take is that many teams do it, and those that don't have in the past or figure they will in the future, so no one calls each other out on it. I equate it with the use of pine tar on a pitchers cap in order to get a better grip on the ball. The Patriots pulled that 4 man line stunt on the Ravens, and while that was not illegal, it went against the spirit of good sportsmanship and to line-up and play ball without subterfuge. The Ravens got pissed and tipped the Colts off to call bullshit on the Pats during the Championship game just to stick it to those guys.
Did the Pats do it? Duh. You'd have to be like the mother whose son opened fire at a high school denying that her precious angel was capable of such a heinous act to believe otherwise...or your typical Pats fan.
Does it make a difference? Totally...easier to grip and catch and hold onto while running as 5 huge dudes try to rip it off your body. And Tom Brady has a history of shoulder trouble, so you think that throwing a ball that's 10-20% lighter would help with that?
I pray the NFL buries them after this week is done. Their proven history of cheating and obvious contempt for anything other than their way demands it. I'd accept a year suspension for Belichek and/or Brady, or stripping them of their entire 2015 draft. And I am a Seahawks honk, and their is still a lot of bitterness inside me from the Tuck Rule game, but say that as a football fan first. Am a big believer in karma and believe that all will be decided by said karma in Arizona on February 1st.
Go Hawks...
We broke our stay up in Vienna with a two night/three day jaunt to Salzburg. Betty put this on the agenda as she had to see the town where the Sound of Music was filmed. For all our transits from city to city, we pre-purchased train tickets. The to and fro from Salzburg and Vienna was 3 hours each way, and the trains were not crowded...allowing us to spread out and read, nap, snack while watching the lovely countryside pass by.
While Vienna was a big city that felt small, Salzburg felt like a picture postcard. Small streets immaculately maintained, compact with everything you could want within a ten minute walk, and framed by the pointiest Alps you could possibly imagine. The hills were definitely alive. Rolled in midday and spent that afternoon strolling. Their Christmas market was a total delight with some of the most awesome looking/tasting pastries on the planet.
We took the funicular up to the medieval Hohensalzburg Castle. You can't spell funicular without F-U-N.
The next day, our only full one in Salzburg, was dedicated to the Sound of Music. Had booked the 1/2 day SoM tour with Panorama and we met our guide Peter in front of Mirabel Palace. I like to talk about super powers, and one of Betty's is to be the first in line. Like a battering ram, got on the bus first so we had the primo seats. Not sure if it is a super power rather than a Chinese thing cause I see that pushy thing in a lot of the women here. Perhaps it is a collective super power, like bees.
Peter had his rap down...at one point, he lost track of what he was saying, said "where was I", then launched into repeating two minutes of what he just said note for note, including the jokes. And he told us a lot of corny jokes. The ones we remember...
What does a fish say when he runs into a wall? Damn
What do you say to a man with no left side? You're all right
What is yellow and smells like bananas? Monkey vomit.
He told Carolyn that if a guy was bothering her, she should say, "is that your face, or did your neck throw up?
Pure gold. He had a running gag with the driver, Boban. Boban is an alcoholic maniac that hasn't killed anyone in weeks. It did keep the tour moving for us. We asked how many of these he gave a week and he said twice a day, 5 times a week. No wonder he had it memorized just so.
It was really well done...we saw the lake where they fell in, the mountain where she twirled, the Gazebo...
Interspersed between sights, he would give us trivia and snippets about the movie. As the husband of a superfan, one who has the 30th anniversary VHS, the 35th anniversary DVD and the 40 anniversary blu-ray, and who has watched all of the special extras and have even been to Sing-a-Long Sound of Music, it was hard to stump me. It was interesting to hear how mystified the Austrians are at the Americans fascination with it, and how Salzburgers like to call out all the logistical imperfections. It would be better if they simply said thank you for keeping our economy strong and provide bigger seats for the American sized ass.
Overall, it was a nice day (as you can see, with splendid weather), and the bus took us through some lovely lake country so we got to see a little of the countryside. Quaint villages nestled into rolling hills around crystal clear lakes with the Alps framing the whole scene, as pretty as you could imagine. I could tell that Betty enjoyed it.
That is me with a brown paper package tied up with strings hat. One of the other screwball SoM aficionados had it, so had to give it a spin.
The last stop on the tour was at St, Michaels church (the one where the Captain and Maria got married, in Mondsee.
As you can see, for December 22nd in Central Europe, was a glorious day,,,dry, low 60's, just yummy. Hit the autobahn back to town, where they dropped us off at the Mirabel Gardens, another place where the Von Trapps sang and danced.
I think it was at this point that I launched into my Sound of Music rant. Seriously, I think it is an amazing movie...tells an historical story, is full of laughs and snark and while I will not admit to crying, will admit to getting choked up with Captain von Trapp as he realized that his Austria was never going to be the same during Edelweiss. But there is one part, really one line that always knocks me out of the moment. During Do-Re-Mi, as Rodgers and Hammerstein are using simile to help the kids remember the notes, they go....
Doe, a deer, a female deer
Ray, a drop of golden sunMe, a name I call myself
Far, a long, long way to run
Sew, a needle pulling thread
La, a note to follow Sew
screeeeeeeeeeech....
La, a note that follows Sew? How effing lazy is that line? They are pitching a perfect game...Maria, Edelweiss, My Favorite Things, Climb Every Mountain, The Lonely Goatherd, So Long, Farewell, 16 Going on 17...every one of them etched into every brain. And deservedly so...great music and exquisite lyrics...except for that La. Like the pitcher with the perfect game...two outs, bottom of the ninth, no runs, no hits, no errors, and the batter taps the ball back to the pitcher...and the pitcher keels over with explosive diarrhea. It is just like that.
The one sight we didn't see on the tour was the theatre where the SalzburgMusic Festival in the movie took place (when the Von Trapps escaped). Hadn't really thought about it before, but that was a very bizarre looking stage. Peter said to us that they give tours of that stage at 2PM and pointed us in that direction. It was 1:45, so we hoofed it over and saw the tour group going inside. We jumped in and were taken right into some other theatre. Apparently, this tour was to showcase the venues where the Salzburg Festival's music shows are currently held. We all started looking at each other as we were taken through several (very nice) concert halls, with detailed descriptions of each, but wondered if we had hopped into the wrong tour. This snap was taken about an hour in and you can see the look of horror on Sophie's face when the guy said that we had two more venues to see.
The dude giving the tour did it both in German and English, the German portion usually was few minute monologue with the English being 80% shorter. He was a total Longhair and was very serious about these venues. At one point, he prefaced a story saying this is one that the kids (pointing at ours) will like. Oh boy...finally. It was something about having a show with a real tank and a mishap having to do with it being too big or something. We couldn't figure out the interesting part in our post tour recap, but we still gave him a chuckle out of courtesy.
At the end, our patience was rewarded as we walked into the Sound of Music theatre, the Felsenreitschule. Cut into the hillside, it looked exactly as it did in the movie except they put a retractable roof over it for shows in any weather. Was kind of a spooky place in the movie, probably as they had Nazi's stationed in all the alcoves, and it felt that way in person. Beautiful, but in a cold and forbidding way.
We had a couple hours to recharge before our Mozart dinner that we had booked for the night. As if you didn't know, Mozart was born in Salzburg so we thought it would be a good place to subject the kids to some music. We felt that as it came with food, that should keep them entertained. We got a late start (still pissed at Betty for being the slow one that night) and hit the place a few minutes before showtime, and got the table in the corner behind the performers. Damn it...when I say 6:30 out the door, it's 6:30 out the door. Not 6:40-efffin-five!.
A pretty room, the venue was in the old Church.
The food was typically Austrian, edible but bland. The show was a Mozart greatest hits performed by a string quartet with a male tenor and female soprano. Did you know that a string quartet consists of a cello, two violins and a viola? Do you know the difference between a violin and a viola? Did you know there was a difference between a violin and a viola? I didn't, but do now.
Even though I was miffed about our seating location, and underwhelmed by the food, we had a lot of laughs that night. Started out when I had the realization that Mozart rhymes with fart, and if you can control the pitch and duration of them, you can create Mozfarts. And with our vantage point behind the performers, we got a little insight into the interpersonal dynamics of the ensemble. The soprano was a pregnant Korean who was supposed to have some sexual tension with the tenor, but that guy had the total hots for the first violin. Every time he would come out, he would check out the stringstress, giving her the old up and down, and the second violin would give her the raised eyebrow, he is totally into you look. The girls were a little creeped out, even the kids. Suppose it is a good sign that they can recognize a lothario in their early/pre-teens.
And the two violinists were such bitches to the viola. There was a lot of interplay, smiles and nods between the violinists, but the poor viola player was getting the cold shoulder from the other two. I hate mean girl stuff, especially in my classical music quartets.
Our train outta town the next day was 3pm, and since it is compact, felt we had done the city center to death, so we took the bus to the Untersbergbahn..
That is a mountain peak about 25 minutes outside of town and there is a cable car from base to summit. Had been a long time since I've been on one of those...think the last was as a little boy when we visited Palm Springs. Wonder if they still have that thing?
Yet another gorgeous day. This peak is on the edge of the Alps, so you look in one direction and you see the rolling valleys and lakes and Salzburg in the distance.
Turn to another and you can see the Foothill towns leading into the mountains.
And then you look another way and the peaks of the Alps stretch out as far as the eye can see. You can pick out the one where Hitler's Eagle's Nest is situated (wanted to tour that but was closed for the season)
I looked up synonyms for spectacular in hopes of finding one that could accurately describe it, and one cannot do it justice. It was equal parts stunning, dramatic, breath taking and dazzling.
The locals were all commenting/lamenting at the lack of snow so deep into the season, but we felt lucky as we wouldn't have been able to do this if it had been snowed out. There was still a layer of ice and snow at the summit, and with my balky knees, was very treacherous in hiking up to the peak. The kids stayed with me saying they would help out, but as soon as they saw a trail with loose snow for snowballs, they vanished. Going up isn't bad, but coming down any incline is a struggle, and combine that with a sheet of ice and it's just a matter of time before I wipe out. Without my aids, was going slow and did go down on my butt a couple times. A lovely elderly Russian couple that were also having a hard time came up and we all grabbed onto each other to make it down. Had to yell at the kids, and the adults, later at how pissed I was that not only did my own friends and family desert me, but I had to be helped out by gawdamn Russians! Horrible horrible Russians. Later found out that they were Ukrainians, so life made a lot more sense afterwards.
Before we leave Austria, have to mention beverages. First, learned that lemony soda drinks are super trendy in Austria these days, and the most popular is the Almdudler.
It was OK, and those two canoodling on the can are precious, but the name is what we loved. A few days later, poor Sophie stepped into a fresh pile of dog crap with her deep treaded snow boots. Nasty...we decided that the German name for dog crap on the street was probably Almdudler, so for the rest of the trip, whenever someone spotted some on the street, the cry of Almdudler was heard warning the others.
Secondly, the Austrians are extremely proud of the fact that Red Bull is an Austrian creation. Their headquarters is just outside Salzburg (Peter pointed it out on our tour) and it seemed that every person we spoke to worked in how great Red Bull is. They own sports teams, is the biggest export, etc. Caffinaeted chemicals and total shit if you ask me, but I guess you got to support your own (like Pats fans defending Tom Shady and Belicheat). So at the end of our Austrian stay, in ranking the most famous things Austrian, the top 5 in no particular order are: Red Bull, Mozart, Sissi, The Sound of Music, and Hitler.
Am feeling a little better about these posts. It was hard to get started and was procrastinating a lot, but am feeling like I'm on a roll...and just in time, cause our next stop was Budapest and that place was my favorite on this trip, and is arguably (with myself) the best city I've ever seen. Looking forward to reliving that next time.
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