Salzburg

Imagine a typical household scene involving mother and child that could take place in any town in any country in any part of the world. It's late afternoon and mother is working in the kitchen when twelve-year-old Billy comes bounding through the door, not a care in the world.
“Where on earth have you been, young Billy?”, asks the concerned mother.
“Fucking!”, comes the eager reply.
You can picture this going downhill pretty fast. Pity the poor mothers, then, of the small western Austrian town of Fucking, for whom such conversations are a daily occurrence.

Yes, there is a town called Fucking. Well, not so much of a town as a collection of houses 20 miles up the road from Salzburg with the most frequently-stolen roadsign in Central Europe. So bad was the sign theft getting that in 2004 a referendum was held on changing the small town's name. Its hardy – and probably giggling – residents opted to maintain the status quo, much to the presumable chagrin of Billy's mother. Personally, I'm glad the town kept its name. While most visitors (Georgina and Caroline included) come to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour and general associated gaiety, I have no problem putting my hand up and professing that I've only come here for Fucking.

That's if I survive the train ride from Lake Bled. Just our luck that we've picked to get on a carriage of weirdos and misfits that wouldn't be out of place on a circus train. Seated a few rows ahead of me is the fattest man I've ever seen. He's also the tallest man I've ever seen. I'd swear he was some sort of freakshow escapee, except he's wearing quite a fancy suit. Perhaps he's trying to go incognito. The seat behind me was occupied by some tosser listening to trance music – which seems a strange choice of genre for someone who is patently not in a nightclub and presumably not on drugs – but he's got up and been replaced by a … you know, one of them. It's not a he, it's not a she, it's somewhere in between. It's tall, has long grey hair in the immortal words of Ray Davies, “walks like a woman but talks like a man”. He/she talks loudly too, and is currently berating the poor elderly man across the aisle from her/him in Austrian. A man wearing a kilt has just come in from the front carriage, walked down the aisle to the rear carriage and back again, which puzzles me because I thought this train had come from Dubrovnik, not Dunfermline. There's obviously been a mass-breakout from somewhere with barbed wire and padded walls – a sort of 21st century Great Escape - and all the escapees are making their play for freedom upon this train.

But strangest of all is the man standing in the aisle next to my seat, gazing mournfully out at the countryside as it whizzes by. His sweater puts me in mind of David Bain and his morose, glazed-over look is consistent with a man whose entire family has just been shot. He's silent and stoic, his only movement the occasional raising of the elbow to take a sip from his can of Hollandia. I wish I could join him in that regard, but I've promised myself I wouldn't drink any beer before 11am. Not until we get to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, anyways. Once we're there all bets are off.

I do however have in my possession a bottle of wonderfully-titled Almdudler. It's a kind of fruity Austrian soft drink, with an L&P-meets-Appletise zing to it. It would appear - certainly from the packaging anyway - that consuming this stuff transforms a man into an irresistible sex machine, and I have no reason to doubt it. The label illustration features a strong, strapping Austrian mountain man in a green suit with a thick mop of brown hair partially covered by a wide-brimmed green hat with a white ribbon flapping gaily in the breeze. Clinking glasses with him is a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein, also decked out in a wide-brimmed green hat. She's fixing him with a look of pure mischief that says “once you've finished consuming that refreshing, lightly-carbonated beverage, I'm gonna take you back to the log cabin and do things to you that will make you scream for mercy”. It's a look I've seen a few times before, though not as often as I'd have liked, and never from a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. A few more bottles of Almdudler and that is bound to change.

Back on the train, and the mournful starer has moved closer to me so that he's almost standing directly over me. It's impossible for me to pretend not to notice him, yet he has given no indication of acknowledging my existence, which leaves me in the socially-awkward position of not knowing whether to say hello or not. Besides this, I don't know whether we're in Austria or Slovenia and I'm not familiar with cross-border language protocol, so wouldn't know which language in which to greet him. Eventually I come to the compromise decision of playing the dumb tourist card and greeting him in English.
“Hello”.
He looks down and regards me for a long while with a face betraying a mixture of blankness, surprise and confusion, like John Key at the front of a fast food queue. Then he takes another sip of his beer and resumes his silent vigil out the window. I glance outside myself and it's just the same countryside we've been passing through for hours: towering, snowy peaks plunging into wooded valleys with meandering streams. It's like New Zealand but with more church steeples and less roadside barns selling horse poo for $3 a bag.

Salzburg greets us under a grey, murky sky and for the first time since leaving London, there's a nasty chill in the air. There's more bad news waiting for me when we arrive at the hostel. It turns out that the guy who runs the tours from the hostel to Fucking has fucking broken his fucking leg, and so the fucking Fucking tour has been fucking postponed in-fucking-definitely. Gosh darn it!

“Well, is it worth trying to get there under my steam?”, I ask the receptionist, who incidentally happens to be a busty, rosy-cheeked blonde fraulein. Too bad I've thrown out that bottle of Almdudler or else I'd have had her swinging from the chandeliers in ten minutes flat.
“Not really”, she replies. “Well, it would take you a long time to go there. You would have to be changing buses three times, and then some walking”.
“But what's the town like? Is it worth it?”
“The town, it is nothing. There is just a big swamp … and the sign”. She smiles knowingly
“Ok, well thank you anyway”.
I feel crushed by this news, like a schoolkid who's shown up for his mate's birthday party a day late and missed all the fun. My Fucking dreams are at an end. Who knows if I'll ever be here again. I could die a Fucking virgin.

Still, this is Salzburg and there must be other ways for a man – even one who has never seen The Sound Of Music – to entertain himself. After all, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Wolfgang Mozart and an important regional centre since Roman times. Not that much of this history is on proud display this particular afternoon. The fortress Hohensalzburg towers imposingly above the old town as it has for the past 900 years, but the fascinating history of the town itself has been swamped by the tourists pouring through every narrow, cobbled street and alleyway with ceaseless vigour. Turkish restaurants and hot dog stalls line every street. “Live Premiership Football” scream billboards outside Irish and English pubs. Fair enough I suppose, why would you spend your Saturday afternoons eating kebabs and watching football in a pub on the rain-soaked streets of Blackburn, Bolton or Wigan when you could watch it in a pub on the rain-stoked streets of Salzburg? The beer's better here, for one thing.

I leave the old town and walk east along the river, and quickly find myself in a run-down industrial neighbourhood. The main theme of this no doubt once-picturesque river is concrete: concrete banks, concrete piers, wide concrete walkways on either side. A cluster of unsavoury-looking teenagers are congregating around a large concrete skateboard ramp. This is the part of Salzburg that they obviously don't want the tourists to see. It's too bad that at the part of Salzburg they do want the tourists to see, you can't see a thing because of all the bloody tourists in the way.

It's not until I get back to my four-bed dorm room that I sense my luck beginning to turn. There's no one else there, but on the bunk bed below me, the occupant has placed a Billabong bag, a tank top and the shortest pair of denim shorts I've ever seen. Thus far our random dorm mates have all proven to be less-than-wholesome characters – a farting Singaporean in Vienna, a socially-retarded, monobrowed Czech in Ljubljana, Stefan in Budapest – so the discovery that I'm sharing a room with a shapely Aussie girl with (probably) loose morals is a pleasant one indeed. You can only imagine my disappointment when the two other occupants – a 30-something couple from Wellington – walk through the door. Still, they're friendly enough, and obviously won't be keeping me up all night playing drinking games.
“We just had three weeks in London. It was two weeks too long”, says the man, whose pale complexion confirms that he did not once see the sun in that time.
“Yeah, I know the feeling”, I reply. “What have you guys been up to in this area?”
“We went to some ice caves today”, says the woman. “It was pretty cold! Not sure I'd recommend it”.
And what of the Sound of Music tour? Any plans to visit Fucking?
“Haha, nah. It's just a few houses and a sign in the middle of a swamp”.
We all agree that we miss New Zealand with its friendly, uncomplicated locals, low crime, and the way you don't have to auction off body parts to have enough cash to make it from town to town.
“The Sound of Music tour was pretty shit, by the way”, says the man. I could've told him that before he even went. We're about to switch off the lights when the Australian girl, owner of the skimpy denim shorts, returns home for the evening. Turns out she's ugly, and can't speak English properly. No loss.

***

“Yeah, London is great, yeah! I love it how all the museums, are like, free? So you can go as many times as you want? Ohhh I love the Tate Modern, I went there three times? Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I'm like, a young 'Strayan female? So I end all my sentences with question marks? Even when they're not questions?”

If there hasn't been scientific research conducted into why Australian accents carry over the top of everyone else's, there bloody well should be. Maybe then we'd stand a chance of putting a stop to the phenomenon. The hostel dining room is abuzz with excited chatter, but all that can be heard with clarity is a porky Australian girl in the corner telling a bored-looking Scotsman about her time in London. The Scot probably had some loose designs on getting in her pants when he initiated the conversation, but now that it's clear she's of about as much interest as a game of Six Nations rugby, he's resigned to just sitting impassively, nodding occasionally looking at his watch, like a bored office worker hanging out for the five o'clock bell. Back at our table, my “Authetic Austrian Breakfast” is making pretty dubious claims to originality considering it's just scrambled eggs with some ham, onion and tomato mixed through, but I'm prepared to give the chef the benefit of the doubt.

It's another overcast day, and the girls have headed off early to embark on their Sound of Music guided tour. They asked me again this morning whether I would like to tag along but I declined, citing far more important business to attend to. The Bledisloe Cup and Tri-Nations decider is on this afternoon and I have to find a pub in which to watch it. Logically, the first place to look would be the Aussie-themed pub on the outskirts of the Old Town. It's manned by a solitary Australian behind the bar, with a goatee that he's waited until his OE to start growing because he knows he'd get too much shit about it from his mates if he grew one at home.
“You'll be showing the rugby here this arvo, mate?”, I ask in a neutral accent.
“Ahhhh, I dunno if we have the channel, mate”, he says with furrowed brow.
“Well what is gonna be on then?”
“Um, Premiership football probably. It's a Saturday”. He flicks through his TV guide. “Yeah. Newcastle against Hull”. Jesus.
“But this is an Aussie pub, right?”
“Ahhh. Yeah, it is. Sorry mate”.
That's shithouse, mate, I think to myself as I step back out into the gloomy afternoon light. My hasty reconnoitres around the English and Irish pubs in the area also come to nothing. Newcastle v Hull is obviously the premier sporting fixture anywhere in the world this afternoon, and if that's what brings the crowd in, so be it. But we're rapidly approaching kickoff in the rugby and the thought of missing out on seeing our boys give the Ockers a hiding has me in a mild panic. Only one thing for it. I'll go back to the hostel and follow the action via live text commentary.

I suppose you might say that sitting in an internet room as live text updates of a rugby game pop up every ninety seconds or so isn't exactly your idea of a swell time in Europe, but I merely see it as doing my patriotic duty for the country. After all, what did Kiwis and Aussies on their OE do before the wonders of internet and satellite TV came along? Were they too busy sinking Guinness and shagging local sheilas to care about these vital rugby clashes, or did they sit huddled around a radio listening intently? I'm fairly sure it would be the latter. At any rate, the updates tell the story of a see-saw match in which first we take the lead, then the Aussies sieze control, then the good guys go on a three-try burst and hold off a late rally from the convicts to win 28-24 and retain the Bledisloe Cup. My fellow travellers in the computer room look up curiously as I dance around the room making suppressed whooping noises, before eventually taking my seat again and triumphantly punching the air and banging my fists excitedly on the desk. If only they could understand the unbridled joy and raw emotion of watching your team win rugby's second-biggest trophy via text update.

And in the other big match of the day, Hull won 2-1.

***

It's our last morning in Salzburg as I walk into the bathroom and find a used condom on the floor. Wow. It's quite the shocking discovery – like finding a hair in your risotto, only slightly less personal – and it's shaken my faith in humankind to its very foundations. What, pray tell, would possibly compel two human beings (sober or otherwise) to engage in sexual congress in a confined space that plays host to germs and other filthy rot from naked backpackers the world over? What kind of people could be so morally depraved and ethically bankrupt as to do the wild monkey dance in a public bathroom and then leave the condom proudly on display like a steaming dog turd in an upmarket fashion store? Oh yeah, our friends across the ditch.

When events like this occur, it's hard not to let them tarnish your overall experience of a place or trip. Like that time in Tauranga mall when a seven-year-old Max put a coin into a love tester and, to his sheer horror, the machine began making all sorts of loud siren noises that caused everyone to stop and stare. Or our weekend away in Whangerei in '93 when my brother smacked his head open on the side of the Hamburgler's head in a McDonald's playground and we spent most of the night in an A&E ward. Which, granted, is probably one of the safer places to spend a Friday night in the far north.

Not that Salzburg appears to have much going for it in the first place. The old town, wedged precariously as it is between the river on two sides and hills on the other two, is just too compact and full of tourists to showcase any of its ancient charm. Across the river is the impressive Palace of Mirabell with its elegant gardens, and the fortress Hohensalzburg cuts an imposing figure upon the skyline to the north, but much of the rest of the city is the same nondescript jumble of heavy industry and characterless buildings that you'd find anywhere across Central Europe. If you don't like The Sound Of Music, or watching unimportant football games in Irish pubs, it's probably worth giving this corner of Austria a miss.

There's one final gutting piece of news awaiting me as we pack our bags and head for the train station.
“I overheard these four Aussie guys talking down here just before you came down”, Caroline says. “They were about to go and rent a car and drive to Fucking for the day”.
“They were going to fucking? When??”
“They were going to rent the car just now”.
“I could've gone with them! They left already?”
“Yeah, just then”.

Fucking hell.