Autumn Light

I’ve been reading at William Fiennes’ The Snow Geese for several months now, slowly following his journey from Texas to the northern reaches of Canada as he tracks the spring migration of the birds. The book is in part an extended meditation on home and missing home, on homesickness, nostalgia and longing. And on days like today, with the dim light of a low-lying sun never seeming to reveal the sky, longing, homesickness and nostalgia are very present for me.

While I love autumn’s beauty, captivated by its palette of bright colours set against the austere neutrals, a contrast that quickens my pulse, it can be a difficult time. For me, death and other losses litter the autumnal landscape. The fading light of the dying year casts these losses in starker relief. The wood next to our flat is no longer a tall green wall. The bare branches of its tree now weave a dull brown screen that filters the light. Inside the flat, the wooden floors gleam darkly; only when I light the lamps – as early as 4:30 or 5 – is there brightness, and that willed.

That’s not to say we are giving into gloom. Yesterday – Sunday – we climbed Kapuzinerberg, one of the two mountains around which the core of the city is built. It is the taller of the two, 640 metres, and it is mostly green space with trails and a small fortress built during the Thirty Years War, now gasthaus serving snacks and beer, at the top. (The Festung, the city’s signature fortress, sits atop the more heavily developed Mönchsberg, the mountain on the other side of the Salzach.)

The last time we climbed Kapuzinerberg, it was a warm late May afternoon, and we panted under a tall canopy of green until we reached the top. Yesterday we climbed by a different route, and the dim light reflected off a thick carpet of copper-coloured beech leaves. We were warmed with exertion, but stopping at a precipice and looking north, we soon became chilled. However, we stood long enough to see that part of the city spread below us, and I was surprised at how many landmarks, strange to me not many months ago, seem familiar to me now.

At the top we stopped to look southeast, but here the landscape was less familiar. Some Sunday afternoon, we agreed, we should explore those street just to see what’s there. Then we descended, keeping to our left the city wall built on the steep flank at the same period as the small fortress above. Wall and fortress were so effective a deterrent they were never tested.

We didn’t stop for beer and wurstl in the gasthaus because we were going directly to Schloss Leopoldskron. Commissioned in 1736 by one of Salzburg’s prince-archbishops, Schloss Leopoldskron is an elaborate rococo palace that sits on the edge of a large pond in an expanse of green space.

In the early 20^th century, it was bought by theatre and film director Max Reinhardt, famous locally as one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival. During the war it was confiscated by the Nazis as ‘Jewish property’. After the war it was bought by the American foundation, the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, and is now used as a conference site. Fans of The Sound of Music recognise its lake as the location for some of the film’s outdoor shots and its grounds and one of its façades as models for the sound stage set of the Von Trapp villa.

However, it is closed to the public every day except one day a year, which was yesterday, when it was open for tours. By the lake, its small formal garden open for an Adventmarkt.

Along with other residents of Salzburg, we waited on line for nearly an hour to view this national treasure, with its stucco ceilings and chandeliers, its faded Chinoiserie room, the gilt and mirrored games room, and the elaborate neo-rococo library, with plaster cherubs and beautifully carved wood, the latter interior commissioned by Reinhart.

The tour was conducted, of course, in German. I was pleased to realise that though I could not follow word for word, description by description, the guide’s commentary, I was able to at least follow the general outline of her remarks. Even though Himself, better at German than I am, filled in some gaps, it is reassuring to find I’ve made even a little progress in German.

It was late and the dun-coloured light rapidly fading when we left the tour to wander the stalls of the small Adventmarkt. We inaugurated the Weihnachtsmarkt season with our first cup of Glühwein, mulled wine popular at the street markets that will soon be open all over Salzburg, as well as throughout most of this part of Europe.

Then, just as we were about to leave, a children’s chorus began singing, and we stopped to listen. They stood in a narrow gravelled path at the edge of the lake. Torches were burning around the grounds, and the lights on the far side of the lake as well as from the garden reflected in its dark waters. The faces of the chorus –  young children and older boys, their voices already deepened, along with a few adult women – were illuminated by a couple of lamps. We listeners were in near darkness, the flickering light occasionally catching a face in the crowd. The chorus sang what must be traditional German and Austrian Christmas music, of which I understood a word here and there.

Then came a familiar song, odd to me in the circumstance, knowing its commercial roots. But, as it happens, ‘I’d Like to Teach the World To Sing’, which began life as a Coco-Cola jingle in the seventies, became a popular Christmas song in Europe, as I learned while living in Ireland. Yesterday, the children sang it with enthusiasm.

Driving home in near darkness, through a part of Salzburg that seems remote from my daily life, I was pleased to realise how familiar have become the mysterious, winding streets of even this part of the city, tucked into the curve of Mönchsberg, where not many months ago I got lost. Last night I knew, almost without knowing, the way. Shops and street corners have become landmarks, if only subliminally. I felt as though, had we turned off Mavis, our Mistress of the GPS, I could have guided us home.

Which reminds me of William Fiennes and his reflection on homesickness and nostalgia. He writes of turning his longing for the home he loved in the past into ‘a desire to find that sense of belonging, that security and happiness, in some other place. . . . The yearning had to be forward-looking. You had to be homesick for somewhere you had not yet seen, nostalgic for things that had not yet happened.’

I am not sure who I am these days or what my job is, not sure what nationality I represent or where my home is. But every small bit of progress I make – in learning German, in knowing my way around Salzburg, in writing something new – makes me feel more grounded in where I am now and gives me more hope that I will be able to manage where I will be tomorrow.

Luck on the Day

The bus was just about to pull away from the Bärenwirt stop when the driver made an announcement, auf Deutsch, of course.

‘He said he’s only going as far as Hanuschplatz.’ My husband, whose understanding of German is growing faster than my own, translated. ‘Something about an event today. I guess they have the streets closed.’

It was the Feast of Corpus Christi and, like all Austrian holidays, it was observed on its calendar date, a Thursday in this case. In Austria, you take your holidays when they fall, not on the closest Monday or Friday. We were on our way to the Salzburg museum. It was too cloudy and too wet to drive to Tirol or ride the cable car up the Untersberg, either of which we’d planned to do on our next free day.

Hanuschplatz would do fine. It was only one stop from Mozartsteg, the closest to the museum. A walk through the Altstadt is never uninteresting.

But as the bus turned up through a narrow passage toward the next stop, we saw coming towards us three open-topped vintage cars. Himself nudged me. ‘Remember the cars we saw yesterday? There must be something on.’

Did I ever mention that Himself has been in love with cars since he was old enough to sit up and, holding a saucepan lid in two pudgy paws, pretend to drive? That he could name – with accuracy – every car on Ireland’s roads by the time he was four? That he can recite the registration number of a car he owned over thirty years ago, when he was in his late teens?

When we got off the bus at the river’s edge, we could see the crowds lining the sidewalks along the street and over the Stadtbrücke about four hundred metres ahead. From the bus stop, the street rises slightly from the bus stop, so we were looking up toward the bridge and could see in the spaces between the standing figures the blur of cars whizzing past.

‘There are cars racing over there,’ he said, with the pretence of petulance, ‘and I can’t see them.’

‘Well, we’ll walk faster then,’ I said and lengthened my steps. We reached the bridge soon and nudged ourselves into an open space at corner of the bridge and sidewalk.

Fifties rock and roll blared from speakers as engines thundered. Over the music a pleasant voice announced the cars as they approached. I turned my  head to see each one as it emerged from behind a lamppost partially blocking my view. A bright-green Porsche 911. A BMW roadster. Several Ferraris. An MG roadster. They flashed by quickly in the narrow space between the lamp post and the woman in front of me who leaned out over the railing that contained us.

I tried to make out the German words: Neunzehnhundert dreiundsechzig. It was a lot of work, but, yes, I worked it out. In fact, I could see that most of the cars were Sixties vintage, with a few, perhaps, reaching back into the Fifties. I could make out the year here and there, occasionally the make. I didn’t understand the German pronunciation of Jaguar, but I did understand ‘E-Type’. A small black Austin passed, similar to the one my parents owned when I was about five. But – wait a minute – did he say fünfunddreißig? Did my eyes or my shaky grasp of German fail me? Or was it my also-shaky knowledge of vintage cars? (I discovered, on researching it, that it was a 1956 Austin A35, a few years newer than the one my parents owned.)

The cars continued their circuit, speeding across the bridge from the Neuestadt, turning left in front of us, then roaring away toward the bridge several hundred metres southward, where they turned left over the river, then left again and northward to re-cross the Stadtbrücke.

I at last spotted the announcer standing behind a barricade of stacked tyres just metres from us. A greying man in his forties, he wore a bright red polo shirt, and his face reflected the calm humour with which he announced the cars and their drivers. Listening, I struggled to make out distinct words, trying to follow at least the car makes and years. But though he spoke distinctly, individual words dissolved into a blur of sound that streamed over me, largely indecipherable.

Still the cars zoomed past, a parade of colour on the dull day. We heard the rumble of the engine and then, briefly, each car would stream into view before listing deeply on the sharp left turn and rocketing away. A cream-coloured 1955 Mercedes 300 SL Roadster. A pewter-coloured Aston-Martin. A 1966 Maserati Mistral. A fire-engine red 1969 Corvette.  A 1962 Sunbeam. Porsche 911s, Porsche 356s, Alfa Romeos, and Mini Coopers.

I let my focus wander from the cars to look around me. To our backs, the Salzach swept rapidly northward, its waters high with the previous day’s heavy rain, so high they came within a metre or two of the pedestrian and bike paths suspended under the bridge. On its opposite bank, pastel-coloured Belle Époque buildings rose against the green, tree-covered Kapuzinerberg. Nearer us, just above the course, people looked out of first and second floor curved windows of the Baroque-era buildings. Rocking side to side, a woman danced to the beat of Splish-Splash playing from the speakers below.

The beat of the music infected the woman next to me, too, as she turned and smiled, as if to invite me to share her excitement. Behind us, people of all ages jostled to find a spot to watch. A young couple angled a baby stroller in and peered over our shoulders. I envied the three men in cloth caps their height as they towered over me. In front of me, a boy of about 11 leaned over the railings and tugged on his mother’s sleeve. The music changed again, and the announcer intoned, in English and with deadpan irony, 'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr Elvis Presley.'

Ah yes. No wooden hearts here.

Across from us, on the opposite side of the bridge, I could see railings where only a few people stood. We slipped down some steps and, with the strains of Fun, Fun, Fun echoing off the walls of the subterranean passageway, crossed to that corner. From there, standing opposite the red-shirted announcer, instead of seeing brake lights as cars rounded the turn, we saw their grilles as the approach to it. They veered towards us, rachetting up the tension as they came close to clipping the kerb near where we stood.

By now the rally class had changed to a thrilling parade of race cars, many of them over 50 years old, and a large portion of them open. Low-slung boat-shaped Morgans, a 1931 and a 1926 Buggatti. A white 1969 Porsche that I thought the announcer said had been driven by Steve McQueen. A streamlined silver 1955 Mercedes and a bulky 1932 Chrysler Gold Seal. A 1969 Shelby Cobra, massive engine throbbing. The drivers in their leather jackets, helmets and goggles, smiled back at the applause and thumbs-ups from the exhilarated crowd. As they sped away down the narrow road, the faster of the cars swerved left and right as they tried to overtake those in front of them, with others approaching close behind.

It was, in fact, a rally, we learned later, part of the Gaisbergrennen race for historic cars sponsored by the Salzburg Rallye Club. But from our perspective, standing on the corner waving at the drivers as they passed, one after another, the atmosphere was festive, celebratory, rather than competitive. Our stumbling onto it on the way to the museum – a visit now  postponed – was happy chance, one of the pleasures of living in Salzburg.