Walking

The flat by the wood had infected the imagination of each of us, though we were concerned by its distance from the city centre and what we felt was a down-at-the-heels aspect to the neighbourhood. It seemed somehow scruffy as well as remote. But Salzburg is not a large city, and the buses are said to be excellent. I certainly had no trouble getting from the hotel into the Altstadt. Every 5 minutes, one of two buses passes, each one going the quick 10 minutes into the city centre. I decided to see how long it would take from there to the flat.

Judging by a street map and the bus plan, it seemed two bus lines went near the flat, but which of the two was the one we had seen pulling away from a bus stop not far from it? I chose one of the two and boarded it at the stop by the river, just up from the Rathhaus in the Altstadt. It dropped me on an unfamiliar bypass far from winding medieval passages, cars whizzing by, near a sharp short path that crossed a narrow canal. It had taken 21 minutes, not too bad, I thought.

I waited as our sat nav, already programmed with the flat’s address and just switched on, located a satellite. Then I started walking, passing at first a series of small houses and apartment buildings along a narrow, poorly paved road. At last the street wound round a curve and opened out across a large empty field pocked with thousands of mole holes, ubiquitous around Salzburg. Across the field -– away in the distance -– I could see more low buildings. I walked and walked under a pale sun, comfortable enough on this spring-like day, but wondering how it would be in summer’s notorious rain or winter’s snow. By the time I came to the end of the narrow street where the flat lay and stood looking up at its dark windows, 18 minutes had passed. Too long to walk from a bus stop with a backpack full of groceries. Not doable in heels after a night out.

The street still seemed seedy. The house, shabby, its angular façade uninviting. The wood with its thin stand of conifers, unimpressive, monotonous. On the dark porch of the downstairs flat stood a toy JCB, the kind a toddler can peddle, and an infant’s push chair. They’d be noisy, wouldn’t they?

It was time to give up on the flat, despite the prickling sense that the woodcarver wanted someone who would care about –- care for –- his craftsmanship. Having seen it, I felt a responsibility toward him. Or, more particularly, his ghost. But the street, and the 40-minute journey from the town centre, was unwelcome.

I faced an 18-minute walk and a dash through traffic to the bus stop. But before I moved away, I turned toward the wood, thinking to explore what lay beyond the end of the house opposite the flat. There was a faint path, just a trace of previous footsteps, in the rough grass at the end of the low wall that surrounded a small garden. After a few metres, the ground dropped steeply to a path that circled a pond. Then I saw the swans.

There were a pair of them, necks rising elegantly over pure white bodies, gliding through the waters on the far side of pond, where the ice had melted. Nearer me, in the shadows, the ice had not yet dissolved, putting me in mind of winter’s afternoons spent skating. I followed the path, about the length of a quarter-mile track, the pond the size of football field of an American high school. Mallard ducks swam in the inlet of a tiny island near the shore; with them were the funny black-and-white fowl I think are called coots. Above my head, in the stillness of the morning, I could hear the high shrill call of a bird I didn’t recognise. Rounding the curve on the narrow end of the pond, I could see a pair of horses in a field just beyond the pond. A man walking his dog greeted another, pipe in his mouth; a third man strolled along drinking something from a bottle.

Sitting down on one of the benches that lined the path, I searched my map. I remembered the other bus stop, one much closer to the house, which we had seen as we drove away the day before. Maybe, by programming the sat nav with a street name taken from the map, I could find the other bus line, the one I didn’t take.

I started walking again and passed, not far along, what seemed like a small administration building. This was apparently part of a recreational area. There were other ponds, a lake for swimming, paths leading off toward another wood. And now, about two hundred metres along, I saw a bus pulling away. All within a couple of short blocks from the flat.

Maybe this can be done after all.

The Wood

Wednesday, Agnes, the relocation specialist, drove us to five different rental possibilities. From the comfort of our house in Ireland, we had ticked boxes on a form outlining our requirements, indicating their relative importance on a 0 to 2 scale. Our answers were, of course, limited by our complete ignorance of what houses are like in Salzburg, what the cost of living is or the net amount of the check each month, as well as of other of unknowns and variables. And, as it happens, move-in costs are enormous. In addition to rent, there is a deposit amounting to, generally, two or three months’ rent as well as a broker’s commission of another two months’ rent plus 20% VAT. Who has €5,000 or €6,000, over and above rent, lying around, liquid and accessible? Not us – we just finished furnishing one house and building a garage. It’s one more thing on the overwhelming list of things we’ll have to work out.

Among our requirements for a flat, ranking high is enough space for a bedroom and a spare plus at least one additional room that can be a dedicated (or nearly dedicated) office. Another essential is accessibility to the city centre by bus. We intend only to have one car, and I will rely on the bus and my bicycle to get around while my husband is at the office. And we want to be able have a meal and drinks of an evening out and get home by bus. Ideally, the flat itself with be within walking distance of the city centre, but we realise that may not be possible. Salzburg is a tourist-oriented city, and rents reflect this.

Of the properties we looked at Wednesday, only one really met these requirements, and it was, though spacious and close to the centre, a uninspiring place with cramped and depressing bathrooms. It’s going to be hard to let go of the pleasant, light-filled house in Ireland, designed and built to meet our specific needs. We tramped through the flats on offer, trying to remain positive and open to the possibilities, working out costs in our heads, with growing disillusionment. Three-year leases are standard here, and with the move-in costs so high, one doesn’t lightly take on just anything with the expectation of moving in a few months’ time.

One place, the least likely of all, did capture our imagination, though. We reached it after driving what seemed a long way from the city centre, and then down a narrow lane on the edge of town. The flat takes up the top floor of what was a single family house built probably 30 or 40 years ago, sitting on the edge of a small wood. Through a dark, wood-carved door, we entered a anteroom with a large mirror set into a wood carved frame, which turned out to conceal the electrical panel. We stood briefly in the stairwell tiled, walls and floors, with the deep red marble I think of as porphyry, a fragmentary and possibly inaccurate detail residual from my days as an art history major. Up the stairs and onto a landing, also red tiled, we passed through another wood-carved doorway and found ourselves in an entry panelled, walls and ceiling, with still more hand-carved wood. It seems wood carving had been the hobby – perhaps even the obsession – of the man who had raised his family in the house. Throughout the flat, surfaces are panelled with intricately carved wood, the walls accented in places with gilt light fixtures, giving the impression that one has entered one of the lesser corridors of Versailles.

Off the entrance is a large room with pale timber floors and white plaster crown moulding – popularly called coving in Ireland – with a central medallion. A large window fills the room’s west-facing wall and opens onto a balcony overlooking what seemed a rather shabby garden, all of which belongs to the flat. (The downstairs flat has its own garden on another side of the house.) The balcony turns 90 degrees to run along the hall off which the bedrooms and a bathroom lie. This window-lined hall creates a south-facing gallery, which would be a pleasant place to sit in the sun on a winter’s day. More carved wood panels line its ceiling, these ornamented by carved and painted roundels about a foot in diameter, one of the crescent moon and a star, another of the sun.

The bathroom off this corridor is spacious and tiled with grey-and-white marble. One wall is fitted with cupboards enclosed by more carved wood panels. One of the bedrooms has a fitted wardrobe with doors upholstered in faded pink-and-white chintz set into carved frames. A second toilet off the flat’s entrance is tiled with more red marble and wood panels, making an elegant if slightly claustrophobic WC.

Of the five places we saw, including a single-family house by a creek in a Salzburg suburb, this is the only one that fires our imagination. But in the moment, it feels isolated, far from the city centre, at the end of what seems a scruffy neighbourhood. A funky neighbourhood, in fact. And, says Himself, we might be haunted by the ghost of the man who lovingly carved all that wood.