The Fourth, Abroad

In Salzburg, of course, there is no Fourth of July. There’s simply 04.07.10 or 4 Juli. Accepting this is an adjustment a native-born and -reared American must make each year she finds herself far from barbecues and parades, fireworks and Sousa marches, awaking on the morning of a day which date has for a lifetime held specific and particular significance to discover it’s simply another day for everyone around her.

It’s not that I’m a particularly patriotic American. I left the country without regret and suffer no longings for it, save my sadness at leaving behind dear friends and family. I’ve settled, as well as is possible for me, where we have lived since and am not eager to return.

I learned, however, my first summer in Europe that I can’t simply ignore traditions that have been part of my life since childhood. That first year in Ireland, I was sent a notice by the HSE – the national health service – asking me  to ‘attend’ the outpatient radiology unit at the regional hospital in Waterford for a mammogram on 4 July.

I considered requesting another date but thought, ultimately, what would be the difference? It would be simply another Friday in Ireland, with people going to work and doing the shopping as usual. There was no reason to re-schedule the appointment, although Himself and I briefly discussed planning a party. Why bother anyway?

I remember driving, for the first time on my own, the 50 or so miles to Waterford that July morning. The middle part of the journey, between Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir, passes through particularly beautiful countryside. The tree-lined River Suir and the gentle Comeragh Mountains, rising stately and green, lie on one side of the road; on the other side, rich pasture land, dotted with fine houses, rolls off toward the horizon. I negotiated the confusing road works as I approached Waterford city, found the correct lane to cross the intimidating bridge across the mouth of the Suir, wound through the ancient streets and found the hospital without getting lost. At that stage, before I had passed the Irish driving test, to have done it alone felt like my own declaration of independence.

I had the car radio tuned to RTÉ’s Lyric FM, which features an eclectic mix of classical, light classical and standards, thinking that, given the connections between America and Ireland, and the affection the Irish generally have for Americans, they would play something to mark the occasion. I was hoping for my Fourth of July favourite, ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’. Perhaps even ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. Something spirited. It wasn’t until my return trip, though, during the lunchtime request programme, that the presenter dedicated songs to mark the occasion. But instead of a rousing march or triumphant anthem, she chose the poignant path, selecting the plaintive ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ and Jay Ungar’s achingly tender ‘Ashokan Farewell’. (Which choices may reflect something of the complicated relationship between Europe and America.)

Flooded with emotion, I took a chance and stopped in Clonmel to seek out an American friend who lives there. But when I went to the shop where she works, she and her boss were involved in a time-sensitive project, too busy to talk. The connection I sought would have to wait.

'Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,' indeed.

I learned the lesson that July, and the following year Himself and I, along with my American friend from Clonmel, planned a barbecue for a few friends. As it happened, my brother the airline captain had a layover in Limerick that day, so he was able to join us. I located a collection of Sousa marches online, and, blessed with a fine warm day, we had, in our small way, a Fourth of July party. Sans fireworks, of course.

So as July approached this year, we considered, then rejected, the idea of hosting a barbecue. Life is too complicated right now. We decided instead simply to go into the Altstadt and enjoy a Sunday afternoon together in Salzburg. Before leaving, I listened to the United States Marine Band playing ‘The Stars and Stripe Forever’ – one small concession to sentimentality. Then, I having furtively wiped my eyes, we set off for the city centre.

The Salzburg Festival opens in just a few weeks, and there are even more visitors on its streets. Crossing the bridge over the Salzach and entering a platz in the Neue Stadt, we were passed by a group of young Americans, enjoying the heat of the day in shorts, tank tops and flip flops. There was no red, white and blue to be seen.

We continued on lazily, admiring Beaux Arts buildings and peering into shop windows, finding breads in the shape of elephants, stainless steel cookware, men’s watches priced far beyond our budget, tempting handmade shoes, and tracht, Austrian traditional dress. At a photographer’s window, we stop to gape at the large, arresting image of a nude woman playing the saxophone, long platinum-blonde hair and white skin against a white ground, with just a patch of black. Another group of Sunday ramblers, a man and two women with a child in stroller, stopped beside us, also staring at the photograph. From his stroller, though, the child was impressed by a second photograph in the window, that of an infant lying on the palm of an adult.

‘Die Baby, die Baby!’, he called out, over and over.

‘Ja, ja, die Baby’, his parent replied. With some relief, I assumed.

In the Mirabellgarten – the formal gardens beside the schloss built by a 17^th century prince-archbishop for his mistress – the gold tulips of Easter time had been replaced by yellow pansies, marigolds, red begonias and salvia. We wandered its paths, staying in under the shady arbours where possible. The garden is where the ‘Do-Re-Mi’ scenes from The Sound of Music were filmed, and it’s popular with visitors, many of whom can be found having their pictures taken in front of the Pegasus foundation featured in the film. But it’s popular as well with ordinary Salzburgers, who sat on benches in the shade, dozing, talking or simply, I suppose, thinking, a small study of humanity.

Back on the other side of the river we sat under an umbrella in a large platz, drinking beer and watching people passing, among them a woman pushing a stroller in which sat a small terrier, its ears pricked with excitement.

‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ said Himself.

Our beers finished, we wandered in the direction of the Festival Halls, which, as it turned out, were open on the very afternoon for a free preview of the coming programme. Why not?, we asked each other, and went inside the larger of the two, the Grosses Festspielhaus. And, again through simple good luck, we found ourselves just in time to attend an hour-long free concert, a kind of sampler of coming concerts. Markus Hinterhäuser, pianist and Festival music director, played duet with another pianist, then discussed the upcoming Festival. But the real crowd pleaser was the percussion ensemble that followed, directed by Martin Grubinger and featuring a fascinating array of metal, wooden and skinned-covered surfaces –  in every shape, size and colour – designed to be beaten, hammered and otherwise struck. I’ve been wondering if my procrastination and hesitation would rob us of the chance to get a taste of the Festival. Now it seems more accessible.

Outside once again in the late-day summer heat, I looked up at the skyline of domes and steeples against the pale horizon. Salzburg is a beautiful city, and I felt alive, joyous, and very glad to be there, just one among many on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, simply taking it in, walking aimlessly and leisurely, pausing to look at art in the windows of galleries or admiring bright coloured beads in jeweller’s. We passed through the platz in front of the Dom, now nearly entirely filled with the stage and a huge bank of bleachers for the traditional Everyman performances that open the Festival. From there we passed by the giant chessboard where a game was in progress. And then on to the gem-like St Peter’s cemetery – another The Sound of Music location – with its bright flower-covered graves and painted iron grave markers.

The caretaker motioned to us as we turned toward the back of the cemetery, saying something in German. A woman standing nearby, an American, said ‘I think he means don’t go back there.’ It was true; it was nearly 7 and the gates of the cemetery were about to close. We moved toward the other gate, the woman and her companion walking near us, stopping to admire the flowers as we did.

'They’re so beautiful,’ said the other woman, also American. ‘I’ll have to keep coming back.’

I agreed. ‘It’s one of my favourite places in Salzburg. I come here every chance I get. You should see it at Easter, when the graves are all golden with daffodils.’

She looked at me, a little surprised, perhaps questioning. I said, simply, ‘We live here.’

As we parted, I again felt my good fortune

Shortly afterward, home at last, and having barbecued wurstl and opened a bottle of wine, Himself treated me to another concert, one for the Fourth of July. He whistled, in its entirety, ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’. It was a virtuoso display of just one of his many talents.

I am lucky indeed.

Easter in the Altstadt

The Stiftskirche is the church of St Peter’s Benedictine Abbey in Salzburg’s Altstadt. The abbey was founded in the 7th century by St Rupert. The Stiftskirche itself dates from the Romanesque period, but it was extensively rebuilt in the 17th and 18th century. I happened into it on the afternoon of Good Friday and, leaving, I noticed that the music on Easter Sunday’s 10.15 mass would include Mozart’s Mass in C Minor and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. That would be interesting, I thought, if we could get ourselves there at that hour.

So Sunday morning we cycled 20 minutes along the bike path that runs beside the Salzach into the city centre and found our way through the maze of streets and platzes to the old church. We got off to a late start, so the priest was just finishing his sermon when we crept from the porch into the back of the nave. Others were entering as well, including a middle-aged couple just in front of us carrying a small basket covered with a cloth embroidered ‘JHS’ – Christ’s initials.

We breathed in thick incense as we stood in the crowd at the back, awed by the Baroque magnificence of the church. Its long barrel vault is white, ornamented closely with pale green rococo filigree plasterwork. Along its length, the vault is supported by an arched colonnade, above which hang enormous paintings. Where the vault joins the colonnade, there are lunette windows, through which light on this sunny morning poured.

Along the colonnaded nave stand monumental marble altarpieces, heavy with paintings and massive silver candlesticks. Above them are brightly painted and heavily gilded life-sized statures. Over the chancel rises a large dome; this morning, light from its cupola flooded the altar below. Flowers were massed on the altar, and statues and vessels on it glinted gold. A row of priests and altar servers in red or black vestments covered by white lace surplices stood as the priest lead the mass in musically intoned German, singing in the old style of the Latin mass.

Overwhelmed by sound, light, colour, smell, we took a while to find our bearings, but gradually we moved along the side aisle to midway the length of the church. Then, from the organ loft over the back of the nave, Mozart’s Mass resumed, with orchestra and chorus, the soprano’s voice rising clear and pure, more piercing than the light pouring through the cupola, as piercing, one wants to believe, as Constanze’s soprano when the work was first performed, in 1783, with Mozart conducting in this very church.

We stood through the rest of the mass, transfixed by the music, by colour and image, light and shadow, the melodic intonation of the mass itself. Gradually we moved from the side aisle to a position behind a bank of pew where we could see the altar more clearly. Periodically, Mozart’s music soared, punctuating the mass. I was half lost in a trance, succumbing to the ecstasy one feels sure the artistry and excess of ornamentation, gold, silver, light and scent were meant to inspire.

I felt this all without an scintilla of belief, even, at times, with a kind of simmering antipathy, given the complete collapse of moral authority the church is undergoing from the pope down. Yet the experience of the mass in this context has its own fascination, especially as a unifier of community, however briefly, as during the sign of peace, which I’ve always found moving.

The mass at last ended. At the end, the priest lifted his hands and, against the background of gold, blessed the food which people had brought in their baskets, an Easter tradition here. Then the organ began a sumptuous voluntary and the bell in the Romanesque tower began to toll. Leaving, we walked beside a father who looked down at his small daughter skipping beside him, swinging a basket with the Easter food. Amid the crowd we made our way out of the church and stood in the platz in front of it watching as Salzburgers poured out, many wearing traditional elements of dress – Bavarian jackets, lederhosen, wool hats and capes.

With the bells continuing to toll overhead, the notes deep and rich, we wandered around the side and to the back of St Peter’s to explore the St Petersfriedhof cemetery, the oldest in Salzburg, with its wrought-iron painted grave markers and freshly planted bright yellow flowers. Through I’m sure there are graves more ancient, the oldest marker I’ve spotted is dated 1717. A few metres away was a grave so new the ribbons on the burial wreaths were still fresh.

From from the cemetery, we passed through two more platzes before coming to the platz in front of the enormous Italianate cathedral, the Dom. St Peter’s bells were still ringing from a couple of hundred metres away. Then, just a few minutes later, mass ended in the Dom, and people streamed out of that building as its bells, more sonorous and elaborate, began to toll. All told, as we stood and wandered and watched, the bells from the two churches must have rung virtually continuously for a half hour, deep, loud, tremendous bell tolling, the sound vibrating right through me, as if the atoms of my body merged with the vibrating air around me.

And so we explored and absorbed the sounds and sights of Easter in Salzburg until it was time to find our bicycles in the maze of streets before cycling along side the Salzach, its waters pale blue-green, on a fresh spring morning, gradually leaving the city behind us.

The Fortress

Stepping off the plane into Salzburg’s surprisingly intimate airport, I was struck by the encircling mountains, some of them rising steeply right there, immediately in front of me. They reminded me of the mountains in my birthplace, Salt Lake City, where, seen at least from that city’s East Bench, alpine peaks rise with similar abruptness and distinctness.

If the mountains ringing Salzburg reminded me of Salt Lake City, the city centre couldn’t be more different. My husband’s immediate boss, visiting Salzburg from global headquarters in the U.S., was taking us to dinner in the Altstadt. On the bus from our hotel, we eavesdropped unintentionally on three American women, each about 20 years old. Obviously in Salzburg for a study abroad programme, they talked loudly about their class schedules and living arrangements until the most vocal got off the bus just before we crossed the river. At the Karolinenbrucke, as the bus turned right, away, we thought, from the Altstadt, Himself and I panicked, just a little, wondering where we were going. However, we were simply entering an area of one-way streets, with north- and south-bound traffic running on opposite sides of the river. After two more stops the bus set us down near our meeting spot, and we re-crossed the river.

Now, for the first time, I could see unobstructed the Festung, rising above the Altstadt even more abruptly than the Alps rise over the city. Illuminated, its white stone walls shone against the black sky. The bulbous blue-green domes of the Dom and what seemed like a half a dozen other churches bristled beneath it, also shining in the darkness. The river gleamed with light on one side of us, the steeples and domes clustered on the other, and dominating the whole was the white fortress hanging in blackness, blackness softened by a scatter of stars and sliver of moon

It was good to meet The Captain again after nearly three years. He and Himself had worked together at another U.S.-based tech firm, and they had built trust and mutual respect over their nine-year-long working relationship. By recruiting my husband for this new position, he had launched our Austrian adventure. Besides which, I like the man. Talking all the time of old times and news of his family, he led us through the narrow passageways of Salzburg’s medieval core. Even now, several days later, there’s an unreal quality to the adventure. It’s strange to think of myself not as a tourist visiting an historic city but as a new resident discovering the place that will, I hope, become home. Then, that first night here, the experience was dream like.

We walked through winding lanes, nearly empty on a Sunday night, that every so often opened out into a wider platz dominated by sculptures under pyramids of glass. Above us, church towers topped with ornate domes clustered forest like. Nearer to earth, glittering shop windows cast diffused light through dim streets. In the windows, light glinted from thousands of brilliantly coloured surfaces: jewellry, porcelain, antique silver, stylish clothes and eyeglasses, dirndls and alpine jackets, leather goods and shoes. Others were completely filled with bright Easter eggs painted all the colours of a vivid summer garden. And everywhere windows shone silver and gold with the foil-covered marzipan-filled chocolate balls, the confectionary specialty of the city, Mozartkugeln. Over it all, high overhead but very very near, the white stone fortress floated, stark and bright against the black sky.

We ate that night in a restaurant supposed to have been in operation for over 1200 years, since 803. Inside, dark wooden panels covered walls and the low ceiling, while fresh tulips filled vases. We sat and talked long. At last we emerged into the night, entering the series of large platz widening out from the sheer cliff wall on which the schloss sits. The lights cast shadows on bare rock, making it hard to see whether the buildings are carved from it or sit flush against it or whether there’s more space than is apparent between the wall and the buildings huddled in its shadow. Light and shadow, buildings with their sharply rising steeples lit brightly from below, empty platz and darkened statues, merged and separated. All seemed surreal; only the floating white fortress rose clear and sharp and solid in the night.