"The Hills are Alive....."

For those interested, I really enjoyed the concert last night. The artists were "Interpreti Veneziani", they are a group of 9 musicians, mostly string players, all soloists in their own right and play together rather like they have one mind. There was also an odd sense of being just people in the crowd as I caught the bus home (standing room only) at 11 last night and found myself jostling for space with 5 of the players I had just been listening to for 2 hours.

Today the promised rain barely happened and the temperatures were much more normal (15-18 deg) on the drive from Venice to Salzburg (Austria). The scenery is quite beautiful and so much more familiar to us - mountains (and they really are massive lumps of rock) and green, green vegetation. We climbed to around 3500ft on the autobahn, hardly noticing the rise in height and were struck by the clean and neat look of almost everything. There were not so many tunnels today, but some were quite long (up to 8km).

In Salzburg, it only seemed to be the University area where we noticed graffiti - makes you wonder about what education does. Mind you, these tend to be more philosophical and political phrases than the usual dismissive expletives we have seen elsewhere (within the limits of my sketchy German). At the other end of the town-decorating spectrum, I noticed that (much like Italy) there were just so many more posters advertising events to do with arts and music than we normally see. It gives the impression that such things are prized by the population at large, even if the cruder sentiments get expressed as well.

Our hotel is located a few km out of town so it is nice to have a bit of space around us for a change. We drove into town but the GPS was struggling to keep up with the situation and at one point recalculated our route (finding a park) 3 times within about 10 seconds. We turned it off and eventually found one using the tried and true method of eyes and signs which was not so easy as we were struggling to understand all the new terms. The information point in town was not particularly easy to find but the crowds were much smaller and we did manage to visit a couple of churches and the Mozart Plaza. One of them (St Peters) had a grave yard in an enclosed garden behind the church. Flowers were everywhere and the care of the graves was exceptional. The sun was going down by the time we headed back to the hotel to the sound of the clip-clop of the horses drawing faikers around the cobbled streets of the square.

This was one character I wasn't expecting to meet (at least not so life-sized) and you might be able to tell from the picture that the conversation was more about chocolate than music.

Tomorrow, we will go back into Salzburg for a while before being guided by "British Andrew" for the last time as we make our way to Munich Airport to drop off the car. Our flight to Vienna will be late so we are unlikely to be posting a blog tomorrow night, and on Saturday, we are going to be out at a concert in Vienna.

Keep watching, but don't expect much news for the next couple of days.