Otherwise at Salzburg «

Otherwise at Salzburg

Sunday 7th August 2016

Salzburg is up in lifts and funiculars, then down again. The castle was devastating. I fell asleep outside the torture room. Doorways needed further thought. What is the point in a good-sized room if you’ve got to crawl through a tiny opening to get into it? Somehow we failed to see the gilded apartments despite endless crawling through displays of armaments, rush matting and gruel bowls. Instead our attention was riveted to the Jerry Hall/Rupert Murdoch wedding. This was as we recovered in the café. One of our party had been present. Guests became coated in caviar. Lachlan read aloud from his father’s email correspondence with the bride. Have no fear – this old gentleman is magnificent of limb and organ still. In the church, the vicar assassinated the character of the groom.

Also up a rock is the modern art museum. They used to have two Klimts, but they had to give the bigger one back to its true owner. They’d got one Schiele and maybe 15 works by other artists whose names I can’t remember but they were awfully good. Reggie didn’t think much of the paintings by Schonberg, done while he was trying to work out 12-tone mu in his head. The display in the museum was intended to convey that Salzburg was really a hotbed of progressive, liberal experimentation, not a bit Nazi or nasty. So there was a huge photo of psychoanalysts, including Sigmund, gathered at Potsdam and another of Stephan Zweig, also elsewhere. The fascinating thing about this latter was that the famous author was wearing a shorts suit in white, forcing me to reconsider that mode very deeply indeed. The lady psychoanalysts also had interesting hats – or one of them did.

I should mention at this point that Rufus Pitman and Raj Zoroaster were very much promoting leiderhosen during their time in Salzburg. Rufus also acquired a cuckoo clock watch. Their devotion to the Germanic Alpine life is exemplary.

Come later for more – Europe’s loveliest registry office and an exceptional watery visit.