Oregon Arts Orchestra - Salzburg July 9

I woke up on the bus ride as we neared Salzburg and fell immediately in love with the area. The countryside was the deepest, richest green I have ever seen. I thought it was green here in Portland, but we have nothing on Salzburg in July. When we got into the city we drove carefully through the sometimes very narrow streets to our hotel. It was two small hotels, really. We were in the main one. It was called the Hotel Neutor, which we thought was pretty funny. The elevator was tiny and creaky – 2 people with bags nearly too much for it. Kip and I got a room at the top (4th floor) with a walk-around balcony, table, chairs, plants, and a nice view. (below)


After dropping our bags and freshening up a little, we met on the street and walked to a restaurant for dinner together. We went through the tunnel connecting the two parts of town on either side of the mountain in the center (above, as seen from our balcony). When we came through an alley at one point, Kip and I were approached by a group of girls. One had a box on a ribbon in front of her. The rest were all in black t-shirts with flowers pinned on. The box girl was getting married and to earn money for the wedding, she was selling stuff to tourists. Schnops. We laughed and said we were the wrong tourists for her and continued on our way. We learned later that she stopped Guy, Lou and Jae after we had passed and distracted them long enough that they entirely lost us all. The wedding-girls helped them search all the restaurants around until the found us.


At the restaurant we chose a seat with Phyllis (flute), Sam (trombone), and Jim (french horn). We had fun talking and I got my first experience ordering Gluten Free in Austria. Julia found all of us with food allergies/restrictions and wrote our German requirements on a bright square of paper to show our servers. Mine said “glutenfrie” and was pronounced “gluten-fry”. Everyone got plates with some sort of pounded steak served with a sauce probably involving soy sauce and fried baby potatoes. I got the meat and potatoes but no sauce. It was a little dry but not terrible. For dessert, they brought out half crepes with chocolate and creme fraiche. I got an apple, which I thought was great.


After dinner we headed back with Phyllis and Sam and Kim Spomer so we wouldn’t get stuck in an ATM line with every other orchestra member. We found our own ATM and only had to wait for three of us to get money.


On the way there and back we passed a fountain with a horse statue and panels on the wall behind with horse pics. I liked it a lot, of course.