Out of Vienna

VIENNA—One of the joys of visiting this city is that it can serve as a doorway to other parts of Austria and Europe. Thanks to wonderful highways and scenic views, a road trip can transform into a voyage of discovery.

During a spare day, and upon the suggestion of the maître d’hôtel who hails from there, we decided to pay a visit to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, which lies less than an hour’s drive away. The city is largely off the tourist radar even if it deserves more visitors to its ancient, historic center.

We were initially armed with written directions and a suggested itinerary. We were assured that we could walk to a nearby bus station and from there take a short ride to Bratislava. But we weren’t warned about the freezing weather, which made every step we took a struggle. Finally, we hailed a taxicab to take us to the station, but when we told the driver about our final destination, he offered to drive us there and wait while we took in the sights.

After a number of inquiries and a helpful student who offered to ride with us and show us the way to Bratislava’s old city center (I felt like a contestant on “Amazing Race”), we finally found ourselves standing on the cobblestone streets of the old town, with the Bratislava Castle looming high up in the mountains, mantled in green.

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We debated whether we should tag behind a tour group and its English-speaking guide but decided in the end to wander off on our own.

Feeling hunger pangs, we turned a corner and found a narrow lane lined with an antique shop on one side, and a small café on the other. Entering the café, we were led into a tiny atrium, surrounded on all sides by glass windows, and furnished shabby-chic style.

Given the time of year, the central square was given over to a Christmas market that featured not just the usual stalls vending Christmas trinkets and gift items, but also an outdoor eating place, the square lined with stalls selling roasted sausages, crepes, sandwiches and breads. We had lunch on our feet, subsisting on sausages with rye bread (apparently, the sausage was a relative of the Polish  kilbasa) and Christmas punch, a mix of heated mulberry wine and fruits.

Save for the modern garb of the crowd, we could have been standing in the middle of a medieval fair, with children running about, biting into sugared apples, and babies wrapped up in thick blankets on wheeled carriages, their shining faces peeking through.

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It was a trip back to a more recent past on a day-long outing to Salzburg. Of course we reasoned we wanted to take a look at a different part of Austria, but the truth is that memories of “Sound of Music” were playing in our minds. In fact, Ruy, our driver-tour guide would play a CD of the movie soundtrack whenever we would drive past familiar scenery, shifting from English to Spanish as he guided our mixed group.

Before entering Salzburg, we took a quick tour of the lake district, with stops at the quaint villages like Fuschl, St. Gilgen, and Mondsee. The last has a basilica which might look familiar to “SOM” fans as the church where Captain von Trapp married Maria. (Still lingering in memory is the overhead shot showing Maria’s l…o…o…o…ng bridal train).

I had fantasized about doing a “Maria” in the opening scenes of the movie, smack dab in the center of a meadow with the Alps in the background, twirling and singing “The hills are alive with the sound of music.”

But we were in the dead of winter, and even the lakes were shrouded in fog. When we trekked from church to village shops, snow crunched underfoot, and snow flurries soon covered our coats and caps with a powdery white coating. So much of the scenery playing out in our minds was the fruit of memory, sparked by a familiar-looking tree or stretch of road.

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Salzburg is an old city that has much more than a Hollywood movie to recommend it. It is the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and was a competing power center with Vienna during the Hapsburg Empire.

The city’s old center has been impressively preserved, and as a consequence, large vehicles are not allowed on the small, narrow streets. Ruy parked our van in a nearby lot, and then we walked to the foot of a bridge to make our way to the historic center.

Just as we set foot on the bridge, we were assaulted by a screaming wind and driving flurry; so, much as I wanted to stop and investigate the locks that lovers had attached to prove their undying love, I rushed across to seek shelter.

The old city square has since been taken over by shops, cafés and restaurants, all occupying the ground floor of wonderfully preserved ancient buildings. The city gardens  where Maria and the Von Trapp children frolicked as they sang “Do Re Mi” were standing in the gray morning light, the formal flower beds little more than the wan-looking green scrub.

Perhaps we should have waited to do our “Sound of Music” tour in sunnier climes, the better to hark back to the movie and the bright memories of childhood it evokes.

But we needed to do our Salzburg pilgrimage, if only to say we had “been there” and re-lived a more innocent, more optimistic time in our lives.