Winter Stopover in Salzburg - from the Archives 1979

Introduction

In March of 1979, I took the train across Europe en route back to USA. I had spent seven months in Greece and the Middle East, but reluctantly had to return home to find a job (one of those irritating life events). My first stop was Vienna, which I described in a 2020 post (please click the link). Salzburg was my next stop. My grandparents took me there in the 1950s or 1960s, but I cannot remember any details.

The Urban Decay reader may wonder why I bothered to revive 45-year-old negatives. They are casual tourist snapshots. Online, one can find a million (billion?) snapshots of Salzburg. Am I attempting a nostalgia flashback to another era, when I was young and energetic? I was exploring the world around me (as I still am despite my dotage). Was I was beginning to form a photographic technique or vision? Regardless, please let me share these pictures from a long-ago trip with you Urban Decay readers. But be forewarned, there is no urban decay in this series.  

An American in Paris Salzburg. Note the giant tie.

Salzburg

Winter in Salzburg is quiet and peaceful (or at least it was in 1979). There were few tourists, and the tourist office found me a room in a modest pension (with delicious Frühstück, of course!). Being winter, some stores were closed, and fountains were protected with wood covers. I had no specific itinerary, so I walked to the castle and wandered the streets.

Road to the Hohensalzburg Fortress (11th century)

Hohensalzburg Fortress (Tri-X film, 28mm ƒ/3.5 Nikkor lens)

Mozart's Geburtshaus, No. 9 Getreidegasse

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthplace is a major tourist attraction. If you are a Mozart fan, some of the best recordings are on the Complete Mozart Edition, a 180 compact disk (CD) collection released by Philips Classics Records in 1990–1991. These amazing CDs are cheap on eBay.

Philips Classic Records Complete Mozart albums (compact disk)

The era of big glasses

Berchtesgaden

Alter Friedhof (old cemetery), Berchtesgaden, Bavaria

I took a one-day outing to Bavaria. I had met an American teacher with a class, and she generously invited me to join the group to see the salt mines and the town of Berchtesgaden. We descended deep into the mines by riding wood sleds down a rail. I developed a splitting headache from the air pressure. The miners used to flood caverns and then pump the brine to the surface. After we came up to the surface, we wandered around the picturesque town of Berchtesgaden. The class was very generous to invite me. 

This ended my too-short stopover in the Salzburg area. The next morning, I boarded the train and headed to Munich.

These photographs are from Kodak Tri-X 400 film from my Nikkormat FTn camera. This was a heavy beast for travel, but that is what I had, and I was stronger then. Tri-X was always a reliable travel film with plenty of exposure latitude. In that era, train stations did not have X-ray machines for your carry-on bags. I scanned the film with my new/old Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 film scanner, operated by Nikon Scan 4.03 software. The film has numerous scratches and defects, many of which I cleaned with the heal tool in Photoshop CS6.