The Grand Tour 07: Kodachrome Slides from Central Europe, 1950

 

After a week in Italy, my dad took the train to Verona and proceeded north over the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck. Before leaving for Austria, he had to check in at the office of the Allied High Command in Rome to secure the appropriate visa. Although it was five years after World War II had ended, Austria was still under joint occupation by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

 

Salzburg, Austria

  

Bürgerwehr fortification on the Mönchsberg mountain, Salzburg

View from the top (from Hohensalzburg Fortress)

Salzburg is such an interesting and historical town. These scenes probably do not look all that different than they do today. The Europeans manage to preserve their historical architecture and use it for day-to-day life. Compare and contrast with many ghastly American cities with their crumbling strip malls.

I traveled through Salzburg in 1979. Time to return. 

 

Vienna

 

In 1950, Vienna was still a divided city. My dad toured in the International Zone (the Innere Stadt) and possibly the US and British zones. I am sure he did not try to enter the Soviet zone, which would have been dirty and largely unrestored.  

Watch the superb film noir movie, The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, to get the flavor of 1949 Vienna. It covers some of the issues of a divided city. Even better, read the novel by Graham Green.

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe outside the Burggarten Gate along Goethegasse

Goethe (1749–1832) was one of Germany's most influential writers and poet (as well as being a geologist). His masterpiece is the drama, Faust. I started to read an English translation but did not get too far. It may be easier to get the flavor of the story by watching a performance of Faust, Charles Gounod's superb grand opera in five acts. 

 

The Votivkirche on the Ringstraße 

The church was badly damaged in the war, but I do not know if this picture shows it after or before renovations.

 

The Wiener Staatsoper with wartime damage still being repaired

This is one of the most active performance houses in the world, with opera, concerts, dance and other functions every day of the week. I remember seeing Tristan und Isolde in 1979 with a student ticket -  I stood in the top balcony for over four hours.

 

Jungfrau, Switzerland 

  

Helping with maintenance on the Jungfraujoch (elev. 3454 metres)

 Zurich, Switzerland

 

In the November sun, Zurich

Zurich

Zurich is in north-central Switzerland. If you have flown to or through Switzerland, there is a good chance your flight passed through Flughafen Zürich (ZRH). This was my dad's last stop in Switzerland before taking the train to Paris. 

 

TWA Lockheed Constellation, Genève Aéroport, August 1952

This 1952 picture is from a later trip to Genève, but I could not resist showing it here. This is a Trans World Airlines Lockheed Super Constellation L-1049. TWA had just introduced it to their transatlantic service, and this would have been one of the early stops in Switzerland. The flight would have required refueling in Goose Bay and Gander en route.

I scanned these Kodachrome slides with a Nikon CoolScan 5000ED film scanner. I adjusted the color of some frames with Photoshop Elements 2024 and manually cleaned some scratches with the heal tool in Photoshop CS6. There is no Ai manipulation or "restoration" of these pictures. They were taken by a real human with a Leica camera.

 

 

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.