I thought of something to write so disregard #7. But before we get onto Germany, a bit more on Austria. You my dear readers, know this isn’t a travelogue where you can read about what best sights to see or hotels to stay in. I’ll leave that to travel agents. We’ll talk about other stuff here.
We’ve recently been to Salzburg (not to be confused with Strasbourg as I frequently do) and if you didn’t know, Salzburg is famous for Mozart and The Sound of Music. They also gave us yodelling, according to them – not something I would mention in polite company. Had they also gifted the world rap music, their work would have been complete.
The guides on this trip have been tremendous and our guide in Salzburg was no exception. At every stop on the walking tour, there was a Sound of Music link…and she’s a singer so it was like being guided by a South African (for South African she is) Julie Andrews. We got the whole sing-song repertoire. But at the end she became a (metaphorical) horse. Before you affect offence by proxy, I mean, like a working horse, as soon as we turned for home the pace accelerated markedly, much to the chagrin of the athletically challenged in our group. An international incident was avoided by a tactical change-up. I’ve never understood why “change-up” means “slow-down” when it should mean “speed up”.
When it comes to attitude to table service, the Eastern Europeans love us, the Austrians are indifferent and the Germans have turned into the French. The EU has a lot to answer for in the overall scheme of things but this development is ridiculous. We’ve all encountered the French waiter of legend but how did this become a German thing? Are the French infiltrating and blaming Germany for some implied slight? Surely the French can’t blame the Germans (everyone else can – Angela Merkel specifically) for cultural assisted suicide because France was already Algeria with attitude when the migrant tsunami smashed through non-existent borders (Poland and Hungary notwithstanding). But I digress (as usual), as this has only a tenuous link to table service..
To further flog this digression, we have just been to Nuremberg and there’s a very nice statue there surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The fence had a ring built into it a few hundred years ago and if inclined you can spin the ring and it will grant you magical fertility powers. Or something. Anyway, we saw this about eight years ago and back then it was in an easily accessible square. It wasn’t in a square protected by freedom bollards, placed to prevent people of irrelevant ethnicity accidentally ploughing their vehicles into crowds of unsuspecting people, usually around Christmas time. But it is now. Something has irrevocably changed so you can understand why your average German service provider might be somewhat pissed and not in any mood to indulge tone-deaf foreigners like us when they’ve got plenty of their own to deal with.