Hmm.
… 43 countries (19%)
Category: travel
lingering in Bad Gastein, Austria
If you’re as fluent oaf Deutsch as I am, you can translate the name of this mountain town:
Bad Gastein = Bad Gas Town
… Not exactly great marketing to attract tourists.
But I love weird & unique Bad Gastein. I stayed over a week.
Catching up on the internet. Day hiking the Austrian Alps. And biking when I needed a change of pace.
Austria is very inexpensive this Summer due to the recession. Tourism is way down. I paid US$22.50 / day for a private room. With breakfast. (I can drink $20 worth of coffee in the morning.)
You could stay in the dorm for US$10 day. And get a complimentary mountain bike. It just might be the least expensive hostel in Western Europe.
The townscape is characterised by historic multi-storey hotel buildings erected on … steep slopes.
It surrounds a series of waterfalls, in fact.
The spas of Bad Gastein are a fashionable resort, visited by European monarchs as well as the rich and famous. … Well, they were in the 1860s.
Since the 1960s imposing and massive hotels mostly sit empty.
Somerset Maugham could have used this town as a setting for one of his short stories about eccentric expat recluses running out the clock.
The good people of the Rathaus have made an effort. To rejuvenate the resort, Bad Gastein renovated the hot springs and added an ultra modern (in 1970) Convention Centre.
The Casino is a little more appealing.
I’d love to shoot a movie here. In one scene an engrossed young couple, deep in conversation in the foreground, wouldn’t notice as a despondent hotel owner throws himself off the balcony into the waterfall.
Soccer balls, as well as the corpses of suicide victims, get washed downstream, eventually finding an eddy.
more bad Bad Gastein photos
I’m aus. En route to the Swiss Alps.
want to go climbing in Italy?
I’m considering a return to Italy, sometime in the future, for a Via Ferrata adventure.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Leave a comment if you are interested, too.
The Sound of Music
Traveling in Austria, it’s impossible to avoid Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, the 1965 musical. I saw it the other day at a hostel.
The film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Wise) and Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Julie Andrews).
Well deserved.
Click PLAY or watch the original trailer on YouTube.
Christopher Plummer as Captain Baron von Trapp is commanding. A great and believable performance. I’d forgotten how good he was.
The plot, acting and even the music hold up really well. Even in 2009.
Fact is it’s the third on the list of all-time inflation-adjusted box office hits, behind Gone with the Wind and Star Wars.
The movie is virtually unknown in Germany and Austria. Those Austrians that have seen it, think it’s bunk. Brits playing Austrians? What’s next? Sacha Baron Cohen playing an Austrian?
quick stopover in Saltzburg
Broke my rule not to travel on a weekend …
Ended up staying in charming Saltzburg for a night en route to Grossglockner.
Hikes are finally starting to be posted on my hiking blog.
The Tent – Munich
Finally found some free internet.
Cool hostel / campground.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
It’s called The Tent.
all’s well in Italy …
The Dolomite mountains in northern Italy are FANTASTIC.
Trip reports coming soon to my hiking blog.
Actually, I’m writing from Munich. En route to some great hiking in the Austrian Alps.
FINALLY found some free WiFi internet access.
why I can’t live in the Maritimes … or Italy
Much as I like Halifax, living in the Maritimes is a non-starter for me. (Sorry Anne.)
Why?
Too many smokers.
It’s disgusting.
As I toured Nova Scotia, one Tim Hortons to the next, I had to push my way through nicotine addicts lurking at each entrance. Yeesh.
Why can’t those Maritimers go work their short-term Summer jobs as mandated by pogie?
I fled the second hand smoke for Italy.
Doh!
Italy is even WORSE. (Remind me not to travel to Cuba.)
And why am I even in Italy? I’m one of the few people you know who doesn’t want to travel in Italy. It’s the last place I wanted to go … last except for the land of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
My Mom reminded me of my only other trip to Italy, over 30yrs ago. I wrote her this on a postcard:
… “Italy is Great…too bad it is run by Italians” …
Italian men back in 1976 were totally irritating.
Happily I can report they’ve improved over the past few decades.
In fact, it seems the young Italian men have collectively opted into a 1980s George Michael look-alike contest. Pretty funny. I don’t speak Italian, but I’d estimate at least 6 million young men, so far, have voluntarily joined into this amusing competition.
It’s great to see that those (formerly) arrogant pricks are now able to laugh at themselves.
The detested Italian machismo seems to be fading.
Of course I’m in Italy for hiking. It was a complete surprise to me. One minute I was searching the internet for cheap flights to Iceland. The next I’d bought a $100 ticket Gatwick to Venice.
Here I am in Bolzano, no guidebook. It’s like the blind leading … myself.
Fortunately 6 of my 10 words of Italian from the distant past have returned to me.
Oh, … I should add that there are only 2 good smokers in the World. And one of them is trying to quit.
shout out for Halifax
I’ve always liked this city.
It’s a University hangout with Dalhousie right downtown. A party place. Great restaurants and bars.
I had a terrific $5 steak special at one busy restaurant as part of my Tattoo ticket package.
The impressive Citadel Hill cannot be missed.
But really it’s the harbour I like most.
My best photo, former prison camp, Georges Island.
… what will Rick do without internet?
Rick McCharles is mostly offline hiking in Europe.
Rick McCharles 