We were too late last night to eat dinner, so we finally started on our watermelon we bought in Backi Brestowac. My father had always talked about the wonderful watermelons he remembered from his childhood. We saw watermelons for sale all over the Vojvodina, reminding us of our father and his love for melons of all kinds. We bought the melon from a very friendly mother and her two children after a wild rainstorm just as we were leaving Backi Brestowac after looking at the cemetery our last day in Serbia. It was a very satisfying melon.
We were surprised that we saw almost no vegetable gardens in Serbia, and when we ordered salads or vegetables in the restaurants, they never tasted very fresh. Perhaps they were imported from far away (much like our veggies and fruits in New York). The fields we saw were all soy, sunflowers and corn (or kukuruz as the DonauSwabians called it) Even when we bought apricots and peaches and plums on the side of the road outside of Belgrade, the fruit was a disappointment. It was surpassing that we saw so few livestock while we were driving through the countryside. We saw some sheep and goats, but no cattle. Since the menus were very meat oriented, where did the meat come from? Our best meals were fresh fish from the Danube; the catfish in Smederevo, the carp and Zander we had at Zemun. The fish goulsasch at Apatin should have been amazing, but the fish parts in the goulasch were too explicit, and altered the experience. I wish we had enjoyed the goulasch more than we did; my father and his father and his grandfather were all enthusiastic about their goulasch.
According to Francoise, our French friend from Belgrade, the poor quality of Serbian food is likely due to the struggling economy. The country is simply poor, and cannot afford to import the best quality ingredients. Perhaps the fish was good because it came directly from the river nearby.
We are happy to be in Austria and enjoying the wonderful desserts. We are always trying the poppyseed cakes and strudels. We tried them in Hungary and in Serbia, but they are best in Austria, and we are taking advantage by entering every bakery and looking for thick juicy chunks of poppy seed. We tried a cake with poppy seeds, rhubarb and meringue, but only the poppy seed part was good. We will definitely keep trying, although we are in Salzburg today, and there are very particular Salzburg desserts which require tasting.
Lunch is usually a picnic for us. We take all the cheese and meat offered at breakfast and each make a sandwich to eat on the road. We stopped in Bruck an der Mur today and sat on a bench in the town square, admired all the gothic and renaissance buildings (the town traded with Venice and amassed great wealth) and reflected on our journey. We have been on the road for 20 days, but on the one hand it feels as if we just started, and on the other hand there is a sensation of being on this journey forever. We are all amazed that we have traveled so far and seen so much and learned more than we knew when we started, and each of us wishes to return and see and learn more. It is our last day tomorrow. We travel to Munich to catch trains and planes and return to our ordinary lives. Yet nothing will ever be ordinary after this experience; we are different people than when we started, aware of many more layers about the past and our present.
Before we end our journey, however, we have a last day in Salzburg. My father received an scholarship for the Mozarteum in Salzburg each year he was studying in Graz, and was able to take any course he wanted and attend all the concerts there each summer. It was heaven for him. He stayed at the Hotel Germania, which we have been unable to find. We arrived late this evening in Salzburg, because our first goal this morning was to find Krottendorferstrasse near Graz, which we did, and it was not too far from the cable car, so we knew that this time, we were probably at the right place. He lived there with his parents and grandmother, because he found a job for his father at the British military installation. We drove the length of the very long street looking for likely places for the Brits, and found some likely possibilities including a castle at the very end. We did not have a number of a house, but it may be that Loni will know, because she would send mail to the address and remembers the name. We will have to ask her.
After leaving Graz, we looked for a monastery that was within a short distance and which had public transportation access, and decided on Stift Rein, an absolutely stunning baroque church and attached buildings, which was the oldest Cistercian abbey anywhere. It was exactly the sort of place my father would visit.
He had also advised us to visit the Salzkammergut, which has been economically significant for thousands of years due to its salt mines. There was so much to see and do in the area, but we were limited both by time and a frightening rainstorm that made it impossible to see or move forward. Traffic was almost completely stopped for over an hour. We limited our viewing to the Dachstein mountains towering over us, and stopped at a couple of the lakes. Grundlsee and Wolfgangsee were arbitrary stopping points; there were many more places we could focus on. We will leave that for our next visit. Austria is so very picturesque and clean and well kept, and very much on the agenda for our next trip. We ate at a gasthof with a great view of a lake, and enjoyed carp and spinach knoeldel and our poppy seed strudel.
It is hard to believe we are almost at the end of our journey. We are settled in our hotel in Salzburg, marveling at what we have seen and done in such a short time. When we are driving we are reviewing all sorts of family stories, examining all the layers, anticipating all the meanings, wondering what more we can learn. We have one more day to imagine the life of our father when he came to Salzburg each summer to immerse himself in music. We walked along the quiet streets of the old city, which is a pedestrian zone now, and was probably not much different in my father’s time. The Salzburg castle towers over the town, the Salzach River runs through the middle, massive churches are used for concerts in the evenings, and the cafes and restaurants are full of excited patrons enjoying themselves. My father would listen to music above all else, so we will look for a concert to attend tomorrow in his honour. We feel so very lucky to be here walking in his footsteps.
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