“Everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient. All the vacations that we find very soulful are inefficient places. The food that we really, really like and find soulful are inefficient to cook… maybe soulfulness is a function of chaos and inefficiency… It is impossible to imagine scaling in life without standardizing. And standardizing is…
Slow down, you crazy childAnd take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhileIt’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or twoWhen will you realize, Vienna waits for you? — Billy Joel, Vienna A traveler seeks magic in places big and small, and in mountains and cities alike. Two weeks of…
“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Taking the train between Salzburg and Vienna I’m reminded of…
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Hallstatt is a tourist town. Thousands visit, take the same photos and leave. The crush of people in the middle of the day is an adjustment if you aren’t expecting it, but really—you should be expecting it. Hallstatt is famous for the iconic vista and the swarms…
Walking around in Salzburg, Austria offers a visual feast of bustling streets and five squares, the Salzach River, the Salzburg Cathedral, the cafes and biergartens, and above all, the Hohensalzburg Fortress high atop Festungsberg hill. The core hardscape is essentially the same for us as it was for Mozart 250 years ago. You can feel…
“We have to remind ourselves that, at that moment, Blitzkrieg was nothing. It was just a bunch of stalled Panzers. Just a monstrous traffic jam on the Austrian highways, some furious men, a word that was coined later, like a gamble. What’s astounding about this war is the remarkable triumph of bravado, from which we…