First Impressions and Second Chances

Location: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA


This internship has been on-and-off more in the last week than my previous boyfriend and myself. It has been an up and down emotional drain, not knowing if I have two weeks or three months left in a city I love, away from a city I also love. I didn't know if I once again would need to tell my friends I was leaving, only to turn around and tell them I would join them in a biergarten as soon as Spring starts. And I still don't concretely know. 


What I did know was that I was not going to be able to make this decision or process the changes while moping in my Munich apartment. I needed to "get out" and, when given the opportunity, I decided to take a chance. 


I had only just met Emily and Katie from England (via the Isle of Wight) the evening before our excursion. They are friends with a guy with whom I go to church and he was leaving Saturday for a retreat, leaving the two non-German-speaking girls alone in Germany. They had wanted to go to Salzburg, about a two hour train ride from Munich, but really needed a German-speaker and guide. I am a German-speaker and have been to Salzburg once. Seven hours later, we were on a train to Austria. 


Nearly six years earlier, I had been walking down these streets as a 17 year-old, nursing a German-beer induced hangover, exacerbated by my mother's endless chiding about missing curfew the previous night. My pounding headache and nauseous stomach continued as we walked aimlessly around the Old City, past beggars and homeless people lying along the bridges. One woman, the most vivid of my Salzburg memories, was selling her artwork which was propped up against her wheelchair. No matter people's situation, I always have a pull at my heartstrings when I see people reduced to begging and though it may put a damper on my day, like many others, I will just avert my eyes and walk ahead, trying to shake the feeling of remorse.


Maybe it was the hangover. Maybe it was Mom. I know it was definitely the remorse. But from that visit to the current visit, I didn't like Salzburg. I viewed it as a dump. A place that was not worth a second thought, or a second visit.


Instead, what I got this time around was a beautiful city on a rare, bright and sunny day in Austria, bustling with tourist and locals alike in the numerous outdoor fresh produce markets. The streets smelled like tulips and croissants. The archways reverberated with the sounds of the markets and local street performers playing an array of instruments from the electric violin to the, well, I don't actually know what this instrument is...


We ate serving-plate-sized pretzels, which had been dipped in Austrian chocolate, as we walked off the 1000s of calories they contained. The girls laughed that the calories didn't count because they were on "holiday" and therefore, by default of my attendance, I was also on holiday. According to them, I was also expected to be eating such large portions because I am American. Okay, point one for the Brits. 

Amongst the good-humor American versus England jokes, we lost ourselves in the Old City. No streets, alleyways or boulevards are straight-gridded, so we meandered and snaked our way around the old churches and Mozart's birthplace, sometimes looping back on our former footsteps, yet still finding something interesting or beautiful that we had missed before. 

Like the locals who were playing on a life-sized chess board, with chess pieces the size of small children. Or the artists haggling prices with us in English, even before we exposed ourselves with our accents. Or the tank-topped girls lounging on the side of the river with a snow-capped mountain backdrop. Or the way the light hit the sides of glowing steeples, glittering statues and the shimmering river as the day progressed and the sun moved toward the same direction to which we would soon be returning.


It was a day of taking chances and giving second chances. I took a chance going on a trip with two girls with whom I had been acquainted less than 24 hours to a city I had previously disliked in a foreign country. 


And I am going back in two weeks with my Mom. Third time will be a charm.