High School Musical - Austrian Style

Location: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA

American tourists are easy to spot and their inability to camouflage with the locals makes for great prose. In a tropical destination, they are the ones with pink skin, only further accentuated by their white sneakers and matching white tube socks. In Asia, they are outfitted in fanny packs and raised voices, all in hopes that the lowly hostess will suddenly understand English at a higher decibel. Side note: For some reason it always seems to be in the excoriatingly pinched Northeastern accent. In South America, they are decked out in baseball caps and t-shirts in support of their favorite sports team, be it local or national, but always American.  However, in Europe they apparently wear electric blue sweatshirts.

Mom and I had arrived only an hour earlier to Salzburg via Ljubljana on the heels of a serendipitous 24 hours. After a quick morning tour around downtown Ljubljana, thankfully minus the rain of the previous day, we packed up and settled back into train travel. This time, our train car was significantly nicer and smelled of new carpet, rather than stale body odor and unfiltered cigarettes. We shared our six person cabin with one rather unpleasant German man for only a short time before it was time to make the train swap again in Villach. This time our train was Deutsche Bahn, the standard German trains by which all train lines should aspire. 


Our train sped along the tracks with the indelible clackty-clack, until it reached speeds where you don't feel you are even moving. The scenery of Spring's newly greened trees, rust-red tiled roofs and long forgotten bridges and fortaments, rushed past in a fog of color. When we arrived at the Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, a familiar city and warmer weather awaited. 


I had visited Salzburg a few weeks earlier, but Mom and I hadn't been back together in nearly five years. The first time was a miserable experience felt through the fog of a seventeen year old's self-induced, tequila-flavored beer hangover and the aftermath that comes from arriving home at 4 a.m. The second time was a spirited jaunt with a pair of English ladies following our brief introductions to each other the night before disembarkation. I was looking to make the third time a charm. 


Then I saw them coming from up the road, all clumped together like a blueberry pie. Nothing more American than that. And then I saw them up close. 

As the group drew nearer, we saw that their sweatshirts had the Dutch, German, Austrian and U.S. flags embroidered and encircled by the script "Spruce Creek High School Marching Band Tour 2010". SPRUCE CREEK?! My alma matter high school? 


"They can't possibly be from Daytona. I mean, your school colors are orange and black," my mother noted observantly "Think about it...two coincidental run-ins with people from your two previous schools, it just doesn't happen".


Resigning to "mother knows best", we kept up our pace towards the mountain opposite of the castle for some nice sunset pictures of the city. But, as another wave of blue approached, I noticed one had a NASCAR hat on and white tennis shoes. My suspicions were confirmed. I thought, “How many Spruce Creeks can there be?” 


So I asked the oncoming group “Spruce Creek in Florida?” The group looked stunned and had a mix of “yeses” as I explained that I had graduated Creek in 2004 and my brother followed in 2009. I think they were most surprised to hear English, much less in their native Southern drawl. They invited us to dinner...dinner with all 200+ teenagers and chaperons. Caught up in the novelty of the past two run-ins, Mom and I accepted their offer and continued with our planned tryst around downtown Salzburg at sunset. 


Before the uproariously loud dinner later that night with ravenous American high-schoolers and exhausted and bullied wait-staff, I stopped to really think about the cliche "small world".  In the last three months, I had run into a college acquaintance in Amsterdam, met another at the Munich Security Conference who was working Congressional Delegation logistics and had communication with a handful of ERAU students, both past and present, living and working in Munich. Now, in just 24 hours, I had met another alumni in Slovenia and a gaggle of representatives from my high school. 


What are the odds? You can’t make this stuff up. Well you could but it wouldn’t be nearly as believable.