Monthly Archives: June 2010

More Notes from Salzburg

These notes were written over a couple recent trips to Salzburg…they are rather random.

The one thing I fear as a tour guide is a group of kids.  I don’t mean, of course, leading a school group or even having a fair number of random kids on my tour, I mean large groups of (usually German, Austrian, or Italian) 12-20 year olds without supervision making life hell for anyone within a 50 meter radius.  Since the trains and buses tourists use are the same as these hellish ghouls they call children here, there is hardly a way to avoid the situation.  I have seen blood shed, beer spilt, and hundreds of items thrown.

Speaking of kids on trains, on my way to Salzburg the other day, if anyone in my 1/4 of the train needed to use the bathroom, they had to go through the carriage before it which:

  1. smelled like a petting zoo
  2. was loud as hell with at least four different cell phones blaring music of different types at full volume
  3. had what appeared to be a full-on dodge ball game going on
  4. was covered in seeds of various sorts which might have been part of the reason for #1

Idiots are telling tourists that the constant rain here is unusual and that it’s the volcano in Iceland’s fault.   Complete bull…should I bring out the statistics?  This is normal weather in Munich…rain, rain, and more rain.

I find myself easily agitated lately and fairly short fused which is worrying and normally indicative of me doing too many tours.  Easily solved, unless it’s late May and everyone is asking you to do their tours as well as your own.  I may flip at any time…wish me luck!

I actually had a tourist complain about the outrageously well behaved dogs being everywhere you go in Germany.  (In Austria it depends where you are, some places they’re not as nice to dogs, for example:  if you’re a dog lover, stay away from Vienna)

I’m possibly the only tour guide that sits here and critiques his own tour…daily.

I’m having lots of luck today…earlier I was walking past McDonald’s and saw this group of teenagers getting thrown out for loitering (there were 6 of them, they bought nothing, and just wanted to sit on the semi-comfy furniture in the cafe area).  Anyways, they were ridiculously obnoxious and only left when the employee finally said he was calling the police.  Now I’m sitting on the opposite end of the mall…and guess who just sat next to me? (and standing in front of me…basically surrounding me…goddamn it)

I may turn into my grandpa any minute now.

The other day I had a tourist turn to me toward the end of a Neuschwanstein tour.  He said “wow, there were so many moments where I would have cracked…how do you manage to stay calm?”  to which I replied “if you got worried over the little things we had today, you’d have a heart attack on the fun days…it always works out, ALWAYS”…”wow, you’re really into the zen”…I guess.

Apparently India produces 13,501,000 tons of mangos a year, I should go there.

My pillow’s made in Poland.  I’m not quit sure how I feel about that.

I just said no to taking someone’s photo on the Makart bridge in Salzburg for two reasons:

  • It’s just rude to block the traffic of an entire bridge (easily 30+ people pass by every 30 seconds)
  • at the angle they wanted their picture all you would have in the background is a muddy river and trees…you wouldn’t even be able to tell that it’s Salzburg…screw that, I have my principles

I finally gave in and tried Ikea’s food.  There’s good and bad.  The price is fairly reasonable (not cheap, though), but it tastes like crap.  It was literally the worst asparagus & potatoes I have ever had…and I’ve had a LOT of asparagus & potatoes in my time.

Our bus got in an accident today (June 4th).  I didn’t have time to take pictures, but we apparently just rammed another bus.  what sucks most is that I had already stamped our tickets.

Would it be rude to line up my tourists every morning and hand out helmets to those I feel may benefit from them?

I actually got the parking lot attendant at Neuschwanstein to not only give the whole bus the finger (repeatedly), but also to threaten it with a shovel.  Let me explain:  we take a PUBLIC BUS…which parks on a public road…and the bus company chooses where to pick us up, not me.  Not one car passed by in the time we took to load the bus.  This idiot thinks I do it to piss him off and drive away business from his parking lot.  Let’s recap:  it’s a public bus parked in front of his parking lot for less than 5 minutes (on a public road, not blocking the parking lot entrance at all) with no possible customers driving by, at all…and the guy threatens physical confrontation with me.  wow.  He needs more beer.

[Listening to The Hold Steady‘s album A Positive Rage]