My travelling experience through Austria, Salzburg to be specific, was one of the worst in my life. Never I felt so unwanted and in such a hurry to abandon a country. I'll start with the (only?) good part. The landscapes are staggering, they are exactly, excuse me, they are better than the images you see on pictures, television etc. Amazing green fields and white covered mountains. Your eyes will enjoy Austria. With that off the way let's move to the rest of my experience there, I'll start from the beginning.
After the plane landed we had to go through passport control. The procedure was basically passing the passport on the photo page through some sort of scanner. Everyone (including Austrians, English and Swiss) received this procedure, but for some strange reason (maybe someone can tell me) mine went through an additional check beneath the counter which I can only imagine as being photocopied as I could see the lady flipping the passport's pages. As I'm Portuguese and the darkest passenger aboard (basically not milky white) I probably need special security check. Or simply, some are more European than others...
I took a bus to get to the train station and when I asked the price the driver shouts TWO EUROS, almost in a military way. I felt like saluting him and answer YES SIR, but just paid him. Definitely a strange fellow. On the bus there were a couple of old women staring at me from the top of their high up noses during almost the whole trip. I could feel I was not welcomed there...
Finally caught the train and reach the friendly country of Germany. The difference is much noticeable. But I would need to return and after a very good OktoberFest it would feel even worse to cross Salzburg...
Round 2. This time I had grown accustomed to say Gutten Tag and Auf Wiedersehen and I was hopping to gain some sympathy from my effort, as native people usually enjoy foreigners' effort to use their language, but I was wrong...
I got off the train station, freezing dawn and head to the bus station. Right there another old women looking down on me the whole time, almost felt pursued. I got in the bus and give a big Gutten Tag to the driver who didn't say a thing. I prepared to hand him the 2 Euros and the guy says something in German in a not a very friendly way and points to the tray, suggesting I should drop the money in the tray. I would aspect this from someone Japanese, as culturally they avoid physical contact but not from Austrian. Dropped the money, got my ticket and sat. Unfortunately, the arrogant, conceited eyes of the previous lady and some other people kept staring me. Probably thought that the not milky white guy posed some sort of danger to them or their country. During this trip I counted 3 sex-shops, that itself is not surprising but the fact that their windows had either gay and/or full latex outfits was kind of awkward. I suppose it's better to engage in such stuff than to lock your kids in a cellar...
Airport, tried the Gutten Tag again but didn't gain any warmth or smiles from that. Same old disdainful faces. I suppose it's their culture. I noticed in the train station, a family going on vacation and all of them had long faces. Usually people get happy when are travelling. Maybe they were already assuming that the vacation place would be worse than their mighty and marvellous country/city...
Slept a couple of hours near the gate, I was awaken by some Asutrian girl who sat quite heavily (even though she wasn't heavy) in the bench where I was lying. An then they started calling people for the plane. Of course they didn't bother to translate the calling, why would they? In a plane travelling London surely everyone speaks German, right? Some of us had to guess what was happening by the Austrians reaction and general knowledge of procedures, first priority ticket holders and then the rest. I couldn't help notice the amount of Austrian people who had priority tickets, it almost nulled the point of being priority. Usually you see few people with priority tickets but this time it was a quite queue full of them :-S
Almost there, but still one last discriminating moment to come. Passport control again, while everyone else (English and Austrian) only showed their passport, mine was scanned. Not really sure why...
Never felt so good to be aboard a plane heading London :)
The fact that the right wing got 30% of the votes in the last poll may explain the treatment I got during my short stay there. I bet a lot of those voting right wing parties were in Salzburg those days:-S I haven't travelled much in my life, not as much as I would like anyway, but never experienced anything even close to this before.
I bet Vienna is different as it is more multicultural, that's probably the only Austrian city I consider visiting in the near future. The other places I'll save for when I have the same operation Michael Jackson had :-D
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