If you didn’t know that Mozart was born in Salzburg, you’ll quickly realize it when you look around the town. Someone caught the marketing bug pretty hard in Salzburg, and as a result, Mozart’s bewigged mug stares at you from all manner of souvenirs, particularly the ubiquitous branded chocolates. As touristy affectations go, it’s fairly amusing, and there’s a quaint charm to having twinkling little symphonies following you around a town.
Germany
The Lone Rangette: A love of solo travel
To all those ladies who romanticize love on the run with a stranger, my take on it is this: if the guy is safe enough to bring back to your hotel, the experience probably wouldn’t be anything to write home about. Once you hit your thirties, it’s not worth worrying about your wallet going missing (at the very least) or translating “it burns when I pee” into Portuguese. Yes, Luigi will act heart-broken when you leave him on the street at the end of a pleasant evening, but you’re representing America, missy! Our rep is already pretty bad in Europe due to college exchange programs, so it’s best not to contribute to the impression that leads European men to treat us rather differently than they treat their own women.
Switching my tiara for a miner’s helmet in Berchtesgaden, Germany
There will be no photos of me wearing the miner’s outfit I donned for the salt mine tour in Berchtesgaden, Germany, as the ensemble is not exactly befitting the royal status of your Weekend Duchess. However, sliding down the shafts well beneath the surface of the earth with a crowd of German family tourists was easily one of my favorite travel experiences, unglamorous as it was. Sometimes your duchess weekends at Lake Como searching for George Clooney, but sometimes she needs to tunnel into the salt mines, too!