Why you shouldn't walk through the Getreidegasse in a hurry

Photo by Yoshio Sato – © 2003 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/

Ever wanted to be like Bill Murray? A walk through Salzburg's main pedestrian zone, the Getreidegasse, will make you feel a little Lost in Translation, too. 
 

Salzburg is like every other small city in the Alps: It’s surrounded by snowy mountains, with an old church in the centre of town, some nice little hotels and restaurants, and a few people running around in Lederhosen. Basically it’s The Sound of Music come true – without the constant singing and dancing on the mountaintops. But you get the picture.

This very true cliché is also the reason why Salzburg is so crowded, even flooded with people. When it gets warm (warm enough to open the top button of your jacket) and the first gentle rays of sun shine down on Mozart’s birthplace, a constant clicking of cameras and spoken words you’ve never heard before fill the air. Suddenly you feel like Bill Murray’s character in the film Lost in Translation – unable to understand the language and surrounded by foreign-looking people. Like ants swarming on an ice-cream cone dropped by a careless child, tourists swarm to the Getreidegasse.

In reality it’s a cosy little side street offering nice little boutiques and homey little restaurants. This, of course, makes nice pictures. Tourists know that, too, as the perpetual clicking of the newest high-tech cameras attests. And here lies the first problem: Tourists tend to take pictures of literally everything. As a common city dweller you learn to dodge cameras constantly, and be careful not to run into pictures being taken (so your face doesn’t end up in myriad photo albums or Facebook pages). And while you’re avoiding the cameras, you also have to look out for their bulky backpacks and huge shopping bags. They turn a normal walk through the Getreidegasse into obstacle course.

But it’s not only the shopping bags and the cameras that are a problem: It’s also the people behind them. Most of them stand in the middle of the Getreidegasse, staring and taking pictures. Apparently it is too much effort for them to go to one side in order to let other people, especially non-tourists, actually walk through the street. For us, sidestepping them is annoying but still manageable.

It gets more difficult when tourists appear in groups. Yes, they may look cute with their matching hats or matching jackets, but this is only cold comfort. Usually the single elements of these groups stick so closely together that getting through is impossible. And walking around them becomes difficult the bigger the group is. The really big groups can easily block passage through the Getreidegasse entirely.

On the other hand, if you want to taste a bit of multiculturalism in a small city in the Alps, the best thing to do is just stand in the middle of a street like the Getreidegasse and wait for the tourists to come. You won’t have to wait long and you’ll be on a lot of pictures, too.