Hohensalzburg Castle sits atop the Festungsberg, accessed by a cable car.
The castle itself dominates the Salzburg skyline.
Below is a view down into Salzburg from the castle walls.
We had lunch at a café, the Salzburg Fortress Café, that overlooked the countryside. This was where we were introduced to Mozart Gold Chocolate Cream added to our coffee.
The square below featured in the Sound of Music.
Among the more interesting objects to be seen, the gun below shows what some of the castle’s armaments might have been. These cannons, in the ‘Firing Gallery’ date back to the thirty years war in the early 1600’s.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
Feeling a little miffed at Boggs’ dismissal, I decided to go on my own fact-finding mission.
Of course, it depended a lot on whether the Cossatino’s still hung out at the same bar, and whether I’d get a foot in the door.
I was going to talk to Nadia, or at least try to.
The Lantern Inn was about as far from the image the name threw up, it was more a place where respectable people wouldn’t be caught dead in.
And, as I recall, a few had. Seemingly respectable people anyway.
It was the place to go if you were looking for three things, not necessarily all at once, trouble, girls, and drugs. Soggy, a friend of Boggs and I, had always looked older than his age and was able to get into places like the Lantern Inn, mainly to buy us beer, and we would go down to the beach and drink it before going home.
When I found a spot to keep an eye on the place and assess whether it was safe or not to go in, now I was old enough, I saw old man Gattle, Soggy’s foster father stagger out, on his way home. It brought back memories of Joel, Soggy’s real name.
Soggy got his name because he was always falling in the water, whether it was a pool or the ocean, and one day, after too many beers, he fell in and didn’t come back up. Boggs and I almost finished up in jail for that, since we were with him, but there was no way we could rescue him as it was in a spot where there was often a rip, and he had been carried away before we could get to him.
And, the body was never recovered. I thought, at the time, he may have jumped in, because his life with foster parents was no fairy tale, and he had suffered. Of course, those foster parents were friends with the Benderby’s so they were never held to account.
It would be easy to lie in wait in a dark alley and simply hit him over the head with a four by two, but I doubt it would make me feel any better.
I watched him stagger and fall several times before I looked back at the Inn. In days past, the patrons often spilled out onto the sidewalk where there used to be tables and chairs. Now, it was just the Inn, and it didn’t look like many people were there.
Had it changed from a den of iniquity to something more respectable?
A large truck, an F350 by the look of it, stopped outside the front entrance, the passenger door opened and what looked like Nadia, or another Amazonian woman, got out. She spoke to the driver, slammed the door, and the truck left.
The light over the door shone on her face, yes, it was a woman, and yes, it was Nadia. By herself? Was that Vince who dropped her off, or Willy, her younger brother, and why didn’t they join her?
I guess I was not going to get any answers from where I was sitting.
Time to make my first foray into the place my mother always told me never to step foot in.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
I wanted to be somewhere else, away from everything and everyone.
Work, family, decisions, and pressure, all came together at once, to such an extent that, finally, I just couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed.
I looked up at the ceiling, then around the loft, a space I had to fight for, and could, at first, barely afford. Then, it symbolized my success, the first of many.
Now?
If I was to think long and hard about where I was right now, I wouldn’t want to think long and hard about it.
Last night lingered in my mind. The girl I thought was the one, who broke up with me, at least not by text, but in person. It was not me, she said, but she was not ready for a serious commitment. Neither was I, but I think I wasn’t the one for her.
Work had taken precedence, as it always did, despite the constant advice from both friends and family that I should draw a line in the sand before it was too late, I didn’t listen.
The cell phone on the side table erupted with a song that Anne had put on there some time back, a reminder of something I’d lost.
Work.
I ignored it, suppressing the temptation to throw it against the wall in the hope that breaking it would somehow provide some relief.
Then I counted down the seconds to when it would ring again. Arty, my business partner, and truly a man with no life other than work, was persistent.
Sixty seconds passed.
That awful song!
I picked it up and answered, “What?”
“Where are you? Tell me you’re just running late.” No mistaking the panic in his tone. Nothing unusual. He was capable of doing it himself, just chose not to. Not today.
“Get it done, and don’t call me again until it’s settled.”
I disconnected the call and switched the phone off.
I rolled over hoping the perspective would change but it was still the same space, except for one minor detail, a painting my mother did a few years back of the house by the lake we had grown up in.
It was, and still is a sleepy little town few people visited, and the young couldn’t wait to get out of, like my brother and I. My sister, she had no big-city dreams, married the bit next door, and lived nearby.
I hadn’t seen the house, or her, since my mother’s funeral eight months before, and was always promising to go but never found the time.
I guess now was the perfect time to go home, and try to make some changes, before it was too late.
…
There were several ways of getting to Alpenville, tucked away on a small Cove, off an estuary, not far from the border, a picturesque setting with mountains on one side and the water on the other.
The first, by ferry, buy that had timing limitations, and I had to get to the ferry berth first. The second, by road, but it was an unnecessarily long and convoluted drive. The third was by floatplane, where I could go to the airport and catch a plane.
I had only done that once when an old friend of my father ran the service, a long while back. He’d obviously sold it, and the new people had turned it into a glossy tourist brochure.
It was expedient, and I knew the flight in over the water would be a sight to behold, which clinched the deal. It would also take the least amount of time.
I turned my phone back on, and it beeped constantly with missed messages. I ignored them and called the airline and lucky for me there was a seat available. But I had just on an hour to get to the airport.
Of course, everything was conspiring against me, as if fate didn’t want me to leave the city, but by a quirk of fate, I walked through the terminal office door five minutes before departure.
The girl behind the counter smiled. “Just in time,” she said, handing me a ticket and boarding pass.
She pointed to the plane, and I could see the pilot waiting. When I was about twenty yards from the plane, I recognized the pilot, just as she recognized me. Lucy Benn. Granddaughter of my father’s friend, who, it seemed, followed in her grandfather, and father’s footsteps.
“As I live and breathe, Alpenville’s prodigal son. Returning in disgrace, are we?”
Lucy had been a girlfriend, we had been engaged, I left promising to return. Promises not honored. That she would hate me was understandable. We had not parted on the best of terms, and this was the first time I’d seen her since.
“It’s nice to see you too Lucy.”
She simply shook her head, took my backpack and put it in a compartment upfront, then opened the side door to let me climb in. I would be sitting next to her the whole way, which could be uncomfortable. She got in the other side. Sorted put the seatbelts, then handed me headphones.
“Put them on. If there’s trouble, I’ll let you know.”
She went through the pre-flight checks and got clearance from the tower, and we were off.
It didn’t surprise.me.she was a pilot, though back before I left home, she had always said she was going to fly real planes. At twelve she had already been proficient at flying the small plane her father owned and operated.
She had taken me up in it once and it had been both terrifying and exhilarating.
A very few had a poker face.
Hers overall suggested contempt.
“Did you ever get to fly big planes,” I asked, picking a moment when she was distracted, looking out the side window.
She turned back. “Did you find what you were looking for in the big city?”
Answering a question with a question, it was her way of evasion she used to use when she didn’t want to answer.
“No. It might please you to know that when I woke up this morning, I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. My first thought was to come home but given your depth of feeling and the fact I can’t cry on my mother’s shoulder, I guess I made a terrible mistake.”
It was a sad story, but true. I hadn’t thought for one moment I might not be welcome, except by my sister, Suzanne, who didn’t care what anyone else thought.
She said nothing, which was probably better she didn’t.
A few minutes passed before she said, “Yes. Had to go through hoops simply because I was a girl. Showed them. Got to fly A380s, slightly bigger than this, married a pilot, the basted cheated on me, so I came home and stuck to what I know, flying these planes. They don’t let you down.”
So maybe we would not have spent the rest of our lives together like we had promised each other at graduation.
“I guess we both have our unresolved issues.”
We did.
The conversation ended there, and for the rest of the flight, there was silence, except when she checked in with the various flight controllers. I may also have nodded off for a whole venture when I was jolted away, we had just landed on the water and headed towards the pontoon.
I could see Suzanne and Cecile, her daughter, waiting on the pontoon.
As soon as I was off the plane she came over and gave me a hug.
“It’s good to see you, but you’re not going to believe what’s happened. Dad’s just been taken to the hospital, and they don’t think he’s going to last much longer.”
With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction. He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.
That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.
He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.
I kept my eyes down. He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup. I stepped to the other side and so did he. It was one of those situations. Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.
Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic. I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone. I shrugged and looked at my watch. It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.
Wait, or walk? I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station. What the hell, I needed the exercise.
At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’. I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light. As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.
A yellow car stopped inches from me.
It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini. I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.
Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car. It was that sort of car. I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on. The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.
My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter. Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.
At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure. I was no longer in a hurry.
At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring. I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road. I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.
At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar. It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.
I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did. There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me. It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me. As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.
Now my imagination was playing tricks.
It could not be the same man. He was going in a different direction.
In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter. I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.
I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in. I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.
In a day of going over old ground and making it new again, I have revisited Zoe’s residence in Paris at the time John called, and found it empty, except for some kid who was all ‘get lost or suffer the consequences.’
Who is he? We flesh that story out, and how it relates to Zoe and those early days in the story.
Similarly, I’m not happy still with how Worthington discovers Zoe, and this is going to need some more work, and definitely a rewrite.
In fact, I might have to revisit his whole appearance in the story and make it a little less bombastic and a little more subdued seething anger.
The whole Marseilles episode is good, it’s just the end and this discovery of who is behind Zoe’s abduction that needs a little work. This is where we sow the enigmatic sees of Romanov and his purpose for wanting Zoe if it is not revenge like it is assumed.
Similarly, that whole thing with the Russian Minister and Anton needs a lot more work because there appears to be a connection between him and Romanov, but there’s not. This is just Olga leaning on her connections to get a result.
Then Zoe takes off to find Romanov, or is it those seeking revenge, it’s not quite clear, and leaves John to contemplate his future. Perhaps a piece here between them that sets the tone for the relationship over the coming months would be good, and the trigger that sets John off on a quest to find her.
His excuses at the moment are wishy-washy at best.
Phew!!! Never knew self-criticism could be so harsh!
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 0 words, for a total of 8,871.
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favor for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favor’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
This is what we saw driving along the Coquihalla Highway in Canada, a rather infamous stretch of road featured on the Discovery Channel, and yes, we saw a number of cars and trucks off the side of the road, and not in a good way
The road was iced over in place, and driving was difficult, but on the plus side the scenery was spectacular, and it was hard not to be distracted when driving.
But, inspiration for a story? It might go something like this:
…
Arty was adamant that he knew the best where man in the business.
That might gave been true if he was in the middle of the city where there were endless tests and turns that could be used to lost chasing police vehicles.
But that didn’t apply to the open road, and one that was think with ice and snow, even if it had recently been cleared.
But that wasn’t as bad as the fact that we had got free of the city, lost the pursuing cars, changed vehicles, and got away free.
All he had to fo was follow the road.
Except Arty had a temper, and getting stuck behind an old van going ever so slowly on the road, caused him to first blast them with horn, then start doing dangerous accelations up behind them, and then attempt to overtake on a bend in the road.
That might not have been so bad if there had not been an oncoming car, but there was.
Even that might not have been so bad if the car had not been a police vehicle.
But the real kicker: Arty lost control of the car and we went sailing off the edge of the road into a ravine, landing on soft ice which after a minute started cracking and then gave way.
The last place I wanted to be was to be sinking into a freezing cold river, but there we were, all frantically trying to get out.
Fortunately, I did, but not before I was soaking wet, and almost frozen. The rest didn’t make it.
David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.
Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.
They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?
When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.
When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.
Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 