ALL THE BEST IN AUSTRIA WITH MUNICH AND THE BA VARIAN ALPS.
By Sydney Clark '12. New York: Dodd,Mead & Company, 1972. With 22illustrations and maps. 344 pp. $7.95.
As a boy, Sydney Clark fell in love with Austria, and, aged 81, he still courts her with enamoured eloquence. This volume tells why. Population only 7,000,000, only the size of Maine, Austria is big with 30 ranges of mountains rivaling Switzerland's but with the special appeal of intimate valleys and rivers. Lakes are legion: 20 in the Salzkammergut and a baker's dozen in Carinthia, peak-fringed, waters rainbow colored. Villages carry fetching names: Obergurgl, Bad Tölz, Mariazell, Igls, Patcherkofel, and Wörgl, and some villagers with rustic charm still wear native costumes.
But natural scenery is not all. Plain Austrian girls in Dirndlkleider look pretty, pretty girls beautiful, Viennese women enchanting. Cities: say Salzburg, and you add Mozart and summer festivals. Say Vienna, and, drawing a long breath, you add Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Schönberg. Viennese shops: smart. Pre-Lenten opera ball: glittering. Spanish riding school: thrilling. People: friendly and honest. Architecture: baroque and rococo (flamboyant). Hotels: European and American, all prices (samples: Schloss Laudon, a remodeled ancient fortress of 1130 and Pan Am's ultramodern Inter-Continental, 500 rooms and 1000 beds, a businessmen's favorite). Wines: flowery, mostly white. Restaurants: Parisian rivals. Coffee houses and Konditorien: gastronomical paradises. Evening entertainment: outdoor, fresh and natural; indoor, stylized and sophisticated.
Mr. Clark has a practical mind. Carry your own soap, coat hangers, alarm clock, and adapter for shaving ("a supermust"). He will tell you about what clothes to pack, the seven entrances to Austria, wines and beers, useful German idioms, transportation, shops and bargains, out-of-the-way places for leisurely exploration (Liechtenstein and Kleinwalsertal), nightlife, sports (Tyrol and Vorarlberg), and, last and not least, history local and national.
The Munich Olympics open August 28: 3500-seat volleyball stadium, 10,000-car parking, 950-foot Olympic tower and revolving restaurant up 650 feet seating 230, Olympic villages accommodating 10,000 male athletes and 2000 female, 80,000-seat stadium with 260-foot-high translucent roof.
Munich should not be limited to the Olympics. Mr. Clark roams the Bavarian Alps, and what he emphasizes in Vienna, he rephrases for Munich. You may familiarize yourself with differences between German and Austrian points of view, between new-world Munich spaciousness and old-world Viennese coziness.
The format of the book has been updated: no dust jacket, hard covers with colored photograph on the front and blurb on the back. Author of more than 40 travel books, Mr. Clark is characterized as "the respected Dean of American Travel Writers." Trust him. He writes honestly and objectively. Some wise sophistication may rub off on you as you handle his book about Bayern and Oesterreich, which 550,000 Americans visited last year with 600,000 expected in 1972. With such an influx can Austrians still be genial and polite? Nearly everyone will agree with an early Clark family observation: "In Austria any official, businessman, or servant who is curt or ungracious cannot be Austrian." In monotone North Germans give you a crisp GutenMorgen. Austrians invite you to share a greeting with the Deity. Before your first Viennese day is over, you too may be saying with unaffected naturalness Griiss Gott.
