A Hitch Hiker's Guide to Getting Sick in Beautiful Places

18th February 2010

It is dusk in Salzburg and I am writing from a hill that I reached by tantalising flights of narrow, winding stairs. The church bells are singing over the river and echoing back and forth between the cliffs that fracture the town.

After a few days in the elegant Vienna, I hitch hiked west to Salzburg. 

After my night in the hometown of Mozart I started even earlier for Innsbruck. I spent more hours than I care to recall in a hole of a town over the border into Bavaria, but by the end of the long and freezing day, I got a ride all the way past Innsbruck into Italy. I ended up in South Tyrol - the mountain state of Italy where German and Italian are dually spoken - and the beautiful town of Merano.

For a while I had wanted to visit Merano solely because it where the first act of Chess (my favourite musical) takes place. 

It was bittersweet to visit such a special place in the barrenness of winter, something like visiting a distant loved one only to find them in a coma. But the air is clean and the mountains majestic.

After wandering down through Trento I spent an afternoon in Verona. 

What could be more melancholy than Venice in winter? A cemetery in Venice in winter. Naturally, it was my first destination.After a brief seaside stop in Trieste (above) I ended up in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. From Ljubljana I took the train to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. It was six years since I spent time there, but I headed immediately for the place I remember the most fondly: Mirogoj cemetery. Its silent pathways and moss-coated crypts are sweeter to me than any city, for ghosts make better muses than people.