European Capital of Culture: The Austrian Way

2024 was a significant year for Austria, among other things because it became one of the three countries to host the European Capital of Culture. And since I picked “art” as one of my interests on Tinder, it would be a shame not to take advantage of this opportunity, being a self-proclaimed cultural expert. That’s why, one day, I set my alarm for five, wiped my camera clean and set off for Bad Ischl, the centre of the cultural region of Salzkammergut.

Every year, the European Commission announces a number of cities to become a Capital of Culture, with the objective of promoting the diversity and richness of the region. In 2024, Bodø in Norway, Tartu in Estonia and Bad Ischl in Austria wore this title. I hadn’t heard of the latter before, but since it was on the same train line as my long-planned trip to Hallstatt, I decided to sweeten my trip to this very popular village by visiting Bad Ischl.

Chasing Pictures and Maybe Even Some Culture

The fresh visual communication and beautiful graphics of the Salzkammergut 24 campaign had been tempting me for quite a while. If you check out the official event website, you will see that there are 4 main themes weaving through the whole project: Power and Tradition, Culture in Motion, Sharing and Tourism and Globalocal – Building the New. I honestly didn’t overanalyse what exactly hides behind them, my goal was quite simple: to see Hallstatt in the morning when there will be fewer tourists; to move on to Bad Ischl and then take it from there. Wishing to avoid the crowds, I set my alarm for early in the morning and took the 5:55 train from Vienna. Scheduled arrival 9:24, of course assuming that I make the 13-minute transfer. Well, I didn’t. Relying on the Austrian railways turned out to be a mistake this time, and while waiting for the next connection, I scolded myself for being too soft and not taking the very first 5:28 connection.

Source: Salzkammergut 2024

On the regional train to Hallstatt, I’m desperately screenshotting all the current events and art works to get the most out of my visit. Their calendar has 18 pages, there’s certainly plenty to choose from. I wasn’t really able to keep track of all the side events of the Capital of Culture, I only just caught that Salzkammergut Pride was organized for the first time thanks to this status and Conchita Wurst, the bearded singer known from the Eurovision Song Contest 2014, was performing somewhere in the vicinity. Even though Bad Ischl is not some vibrant metropolis, their event calendar is quite rich. For the first time, not just one town, but an entire region has been chosen as the capital of culture – in addition to the capital Bad Ischl, 22 other municipalities have also participated in the project. In each of them, you could find something for everyone: in the village of Ebensee, for example, works of the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota were exhibited. Fun fact: at the time of writing this article, she holds an exhibition in Prague. But me, driven by Instagram, firstly wanted to tick the fairytale Hallstatt off my bucket list and then possibly get culturally intoxicated.

I Didn’t Miss Anything (Luckily)

I eventually get off at Hallstatt at half past eleven, all dejected that now it is definitely going to be packed to the gills. The first thing I see is a Slovak Lines tour bus. “Oh great, we Slovaks are indeed everywhere,” I say to myself, wondering with a tiny bit of anxiety which of the three viewpoints on Google Maps is the right one and whether I’ll manage to find it. My fears proved to be baseless, as there is one main street running through the village, lined with shops and restaurants. I gently slalom past the other tourists, who, strangely enough, are not that many. When I finally stand in front of THE viewpoint, I’m relieved – the roadblocks I saw in the news have disappeared and I even have enough space to take a photo. My inner influencer is satisfied, and so I can slowly set out to explore the village I used to have in my desk calendar as a kid, “World 2013”. On the lake, I can see people boating on swans, which I can recognize from the ÖBB billboard back in Vienna. Austrian Railways was offering a cultural weekend with breakfast and transport from 199€, I’m hoping my day trip will fit into 20% of that amount.

But as it’s getting warmer, the tourists are multiplying and I have no one to enjoy a beer with at the checkered tables by the lake; I’ll move on. Next on the agenda is Bad Ischl, and maybe not only that, cheers to FOMO.

Bad Ischl, Here I Come!

Outside the local train station, I pass a statue of a woman balancing an oxygen mask on her nose, which is to remain there after the project is over. Since it doesn’t give *aesthetic*, I continue on towards the Trinkhalle building. “Ah, it’s Saturday!” I figure as I enter the centre through the flea market stalls. Many offer ceramics with the characteristic white-and-flamed-green stripes. I’ve seen that one on a poster somewhere, so I guess it’s some local curiosity.

The Trinkhalle is the building in the middle of the passage, with Greek columns in front of which stand panels promoting Salzkammergut as the region of the capital of culture. I probably would have expected a less chaotic layout from the local information centre, it reminded me more of a souvenir shop with a few installations scattered around the building.

When I asked my friends what there was to do in Bad Ischl, apart from the famous spa, there was one cake shop they recommended to me. I’m pretty sure they meant the one where I ended up – it looked chic from the street and was also relatively full. When I ask for a dessert, I get a token – I see they have a similarly confusing system here as in the Vollpension in Vienna. And even the waiter is quite grumpy – I guess this isn’t only a Viennese thing.

As my cultural event of the day, I’m choosing a guided tour of the Art of Water and Salt exhibition in the former saltworks. But first I have to find it – the arrows lead me through a kind of office building that reminds me of a warehouse in Bratislava where I once went to pick up an order. When I finally get to the exhibition space, my heart leaps – bare walls, indie sounds from the speakers, industrial windows – I’m into this. Excitedly, I sign up for the guided tour – it looks like I’m the only one so far.

Salt in x-number of ways

A guide in shorts and a T-shirt asks me if I’m studying art history. Fighting a chuckle, I tell him no, computer science, and it turns out we’re from the same university, even the same faculty he studied at. Apparently his life eventually took him elsewhere too, since he will take our group through a section on the history of salt mining and a modern art section that uses this element. In the meantime, we are joined by an elderly lady from Salzburg and another couple – great, the 1:1 setting doesn’t stress me out any more.

Salt played a central role in the region – the Salzkammergut was under the direct administration of the Habsburgs and the locals were, for example, exempted from compulsory military service. It was the clash between paying tribute to the Habsburg heritage and contemporary impulses that ensured friction between the locals and the organisers during the Capital of Culture. When I did some research on the perception of the project afterward, I also came across opinions that folk culture had been overshadowed by ‘high culture’, which made some locals feel provoked. [1,2] When the guide mentions that in some cultures salt is a symbol of respect, I do something I rarely do on tours. I ask a question. I wonder if Austrians also greet important people, like politicians, with bread and salt, like we in Slovakia sometimes do. The lady from Salzburg laughs and replies that ‘certainly not politicians, at most we have salt consecrated on Easter Sunday’.

The modern art part is not only interesting for the content itself, but also for the stories attached to the works. “When I took a picture of this painting and sent it to the insurance agent, he replied to us saying what was there to insure,” the guide recalls, pointing to a painting painted in pure white, containing salt, of course. “This salt mosaic was just supposed to be flat. But after the artist traveled here in person, he insisted on adding our Alps, he liked them so much,” the guide says about the 6-ton installation. The exhibition also includes a film of a man on a lake sawing away at the ice beneath him; or a string with hanging shoes encased in salt. If you scan the QR code next to the work, you’ll learn from the artist that she created the piece by accident when her sandals flew away into the sea. She pulled them out coated in a layer of sea salt, and so she decided to similarly represent the sediments of time by submerging the objects in the Dead Sea.

When leaving this city that reminds me of Piestany baths in my home country, I smile at the “Salt Lake Cities” sticker at the station. This pun refers to the 23 cities and towns involved in the project. One of them is Gmunden, which will be my last stop.

City by the Lake

Truth be told, neither the castle on the lake nor the renowned local ceramics enticed me to Gmunden. It was the moustache, round glasses and dark brown hair that tapped me on Grindr that caught my attention. And though the lad ultimately didn’t have time that day, Gmunden turned out to be a great addition to my cultural trip.

A bust in colors I’d seen before at a flea market definitely did its marketing. Together with a swimming pool installation, it was inviting me to an exhibition at the local Blaue Butter art house. My enthusiasm was taken away by the lady guarding the exhibition. “Well, we actually only had the curtain there for the photo shoot,” she says, explaining why the exhibition doesn’t look like their billboard. However, she taught me something about the importance of local ceramics. What I understood from her story is that Gmunden ceramics is something similar to the majolika ceramics from Slovak Modra region, with a European level of importance. The lady would talk and talk, but I didn’t catch much more as she had a pretty strong dialect.

I also found the town of Gmunden on a blog listing “charming small Austrian towns you must visit”. They were right, apart from the historic mini-centre, the promenade that stretched all the way to the castle on the island named Schloss Ort left a very pleasant impression. The square, where people were chilling by the food stalls and live music, was dominated by an installation of the green child Moosmensch (Moss person). Together with the mountains and the lake, the whole scenery looked like something out of the fantasy world of a computer game. The mayor of one of the participating municipalities was probably right when he commented that “he has his own opinion about the use of the money, but at least people will notice what a pretty swimming lake we have here.” [3]

A Parallel with Slovakia

This is not the only critical voice associated with the organising of the Capital of Culture. The opening event with its choreography where naked dancers sprinkled salt on each other, as well as the large-scale artwork of two girls kissing, hanging in Gmunden’s town hall, also provoked a response. When I noticed this incident in the media, I immediately thought, “They would be eaten alive back in my country.” I found more similarities with Slovakia in the European capital of culture matter. Not apparent ones, because in 2013, when Košice had this title, I had other problems than travelling for culture. However, when I was wandering around the internet looking for responses about Salzkammergut 2024, I had to think of my home country once or twice.

According to Der Standard daily, the number of rejected projects is also a major criticism – out of 1,000 proposals submitted, only 50 could be accepted, resulting in 950 rejections. [4] It is clear to me that in public calls in any country, you can’t please everyone. Then I thought of the frustration and disappointment of many Slovak artists, having their projects rejected because the new government politicized the funding system. I guess culture is a delicate thing everywhere. Similarly, I noticed the omnipresent division in society, which Elisabeth Schweeger, the cultural intendant of the Salzkammergut 2024 project, also hinted at in her speech: “Art is a formative force, it is not a privilege for elites, it cannot be replaced and cannot be outweighed by money.” [5] So I’ll try to end this on a positive note: it doesn’t matter if you prefer Austrian Lederhosen, Slovak folk costumes, contemporary dance performances, or if you just like nice photos like me. If we give creative forces room to express themselves, it can lead to valuable impulses, or at least to a dope trip.

Sources

[1] https://www.arf.at/2024/12/02/kulturhauptstadt-2024-die-einen-feiern-die-anderen-sparen-nicht-mit-kritik/ [2] https://www.nachrichten.at/oberoesterreich/das-salzkammergut-zwischen-tradition-und-moderne;art4,3931840 [3] https://www.nachrichten.at/kultur/was-wird-von-der-kulturhauptstadt-bleiben;art16,3959733 [4] https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000246118/kulturhauptstadt-salzkammergut-2024-mit-bisher-gut-600000-besuchern [5] https://www.krone.at/3600921