I wrote this last week in my final few days in Salzburg. When you go to a place where you have more quiet time you get thinking about what makes you pick the destinations you do. This was how I felt about Salzburg.

I’ve edged into the second half of my week here in Salzburg. And the grey drizzle that is slowly becoming synonymous with the European spring. It completely changes the feel of the city.

It’s not until you have bad weather in Salzburg that you realise the city is made of two halves. It’s urban centre and then the mountains that caress the old city and expand out to into mind blowing alpine regions.

It wasn’t until this morning, when I awoke and saw that the clouds had descended; the magnificent peaks had been painted over in this monotonous grey. The city felt closed in all of a sudden, as if an invisible string around the city had been tightened and the city was immobile, held hostage by the weather front. As if the life source of the city had been turned off.

It got me thinking about how I choose new cities to visit and how I experience them. That burning desire to pay homage to the epic urban metropolises of the world that so defined my twenties is no longer so vital. Instead, it has been replaced by a more subconscious choice of balance. Where cities of brash industrialism, commerce, and cultural overload are now replaced by those of which are complimented by nature.

The tourist metropolises of the world are now so overrun to the point where you find yourself asking ‘What is it about this particular spot that made people want to set up here?’. This questions plagues me particularly in places where there is a total disconnect from the nature and ecology within which the life of the city began.

In the great cities, how often has urbanisation just supplanted nature rather than work with it? Where nature was just another obstacle in the urban development of the city?

Here in Salzburg, when the mountains are hidden, so is the life force. It’s story is only half told, the city is only half understood.

It really can’t be overstated how soothing it is, to look up from the city centre and see a mountain somewhere. It retains the notion (one we more than often forget) that we are here at nature’s behest, and that our mere physicality is dictated by our surroundings and nature itself.

It’s an immediate and natural reality check. I would find it incredibly difficult for people here to lose perspective. How more often that not, it is to nature that we turn to in search for the emotional equilibrium our souls crave.