Salzburg, 30 Degrees at 9 in the Morning

Yesterday evening, I arrived in Salzburg by car, which sounds elegant until you remember that Europe has recently decided to become a bakery oven with borders.

The drive itself was fine, in the same way that being slow-roasted in a metal box is technically fine if the box has air-conditioning and you occasionally lie to yourself that the outside world is still suitable for mammals. Every country I passed through had the same local specialty: heat. Slovenia had heat. Austria had heat. The mountains, which had one job — to look cool and psychologically lower the temperature — failed completely.

I checked in at the Altstadt Hotel Hofwirt, which is a pleasant old Salzburg hotel and therefore exactly the sort of place where one expects thick walls, history, and perhaps the ghost of a minor composer complaining about tourists.

Instead, I found modern Salzburg in full summer mode: warm stones, warm air, warm people, warm luggage, and me, a traveler from several dimensions, defeated by a thermostat.

After leaving my things in the room, I decided to walk.

This was my first mistake.

Actually, no. My first mistake was listening to Clovis.

But walking was definitely in the top five.

Salzburg was having some kind of city festival — the day of the city, or the city deciding it needed to be louder and more edible. Streets were busy, music drifted from somewhere, people moved around happily as if the sun was not trying to iron them flat, and food stalls appeared with the confidence of a civilization that has solved every problem except moderation.

I had ice cream.

Then I had more ice cream.

Then, because the laws of balance must be respected, I had sausages.

Then, because the laws of balance are stupid, I had more sausages.

There was a moment — brief, spiritual, dangerous — when I stood in the old town with ice cream in one hand and a sausage in the other, and thought: Perhaps this is why Clovis sent me here. Perhaps the Institute has finally understood my talents.

But no. Usually when Clovis sends me somewhere, it involves a spatial fracture, a missing scientist, or an object that hums when it should not. Never once has he sent me somewhere only because of sausages.

A shame. It would be the first sensible mission in years.

This morning, I woke up at the Hofwirt and went down for breakfast. It was nice. Proper hotel breakfast. Coffee, bread, cheese, the comforting little plates that make you believe you are a reasonable person making reasonable decisions.

Naturally, I overdid it on pepper ham and salami.

There is always a moment in hotel breakfast when one thinks, This is enough. Then one sees another slice of salami sitting there like a small red argument, and suddenly philosophy collapses.

Still, while eating, I became unexpectedly nostalgic for the Ibis in Lviv.

Not because the Hofwirt is bad — it is not. It is good. Pleasant. Salzburg-appropriate. But the Ibis in Lviv has become one of those strange anchors in my traveling life. A practical little base between errands, medical corridors, old streets, strange coffee, and the constant feeling that the world is difficult but still possible.

I hope the work of the Clovis Institute allows me to return there soon.

That is the official version.

The unofficial version is that I miss Lviv coffee, quiet rooms, familiar routes, and the emotional stability of knowing where the nearest supermarket is.

After breakfast, I decided to walk a little.

This was my second mistake.

At 9 in the morning, Salzburg was already 30 degrees.

Thirty.

At nine.

Morning is supposed to be the polite part of the day. The part where the sun negotiates. The part where humans are allowed to exist before lunch. But no — the heat had already arrived, unpacked, taken the best chair, and begun making decisions for everyone.

I have crossed deserts where the sand whispered in dead languages. I once spent three hours on a version of Earth where summer was a government department. I have visited a dimension where people eat electricity and consider humidity a dessert.

And still, Salzburg at 9 a.m. made me reconsider walking as a concept.

I found Ratio Coffee near the hotel and surrendered.

This is where I am writing now, seated with filter coffee, apple tart, and Tim Tams, because apparently my body looked at last night’s ice cream and sausages, this morning’s ham and salami, and decided: Yes, but what about biscuits from another continent?

The filter coffee is good. The apple tart is good. The Tim Tams are unnecessary, which is why they are excellent.

Outside, Salzburg continues to melt beautifully.

Inside, I am waiting.

Clovis called me here for a reason. They did not explain, of course. They never explain. The message was just Salzburg, coordinates, and that usual Institute tone of urgency disguised as administrative laziness.

So I sit here in Ratio Coffee, pretending to be a tourist, sweating like a man hunted by weather, surrounded by tart crumbs and the faint suspicion that somewhere in this city, something has gone wrong in a way only Clovis would consider “interesting.”

For now, there is coffee.

And heat.

Mostly heat.