I’m surprised no one has chimed in on this one. It was a pretty memorable trip, as I recall.
As I mentioned above, the bus ride down was a blast. Meaning, I guess, that everyone was pretty blasted by the time we arrived. First rolling party I’d ever experienced, and I loved it.
Let’s see: Me, Glenn and Janet Miller, George and Linda Kalebaugh, the Haverlaughs, Kaipo, Kurt Laidlaw, “Holly” Hollingsworth. And those were just the ones I recall quickly. Must have been 30 or more all told, if my old memory is halfway correct.
And I recall that for some reason the guys had in mind to go the casino in Salzburg, but the ladies, for some reason, thought that a bad idea. So instead, we ended up having a very nice dinner at the Hotel Mirabel. (Somewhere in the dark recesses beneath the stairs, I think I still have the menu from that evening.) There were 11 of us at that dinner, and the tab came to something more than $300, a princely sum in those days. But it was a grand meal. I had chateaubriand. It was for two, so Kurt (IIRC) and I shared that, as well as the baked Alaska for desert. Wonderful meal.
The dining room at the Hotel Mirabel was ... well, fancy. So when we arrived we were pretty quiet, until someone said something like, “Well, enough of this,” and the real fun started.
It was late in the evening, as dinners go, so the room was fairly empty except for us. However, there was an older lady at a nearby table with her dog, which as I recall sat on a pillow in a chair next to her.
Paying up was fun because we had all sorts of currencies, and the guy had to do a lot of quick calculations. And I remember we had requested to see the chef so we could thank him and tell him how nice the meal had been.
I think everyone there ended up liking the crazy, drunk Americans.
