Cunk on Salzburg
3 min read
Published on Aug 10, 2024
Updated on Aug 27, 2026

Geolocated in the country of Austria is the city of Salzburg—the name, a portmanteau of the German food item “salt" and an American delicacy of Germanic origins called “hamburger”, which the city of Hamburg was strangely named after even though the Germans themselves ingest hamburgers only in an efficient smoothie formula called “beer”.

Beer
Beer sold in solid format.

Very close to Salzburg is the picturesqueue village of Hallstatt, where you can watch hundreds of tourists queue up for pictures. Interestingly, the name Hallstatt is likely anonymous with Salzburg—it also means “salt settlement”—but as linguists point out, it is spelled differently from Salzburg.

Hallstat
Hallstatt, an instagram paradise with its famous pointy tower.

This village long used to be a postcard village. But then postcards were eradicated after people discovered that a postcard is just a boring sheet of paper that also exposes your intimate messages and address to anyone. Which is why this has now become an “Instagram village”: an Instagram is much more fascinating to the brain and does not reveal your messages and addresses to anyone but a select few, like the people who want to sell you things and the Government.


Salzburg is the location that spawned a music artist revered by anyone who pretends to understand Western classical music: the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mode’s Art, a man who released many back-to-back tracks to become the top 10 most played artists on the music charts of those days, which was probably an engraved wall in the middle of the town.

Mode's Art
A statue of Mode's Art with his name printed on it in the native Austrian spelling.

It is a shame that before Mode could try his luck on the world wide internet, Mode gave up on composing music altogether at the age of 35, soon after he released his last breath in 1791. Like the other dead composers of his time, he then began dabbling in what is called as decomposing.


Fast forward to this day, Austrians take such immense pride in Mode’s Art’s Art that they honor him by peddling these palm-sized balls of chocolate with his face on it. These sobering edibles are called Mozartkugel, which in native Austrian means “Mode’s Art’s Balls”.

Mode's Art's Kugels
Mozart Kugels are also available in giant form. Source.

Now, as you walk along Salzburg, you’ll notice a river flowing through, its name pronounced exactly like the French novelist Balzac, but with an “s”: Salzach. Since its name rings a familiar bell, they did not bother to prefix a “the” behind it like they do to the The Danube. But they do suffix the word “river” after it, just in case you forget what we’re talking about.

Salzach
Salzach river from its personal Wikipedia page.

One of the other distinctive hanging features of Salzburg are these metal designs hung in front of every shop, visually telling you what their business model is, like the logo of the American hire-a-mermaid shop, Starbucks, or the like the logo of the googling machine, Google.

Guilds
A shop that used to sell winged horses before they become extinct. It is now a hotel for tourists at least until when tourists become extinct.

These “guilds” date back to the mediaeval times when most peasants in the feudal system were too illiterate to even spell the times they chose to be in. Literacy was then a luxury of the powerful, unlike our egalitarian modern times, where anyone can become a well-read billionaire for free.


Speaking of billionaires, in upcoming documentary, we will travel from the city of Salzburg to the modern city of Zuckerberg: San Frances and Co.

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