Letters From Salzburg

The author writes: "Among family mementos saved by my mother were more than fifty letters, most of them typewritten, crowded front and back on thin paper aerograms: letters I had sent to my parents during my third year as an Oberlin Conservatory of Music student, a year spent in Salzburg, Austria. Shortly after mother s death in 1984, I read a few of these missives, and thought, There might be a book here. In great detail - perhaps too great - the young Larry Palmer describes his reactions to a different world. He, having completed two years as an organ major at Oberlin, the private College in a tiny northern Ohio town, found himself in a small, but cosmopolitan, European cultural center in a German-speaking country, with relatively easy access to the rest of Europe. It had been only thirteen years since the end of World War II. Dwight D. Eisenhower was midway through his second term as President of the United States. The Russians and the Allies had agreed to the reunification and neutrality of Austria only three years earlier, in 1955, the same year in which the rebuilt Vienna State Opera resumed its brilliant performing schedule. The economy was stable. Twenty-five Austrian schillings equaled one American dollar. Even for a student, living was bountiful."