This weekend it was so warm and sunny, it was almost ridiculous because of the heavy snowfall that was going on in the same week. 22°C, some AC/DC in the car and a task: location scouting for our next shoot in the middle of April. As we were driving around I could smell the warm, spicy and forgiving scent of summer everywhere — well except for Puch where it smelled of crap. For days.

That’s one of the things the tourist information never tells you, and you won’t smell it in the beautiful pictures of the Salzburgian pastures, the smell of freshly manured plains, fields and farms thanks to the ancient rural Austrian practice to carry out, literally, the shitload of cow-crap that has accumulated in the winter. Yes, it’s good for the seed and makes the grass grow greener, but it detains the smell of summer for a couple of weeks longer and you just can’t close your nostrils!

Sooner or later you get used to it. Like all of us here on campus. At first we avoided going outside or open the windows to air the room but after a couple of days it’s like fresh air to you. We held meetings outside, some grilled, some played volleyball, I golfed and all of us were used to the constant smell of fermented crap. We just didn’t notice it any longer.

But others did. I was sitting in the Café Wernbacher in downtown Salzburg again, was enjoying my café latte, reading my newspapers and my weird book and was a little irritated by the seats around me, which weren’t occupied for long. And suddenly I smelled something awful. I sniffed and sniffed and found the stench originating in my jacket. Yes, the smell of Puch!

But last night I was driving around Salzburg late at night after a meeting in the same café, the air still warm and soothing from the day. The streets were mostly empty, not many people around on a late Monday evening. A breeze has sprung up and the wind eventually carried away the stench from the past days. And there it was: My first real moment of this year’s summer.

The windows of your car down, Iggy Pop’s The Passenger at maximum volume on your stereo, the orange lights of the city passing by one after another on a long and empty road. In your mind memories of other years’ summers, experiences with your friends that brought you closer together in some bygone mild blue summer’s night.

In an attempt to give you a short “demo” of this first summer-moment in 2008 I took a photo with my, omg!, cell phone for you to view and a minute of Iggy Pop’s song.

Iggy Pop - The Passenger. Lust for Life (1977)

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