Directories showing as files when browsing a Time Machine backup on Windows I have to grab some files from a time machine backup and I only have a Windows PC.  I downloaded the HFS+ filesystem drivers from MacRoumers (here) and plugged in my Time Machine Drive.  Everything appears normal, until I transverse into a specific backup.  There I see the "Library" directory, and every other folder (Desktop, Movies, Music...) are files.  It's like this in every backup instance, and I'm stuck.  I don't recall these folders being symlinks to earlier backups, but I could be wrong and these drivers don't support symlinks.
When Time Machine makes a backup it only copies changed files and creates links to the older items. AFAIK these are not symlinks, but hardlinks. 

Sample output from Time Machine
23/06/2014 10:40:19.087 pm com.apple.backupd[12797]: Copied 4 items (33 bytes) from volume DeepThought. Linked 20.