You're right, I was forgetting that it was Alt 2 (No Prot), the soft protections would not have been active. I'll flag that in my post.
That said, even with the trim the way it was, the extreme attitude was being held with the elevators - letting go should have brought the nose down to some degree - so in that regard the only difference between conventional and Airbus controls is that more physical effort needs to be expended in the case of the former - I'm told that it does take a fair amount of effort to hold the Airbus SS back against the stop for any length of time - considerably more force than it would take to hold a home computer analogue stick in the same position.
I go back to what I was saying the other day though, sometimes the best thing is to do nothing at first and allow the aircraft's inherent stability to ride the problem out - if the problem doesn't improve, *then* it's time to make positive corrections, albeit gently at first unless you're *very* sure of what you're doing.