Salzburg - Not Acting Its Age

After a particularly difficult stretch at work in February, Erin emailed me to say as soon as her project wrapped up in March, she was getting it away from it all for awhile, darn it - with or without me. I'm not one to miss out on a possible holiday. Doha is OK, but sometimes you are compelled to leave it in order to preserve your sanity. Fortunately, I receive special offers via email from Qatar Airways through the finance department at work, so I had a fairly long list of options. After putting forth several options to Erin, we decided on a 4-day getaway to Salzburg, Austria. (C'mon, are we kidding? No.) We had an agenda to travel when we arrived, but had no idea it would be largely dictated by the promotions put forth by Qatar Airways. Which led to a lot of "Wow, we could go there!?" moments before we decided that Salzburg was in.

So we really did not have an itinerary when we landed in Vienna. What we had were transfers to a car to take us to a train to take us to a car to take us to the hotel. Oh, and we had a guidebook.

Now both of us studied German in high school (and I studied it in college, too) but we were, shall we say, a bit rusty. Most of what I knew I'd read in a book we own called The Wicked Traveler, which teaches you how to be an obnoxious jerk in five languages. So I had time to learn to say things like "Your Doppelbock gives off a bold aroma of sweat and glue", or "My Eyeballs hurt after just one glass." These didn't come in very handy in Salzburg, unfortunately. German is a language where instead of creating a new word to describe something, they string a bunch of existing words together. For example, we have the word "Aspirin"; while in German it would be referred to as "Littlepillyou swallowtomakeheadstophurtingalot."

The other things we knew about Austria were to be found in the satirical 'Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need', so thanks to Dave Barry for these wonderful tips:

AUSTRIA FACTS AT A GLANCE
Currency Unit: The Pflugenhaffenlepzeigenhohenzollern (or "Winkie")
Language: Foreign
Tipping: Not Permitted
Littering Punishable By: Death
Alps: Yes
Taco Bell: No

So, that was useful.
All this is to explain that, initially, the signs were confusing. Eventually we found our way to the passenger pick up, where thousands of uniformed chauffeurs waved name-signs nonchalantly as they chatted with other chauffeurs about the state of the chauffeur industry. Our driver must have been all talked out in fact, because when we found him; we greeted him and after a quick "hello" he promptly took Erin's rolling bag and walked off in the opposite direction. We followed and after an awkward-ish elevator ride we arrived to his car. Erin wanted to be friendly, so she bravely mustered up a "how are you today?" as we pulled away, to which he responded.....nothing. He didn't respond. During the ride to the train station, I think Erin and I were communicating telepathically - "I hope the next Austrian we meet is nice." Because at that stage they were 0 for 1 in the hospitality department.

We we dropped off at the train station, but it wasn't clearly marked - even in German - that that's what it was. So as he parked and unloaded the trunk - we must have looked like deer in the headlights because he pointed to a set of doors nearby and said "you go there". We wandered toward the station doors only slightly sure that we weren't lost in a foreign country.

It was the train station, but we soon had another challenge: figuring out which train was ours, when it left, and what in the world the signs said. I saw an information booth (it said "INFORMATION" in english, joy!!!) so I walked up and showed him our train transfer ticket. I told him it said "platform 9" and "where is that"? He responded curtly with, "Salzburg leaves from #8, not nine." Despite that the huge display sign suspended from the train station roof CLEARLY said Salzburg - 9. So instead of finding out how to get to platform nine, I got mis-information. 0 for 2. We led ourselves to platform nine, but not before a young guy approached us on the platform and asked if we spoke English. I reluctantly said "yes", after which he said he was from Prague and needed to get there and did we have any money for a ticket.... I just said "um, no" and we quickly went off in search of our train so we could get the hell out of Vienna. 0 for 3.

The rest of the trip was completely different.

Everyone was nice from that point forward; after the 3-hour train ride to Salzburg - the inner country looked a lot like West Virginia actually - we pulled into Salzburg feeling semi-relaxed again. We caught a taxi to our hotel, the Castellani Parkhouse and settled in with some champagne, schnitzel, and carpaccio - we picked foods that would basically get you a load of Scrabble points. Thank goodness for the concierge and the guidebook because we probably would have been content to hang out in the room, in fear of the locals.

Fed and slightly rested, we decided to see some off the beaten path attractions, so we went to a local science/history museum where we learned that the guy that discovered the Doppler effect was from Salzburg and lived across the street. (For those not remembering your earth science, its the sound waves from something fast passing something still - the zooooooooooommmmmm you hear when a fast car goes by.) Also, we learned that really really huge snails used to live in Austria, like the size of truck tires. But anyway, it was fun and there are a couple of photos of me electrocuting myself as a bonus.

After taking a taxi to the museum and seeing that it really isn't all that big a town considering its literally squished between mountains in a river valley - we thought we'd walk. That turned out to be a good choice, as we got more exercise than we usually do at home and worked off out that Schnitzel and the local beers, so that by the time we arrived back to the hotel or to our destination, we were ready for more beer and schnitzel. This was just the type of efficient pork consuming I was seeking. And I think Erin just liked the walks.

We discovered Getreidegasse, the oldest shopping street in old town. The narrow alleys' shops had signs protruding from the tops of the doorways; and what was interesting we learned from a downloaded audio tour: that some signs had lettering but also a small icon of what was sold inside, for example a miniature brass big mac on the McDonalds sign. This was because these shops were open before the renaissance, when most people couldn't read - so they put up an icon instead. But I am assuming McDonald's was just fitting in. :-) Other than gawking, the shopping usually involved 1-souveneirs, 2-pulling Erin away from 20,000 Euro necklaces, and 3-pulling Steve away from 500 year old swords and suits of armor.

Referring to aforementioned Audiotour, we found it online and did a walking tour of the most famous attractions, which took us to Mirabellplatz, a beautiful public building and courtyard with purple and yellow flowers where all Salzburg-ers have to get married by law (really). Also, a scene of The Sound of Music was filmed there, and in the photos you can see a winged horse statue that appears in the film along with a certain staircase where I think they might have been singing about musical notes while wearing curtains or some such household drapery.

But really, Austria was EXACTLY like it was in our German Textbooks. Little old ladies in scarves, hot dog stands, cheese stands, flower stands, tiny cafes with 18 chairs and a grumpy, German only speaking proprietor, etc.

We were surprised to know that Salzburg was the birthplace and boyhood home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - you may remember him as the inventor of chocolate. Or, I do anyway because of the Mozartkugeln; a locally plentiful chocolate candy with marzipan inside that is dedicated to marketing the memory of the famous composer. Not that they didn't sell Mozart every way they could; music, ornaments, pictures, paintings, candy, keychain, t-shirts - you name it, Mozart's face was on it.

We mostly stayed away from all this, but on our last night we gave in and booked tickets to a classical performance of Mozart's most famous works over dinner at a restaurant called St. Peter's Stiftskeller. Let me talk about the restaurant for a minute. It's the OLDEST restaurant in Europe, which is like being the most pious priest at the vatican. It first opened its doors in 800 AD. No, really. Apparently, not only did Mozart love this place and used to go and jam there all the time - CHARLEMAGNE ate there. That's damn old. For reference see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne. I don't think St. Peter ate there, but maybe.... anyway, the music was really good - I guess this Mozart guy was fairly talented! The most interesting part of the evening was the company however. We were seated with 6 others at a small table and we first thought, Oh man this is going to be a culture-laden evening, by which we meant "awkward".

They ended up as being two older couples from Austria/Germany, and a russian mother and son who lived in North Carolina and central Russia respectively. I heard them speaking Russian and I assumed they spoke no English, but sure enough they did and even one of the older couples did too. So I spent the time when I wasn't eating or listening talking to them about Qatar and hearing about North Carolina. Erin, on the other hand, spent the whole dinner listening to the other couples speak in German, and by the middle of it she turned to me and said, Hey I remember this! She actually understood quite a bit of their conversation - its unfortunate she revived her German lessons on the last evening, it would have been nice to have the translating skills. I'd have to recommend a few weeks of serious German cramming before you venture here.

Salzburg can be summed up in one word: Falzenpfeffenkuchelgeschitzearbeteitgelassenvruge, which of course needs no translation. But regardless, we had a nice time and blew off some Doha steam. Photos can/should be posted soon (and only a month late,!).