Austria: Vienna and Salzburg

Our travels through Europe continue south from Hungary into Austria.  We have two quick stops in Austrian cities so I'm going to combine them into one post.  

Vienna

Another metro ride and a pleasant train trip and we're at our next destination: Vienna, Austria.  Vienna is yet another very pretty European city with stately old buildings, pedestrian squares and statue-filled squares.  It's a pleasant city with a laid-back vibe, but it lacked a little personality for me. Maybe I've been on the road too long and have had too many of these eastern European cities in a row to get too excited about another one.  

Of course, Vienna is very photogenic.  Just to prove it here are some pictures of old buildings...

... a pedestrian mall...

... and a statue.  But look! It's finally sunny enough to ditch the sweaters!

We arrive in Vienna on the weekend, so of course we hit another festival and a crowd of people. What does festival state fair food look like in Vienna?  Meats, potatoes and sticky carbs of course.  Sausage, spaetzle, and pretzel stands abound.

Vienna is a very bike-friendly town with dedicated off-street bike lanes. This is how you show a commitment to alternative transportation.  As a walker, we definitely wanted to stay in our lane because those bikes wized by very fast, almost like mopeds in Shanghai (but they stayed in their lane). 

As we leave Vienna we're starting to notice refugee families traveling on the same trains we are.  Not really a crush of crowds but you can certainly tell they're trying to carry as much as possible as they flee the war in their country and hope for a safer life elsewhere.  

Salzburg

We arrive in Salzburg and find mountains!  ...or at least hills. And they are alive with the sound of music! The home to both Mozart and the Sound of Music, Salzburg immediately feels like a very liveable city.  And after a couple days here, I vote this place as my favorite on the trip.  Now we realize we've made a mistake with planning this trip: we should of stayed away from the big capital cities and visited the medium size cities where you have similar culture but a little more breathing room and fewer crowds of tourists. Lessons to apply to the next trip I guess.

We are the only ones that decide it's warm enough to enjoy the cafe patio along the river sporting awesome views of their Old Town, cathedrals and medieval castle.  We can only imagine how perfect this city would be in the summer enjoying their parks, gardens, mountains, lazy river and cafés.

And Brian finally gets to enjoy some patio time at a classic European cafe... without his bulky sweater!

Fall has definitely set in here - leaves on the ground, a nip in the air, Indian summer (or whatever the Europeans call Indian summer).  Hiking is the traditional activity for this holiday weekend (because of course we hit another national holiday) so we trek to the top of the city hill to take in the trees, sunshine and fresh air. Yay hiking!  Definitely different than the US holiday traditions of snarfing food and watching sports on TV.

Salzburg is very close to the German border so they have several excellent breweries/beer halls.  Time to switch from Austrian wine to Austrian beer. We visit the Augustiner: a monk-run brewery with several attached beer halls. It's kind of a self-service thing where you grab an old traditional ceramic beer stein from the shelf, rinse it off in a central fountain and then stand in line to get your fill of tasty Octoberfest brew.  It's certainly a raucous place and probably not our favorite way to savor a beer but it was fun to experience the atmosphere of a true German (Austrian) beer hall once.  Here's Brian enjoying a cold(ish) one...

... and then toasting the monks who made it.

Time to switch from beer back to wine as we move on to Italy next!  And perhaps pair it with a little bit (or a lot) of pasta?

"Live the story you want to tell."  - Simply Topaz

Austrian Food & Drinks

Ok, so we're having a tough time justifying that these eastern Europe countries really have different cuisines. They all have sausages/kielbasas/wursts, they all love roasting various pig pieces, they all love serving potatoes (and no other veggies) with their meals and they all have a local macro-pilsner that they think is the best.  It's getting hard to get too excited about yet another variation on stew or apple pie.  We're definitely looking forward to getting to Italy and a real change of menus.

One of the classic dishes of Vienna is Schnitzel - typically served with a mustardy potato salad. We had a couple of them.  Just like an Iowa pork tenderloin without the silly bun getting in the way.

The other classic Vienna food is a roast beef dish.  Here Brian has it in sandwich form.  Tastes like a steak sandwich.  But look... a little lettuce to freshen things up a bit which is a welcome change from all the heavy meat and potatoes we've been eating.

Pumpkin goulash with spaetzle. Loved this dish!  Ahhhh... tastes like good ol' home fall cooking. After two months on the road/sea/track we're starting to miss our kitchen.  

This is how you do brewery food.  A pork-a-palooza in the Salzburg beer hall without a veggie in site. We picked out some ribs and some sausages (surprise, surprise).

This is a street sausage variation found only in Salzburg called a Bosna Dog. If Brian looks confused it's because it was a very confusing handful of food: two skinny dogs, mustard, onions and yellow curry powder smashed panini-style in a bun.  So no, we didn't go back for a second one. 

I am so jealous of all this Austrian bread!  I can't get enough of the grainy, nutty buns and breads (or their delicious pasteries).  Guess I'm going to have to restart the diet when I get on the cruise.  

We've found pretzels everywhere since Berlin, but this is the first time we've seen an array of so many flavors. I picked out a cherry pretzel - with real cherry filling but it would have been much better warmed up.

This is Sachertorte - a chocolate cake with apricot filling. We've been holding off in having a slice of this until we got to Vienna since that's where it originated. The picture is blurry because Brian had to quickly snap a picture before I shoved it in my cake hole. Sadly, we had a better version of it on our Pacific cruise ship - this one was a bit dry.

Just like Hungary, we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of wine here in Austria - particularly the whites. I'm not sure we're going to pester our wine shop to start importing them but they are a nice change-up from the German and Czech beer we've been drinking.  Interestingly, they're very precise about their wine pours here. Most glasses have a 1/8 liter mark on them so you know you're not getting short or over poured (if you look closely, you can see the pour line on the glass on the left). We were at one bar where the glasses didn't have a pour line and the bartender *weighed* the pour to make sure it was accurate. A glass of wine here is still about $3... I'll refer you back to the Budapest post rather than repeat the same rant about US restaurant wine prices.

Edelweiss beer - a tasty hefe brewed in Salzburg.  Now I can't get that damn Sound of Music song out of my head because Brian sang it everytime I ordered it (which was a lot).  Definitely my favorite beer in this country.

Although we had to try a few others just to make sure... Prost from Salzburg, Austria.

Budapest, Hungary

As we leave Prague, I spend the last of our Czech money on a new scarf at the train station.  Look for the exciting new fashion possibilities in future pictures!  We get to travel through a bonus country as our train crosses Slovakia on our way to Budapest. The countryside reminds us of the midwest - dark black soil and lots of fall-colored leafy trees. We have yet to see the large groups of Syrian refugees that are working their way across Europe.  Either the authorities have sorted out the major issues or they aren't traveling on the same trains we are. We arrive at the Budapest train station to discover yet another gorgeous building with soaring ceilings and interesting details.

After a quick metro ride and an easy hotel check-in, we hop out to explore Budapest at night. Wow! The Danube river cuts the city in half so the spectacular illuminated buildings and bridges reflect off the water. And I thought Moscow was amazing at night! Interesting bit of trivia... before a bridge was built to span the river, Budapest was two separate cities - Buda on one side and Pest on the other.  The founders sure put on their creativity hats when they came up with the name for the new combined city.  The Szechenyi chain link bridge is one of the prettiest ways to cross the river - especially when it is lit up at night.    

We love Budapest! There are enough tourists around to not feel out of place, but the city hums with a energy from the university, political center and businesses. It feels like we're in the middle of the Budapests' daily life instead of being a huge tour group overwhelming the city like we were in Prague.  Brian votes this place as his favorite city on the trip so far (excluding Loveland of course).  

We love exploring the food markets when we travel and Budapest has a great one: clean, organized and housed in a majestic building. Can you imagine shopping for your groceries here instead of schlepping through Safeway or Hy-Vee?  If only we had access to a kitchen so we could take advantage of all that produce and interesting spices.  Guess we'll have to be satisfied with grabbing a few breakfast snacks at the stands.

We've had breakfast and the sun is out so let's start exploring the very photogenic Budapest sites. 

Hero's Square

Hungarian Parliament 

Doesn't that blue sky improve these building pictures?  It sure makes walking around them much more pleasant. Hooray for sunny days!  We've realized that we've become major weather wussies.  All that Colorado sunshine spoils us too much so we now have a hard time dealing with gloomy, dreary weather.

Here Brian gets all artistic with a combo bridge lion and parliament shot at dusk.

Europe is obviously very heavy with history and we find memorials everywhere. This one is on the bank of the Danube river. The bronze shoes remember Jews who were ordered to take off their shoes and then were executed on the waters edge.  A quiet and sobering display.

Budapests' bridges, buildings and statuses come alive at night (figuratively... not literally... although that would make an interesting Pixar movie).  Gorgeous!  Brian enjoyed playing with the settings on our cheap camera to try and capture some of the sites at night.  We met an older east-German couple on our cruise who told us that back in the days of the Soviet Union, when they couldn't travel freely to the west, that they considered Budapest as their Paris. Now we see why - it definitely rivals the other European city of lights.

Who knew Hungary makes some awesome wine?  We do now.  We find a great little wine bar to explore some tasters.  The place oozes charm with it's brick walls and bronze chandeliers (although maybe they could rethink that honking speaker system).  We arrive in the late afternoon so we mostly have the place to ourselves while the bartender walks us through an 'intro to Hungarian wine' sampler. We could have spent hours here... oh wait... I guess we did.

We're starting to see the end of this journey as we only have Austria and Italy to travel through before we board the cruise to Florida. After all that planning and all these miles it's hard to believe that this incredible adventure will be coming to an end soon (ish).  

"Of all the books in the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport."  - unknown

Hungary Food

Paprika is the most famous Hungarian spice and it comes in various levels of heat and smoke. We will definitely be making some additions to our secret chili powder mixture.  Did you notice my new scarf? 

What do you do with all that paprika in Hungary?  Make Chicken Paprikash!  All those nice warm spices are stewed with chicken making a delicious sauce to dip the spaetzle in. This definitely goes on the 'figure out this recipe' list.

The other classic dish in Budapest is goulash: basically a beef and veggie stew with paprika.  The stew was tasty but I loved this cauldron-over-the-candle serving dish cause it kept the soup hot all through dinner.

We can't explore the Jewish Quarter of the city without also exploring some of their food as well. We wander into a cafe for a late lunch and discover a soup called jokai-bableves: a bean and smoked sausage soup topped with sour cream. Delicious! Fire up the Google search engine for that recipe too.

We've been walking by the strudel stands in all these eastern European countries waiting to get to Austria - cause strudel and Austria just seem to go together.  But we can resist no longer.  Notice how I'm waiting patiently for my piece?  

There are so many flavor choices... I go with the carmel-apple. Tastes like mom's apple pie (almost). Dang - should have gone with the pumpkin and poppy seed.

European breakfast buffets are way better than American breakfast buffets because of Nutella and fresh croissants.

A traditional Hungarian dessert: Gundel Palatschinken.  Basically a crêpe filled with a walnut mixture and  topped with chocolate sauce.  Tasted better than it looks in the pic - the heat lamps on the patio really messed up the lighting.  Yes, Brian made us eat outside on the cafe even on a chilly evening.

A better choice for dessert in Hungary is to have a small glass (or two) of their sweet wine. Delicious!  Did I mention that we liked the Hungarian wines? 

Or maybe we were just enjoying a change from all the German and Czech beers.  How will we fill our empty glasses in Austria?

Prague, Czech Republic

We ride from Berlin to Prague though some amazingly pretty countryside. The rolling hills, lazy flowing rivers and quaint little villages are postcard picturesque.  Unfortunately both camera batteries completely zonked out on us so we can't share any blurry out-the-train-window pictures with you. Guess you'll just have to come visit Czech Republic sometime and see it for yourself.

Check out the cool train station in Prague! We're reminded again how much more civilized train travel is over airplane travel.  There are no long cab rides out to the airport, no acres of cement parking lots, no waiting for baggage, no faux-security measures and no 3 oz liquid limitations.  Plus family and friends can greet their loved ones as they get off the train - no waiting in cell phone lots or behind security gates. A great way to travel.

The Prague train station is smack in the middle of town so it should be an easy-peasy walk to our hotel, right? Nope.  We wander the Prague streets quite a bit looking for it. Try to find our hotel sign (named Icon) along this street. That's one disadvantage to staying in non-chain hotels - they definitely have smaller signage than the bigger chains. Even after we checked in and had stayed there overnight, I walked right by our hotel door a couple of times.   

There it is!  That post-card sized plaque in the doorway.

Without question, Prague is a gorgeous old city. It's the only capital in central Europe that escaped the bombings of WWII so the buildings are original and stunning.  But we arrive on a festival weekend so it was crawling with tourists soaking in the old-world charm. There were so many languages being spoken I'm not sure we ever met a true local Czech person. The crowds thinned out on Monday, but the city still has a feel of a tourist town (or at least the sections we explored).

The weather is in the 40's, cloudy and chilly but at least its not raining. Look! Blue sky! While these old buildings look good during the day (especially when there's sun), they're even prettier at night.  Unfortunately none of our night photos turned out blog-worthy.  We do the typical tourist things like crossing the famous Charles Bridge - packed with vendors, artists and lots of tour groups.  We also stood around with the crowd of tourists waiting to see what happens when the Astronomical Clock strikes the hour.  Answer: not much. I think we checked (Czech'ed - get it?!) everything off the list of must see's in Prague.

The graffiti in Prague isn't quite as artistic as Berlin. But this cool wall was used for protest slogans during the overthrow of Communism in the 80's. It's named after John Lennon (get it? a play on Leninism) and features lots of Beatles and Lennon imagery like 'Give Peace a Chance'.

Brian wants to hang out in a European cafe so bad, we brave the cold, wrap up in blankets and huddle close to the warming fires. Yup... we have the place to ourselves cause we're the only ones crazy enough to sit outside today. Loved the faux-furry covered chairs.   

Brian has finally had enough of the cold cafe so we hop in a pub to drink some Czech beer.  This was our first encounter with the prevalent smoking in the European bars.  Remember when there was smoking everywhere? Definitely don't miss coming home with those smokey bar clothes. I guess tomorrow is sink-laundry day again.

We definitely enjoy gathering food ideas during our travels, but I also love looking around to get a few fashion tips too. All these fashionable Europeans are making me anxious to go shopping.  I am so tired of the handful of clothes that I have stuffed in my backpack.  Maybe I'll finally cut loose and buy some things in Italy when all I need to do is carry the pack one more time onto the cruise ship.    

We do get to do *some* shopping in Prague... but bummer that it's only for a camera battery. We locate their largest mall and find the electronics store but no camera batteries.  We're starting to get a little nervous, wondering if we're going to have to buy a whole new camera (Brian's vote) or start taking pictures with our phone.  We spot a small souvenir/camera shop along a side street that has one battery left that fits our camera! Whew.

And guess what?! We saw something we hadn't seen since Beijing... our shadows! I was so excited that the sun came out for an hour that I had to pose for a picture without my bulky sweater!  We are both getting tired of wearing them and I'm sure you're tired of seeing pictures of them! Hopefully the sun and slightly warmer weather follows us as we continue on to Budapest.

"My favorite thing is to go where I've never been."  - Diane Arbus

Czech Food!

Meet the Czech Klubása. 

If that sounds a lot like a Polish Kilbasa that's because it tastes like one too.  See, learning new languages isn't hard! These eastern Europe countries sure do some awesome pork sausages.  Seriously... this was one of the best sausage/wurst/dog/kilbasa I've ever had - spicy, snappy, smokey and delicious tucked in a perfect bun.  Brian called them Prague Dogs.  We had five (!) of them during our three-day stay.  We would have had six of em but the stand wasn't open for breakfast on our departure morning.

This is called a Trdelník: a cinnamon roll tube cooked over hot coals sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. They were all over - kind of like outdoor Cinnabon stalls. They will even stuff the insides with nutella and whip cream in case you didn't think there wasn't enough sugar on them already. Very tasty. 

Hey Cedar Rapids friends! Look - a real Kolach from a real Czech town. We hunted all over town to try to find one and had a tough time tracking one down.  Maybe they've moved on to those cinnamon roll tubes.  

Halušky: a sticky mash of potato dumplings, cabbage and pork. Warm, filling, starchy but not much flavor. We bought a bowl of it but didn't finish it. Gotta leave room for more Prague dogs!

Chlebíčky: Artistic open faced sandwiches - also knows as smorrebrod in Scandinavia. They were kind of like a lunch sandwich version of a bruschetta. Clockwise from the top: roasted pork with purple slaw, pickled beet spread with goat cheese, egg salad with watercress, ham and potato salad, smoked salmon with radish, celery root slaw with tomatoes. They're gorgeous looking and delicious tasting! Could this be the next trendy thing to sweep through hipsterville? Can't you see a Chlebíčky display case sitting next to a pile of cupcakes?  Our kick-starter campaign starts next month (not really - that sounds suspiciously like a real job).  

Svaräk: Czech mulled wine. Cheap, warming and sold everywhere. Makes me excited for cool fall evenings at home but we still have another month of travels before I can look forward to that.

Bavarian creme fille croissant - bavarian cream in Bavaria. Tastes just like you'd expect.

Kofola - Czech's local cola created when Communism blocked those capitalist brands of Coke and Pepsi.  Not great flavor - kind of a watered down herbal Mr Pibb.  Maybe it's an acquired taste kind of thing.  Or... maybe there's a reason why no one else in the world drinks it.  Or maybe there's a reason why Communism failed.

Those Prague Dogs were so good... how about another one?

Czech Beer!

Czech beer is awesome!  If there's a rivalry between Germans and the Czechs about who brews better beer, I raise my glass to the Czechs (sorry to any Germans reading this). Clean and solid on the standard styles with some creativity thrown in here and there to keep things interesting.  I thought this was just going to be pilsner-land but was surprised by the variety on tap. Too bad all the bars are smokey-chokey.

This was a black cherry lager and a hoppy pilsner. 

A chocolate stout and a blueberry lager.

Do you know how to sucker tourists into your bar?  Call it a beer muesum so they think they're in for something educational. It actually turned out to be a great little pub - we explored several of their 'exhibits'.

The Czech Budweiser brewery and the US Anheiser-Bush Budweiser are in a lengthy legal battle about who gets naming rights. The latest ruling is that Czechs get to use the name in Europe.  So when you order a Budweiser, this is what you get. A-B Budweiser is labeled 'Bud'.

Traditonal Czech bar breaking the 2 inches of foam guideline.  But I love their tradition of having snacking pretzels at the table.

The Czechs drink so much beer they sell it in 2 liter bottles at the grocery store. Now that's a tall boy!

You know what sounds good after all that Czech beer? Another Prague Dog!  We'll miss you Prague dog...