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.
