Austria September 14th - 29th, 2007

After a looooong flight we landed in a gray and rainy Seattle again on September 29th. We had checked back into the brutal reality after two wonderful weeks in Austria. Funny, we've been back for a few days now and it is hard to imagine we were ever there. That seems to be how vacations work though - once they're over, they as fleeting as a dream.

Anyway... As I hinted, we had an amazing vacation. We left home on September 14th, boarded a plane bound for Copenhagen, and then on to the next flight to Munich. We arrived only to find that Andreas' suitcase had once again been the target of some baggage handler's rage (you may remember that his suitcase-at-the-time was completely demolished when we arrived at Arlanda last Christmas, and he received a new one from SAS - great service by the way!). This time it wasn't as bad however, and after a Lufthansa service member helped us take out the bend in the bag we could get on our way.

Jakob was kind enough to drive for over 2 hours to come and get us at the airport. And then we of course had to drive all the way back again - another 2 hours. Poor Jakob's Saturday was pretty much spent in the car.

For those of you who don't know, Jakob lives in Reutte in Austria. It is an absolutely delightful little town embedded among the Alps. Its only downside is the many Germans that enjoy driving to Reutte to fill up on gas (it's apparently a few cents cheaper in Austria...). There are also a lot of tourists from neighboring countries - and Holland - passing through, so the town has a lot of traffic.

We spent the first couple of days in and around Reutte. We hiked up to the Ehrenberg ruins above Reutte, and we went to the Neuschwanstein Schloss (castle) near Füssen in Germany (Reutte is very close to the German border). This castle was built by Ludwig II, who mysteriously died the day after he was declared insane and unfit to rule the country. In fact, the castle was never finished. You can read more about this if you like at their site.
Though we enjoyed the castle, it was a bit disappointing that you had to take a guided tour - I prefer to take my time and wander as I please.

Füssen, by the way, is a lovely little town, and when we were done with the castle tour, we had coffee and ice cream at an Eiscafe, one of these delightful little cafes that seem to be scattered around Germany and Austria (and probably other European countries too). They all serve various coffee drinks of course, but, more importantly, they serve lots of very good ice cream in all forms and shapes. On top of this well deserved refueling of energy, we also stopped by a lovely bar in a very small market place and had wine and beer (also very well deserved on our part).

On Tuesday, the third day of our stay, we woke up to a very rainy day. Since we were planning on driving to Salzburg anyhow, we figured it didn't matter with a bit of rain, but after a number of hours in the car and no letting up on the horizon, we were getting tired of it. We stopped by Hohenwerfen, where there is a beautiful fortress (which we didn't have time to tour unfortunately - next time!) and also the Eisreisenwelt. This is a cave - or many caves to be correct - of ice! Although we had to hike quite some ways (in pouring rain mind you) just to get to the cablecar, and then again some to get from the cablecar to the entrance to the caves, it was well worth the trip. We experienced the most spectacular icy landscape in those caves, stalagmites and stalactites of ice, and all sorts of other formations. The only downside to this trip was that I managed to get a urinary infection, which I can assure you is not fun to deal with in cold pouring rain and not too many toilettes around.

Once our tour in the ice caves were done, we warmed up with goulash and beer for the boys, and hot tea and bathroom visits for me at the café near the cablecar. When we felt ready to brave the rain again, we got on the cablecar for our quite steep ride down to the base and then relied on our legs to get us back to the car to continue toward Salzburg. On our way we had to stop by a pharmacist who was very concerned that I had not seen a doctor for my urinary infection, but agreed that it should be treated and gave me some sort of pills and a jar of odd tea. Once in Salzburg (and Andreas did a fine job at directing us to our hotel using a very sketchy map) we checked into our hotel (Haus Wartenberg, very nice little Gasthaus), and Andreas and Jakob went out for a bit to eat while I stayed in our room drinking that odd tea and recovering.

The next day we had only a few hours to explore a little bit of Salzburg before we must be on our way toward Vienna. We decided to go to the Old Town of the city, which is as beautiful as it is crowded with tourists. We walked up to the Hohensalzburg Festung (fortress), but due to lack of time we never went inside. We then wandered around the Old Town for a little bit and visited the cathedral Salzburger Dom, where we lit a candle for my departed grandfather.

After a quick glance at Mozart's birthplace (a yellow house in the Old Town surrounded by a maddening amount of tourists) we slipped into a café for a short break before heading back to the car and set course for Vienna.

On our way to Vienna we decided it would be nice to take a lunch break in Steyr, a little town that is sort of on the way to Austria's capital, which according to our guidebook is very "gemütlich". Well, the way there was quite long it seemed, we were all getting hungrier and hungrier and it was well passed 2 o'clock in the afternoon when we finally rolled into the little dream of coziness that is Steyr. Situated by a river, surrounded by old, beautiful churches, houses, and even a castle, we decided that it was well worth the trip. And our lunch at a very - of course - cozy restaurant in the city center served food to write home about. Granted, our rest stop delayed our arrival in Vienna with a couple of hours, but what is a road trip if not a journey from point A to point B with stops at point C, D, S, and perhaps even Y?

We did eventually get to Vienna and after Andreas once again marvelously guided us to Pension Madara, where we were supposed to stay, with whatever few details the map we had could provide. Our quarters were quite modest, but considering we were only going to sleep there, perfectly fine. The Pension was run by a lady, probably from some Eastern European country, who was very concerned over two things: 1. A bunch of teenage girls were staying there at the same time, and they were apparently a catastrophe, and 2. The tables in the little breakfast room were numbered with whatever room you happened to stay in, and when you (like we) didn't understand that system (which we hadn't been told about), and sat yourself at another table, it caused a great deal of worrying and rearranging for this poor lady.

Anyhow... Since we got in kind of late on the Wednesday evening, we only went a few blocks to find a place for dinner. We found "Einstein", a simple, nice restaurant/bar where we downed some grub and alcoholic drinks.

The next day we were ready to discover Vienna. We spent most of the day walking around the city, looking at various buildings and monuments: Stephansdom of course, the museum quarters, city hall, and several very beautiful churches and cathedrals. We also spend an hour or so sitting out in the sun at a café, enjoying a latte. Later on we met up with our friend Olof, who happened to be in Vienna for a conference, and after a Dry Martini at the famous Loos American Bar near Stephansdom, and a couple more drinks at a bar on the top floor of a hotel, we set out to find "Die zwei Lieseln", a restaurant Jacob swore serves the best schnitzel in town. Well, I won't go into too much detail about how long it took us to find this place, but let's just say that we were VERY hungry by the time we finally got there and got a table (next time we'll listen to Olof and just take a taxi). The place itself is a shabby, old hole in the wall, but the food... well, it was worth waiting for. I had possibly the best sauerkraut in my life. And the portions were huge (and we finished it all - that's how hungry we were). So there we were, eating like locals in Vienna and loving every minute of it.

We had to leave Vienna the next day, and had to make a decision whether to visit Schloss Shönbrunn or Hitler's summer house, the "Eagle's Nest" (speaking of eagles, did you know that every single village in Austria seems to have at least one Gasthaus (B&B) called "Der Schwarzer Adler" - which means "The Black Eagle" - or something else including the word "Adler" (Eagle)? They are everywhere!). We opted for the Eagle's Nest, or Kehlsteinhaus, which it's called in German. Unfortunately the place has been completely exploited since Andreas was last there about 15 or so years ago; now you can no longer drive up there, you have to pay 15 Euros to ride the bus up there. While the view was spectacular, there were no historical markings, and on top of it all we got there fairly late in the day so we had to take the last tour up there - meaning we only got 25 minutes at the actual house (and still pay full price!). It was disappointing to say the least. But, on the bright side, we have now been there, and Berchtesgaden, the nearest town, is WELL worth a visit. The lake Königsee is also nearby, and though we didn't have time to visit, we saw it from "Hitler's House", and it too would be a wonderful destination with some more time.

From Berchtesgaden we followed country roads back to Reutte. We stopped at a bakery for some bread to bring home for dinner and saw the sun set through the valley. We didn't get home until fairly late, but who's in a hurry?

The next day, a Saturday, we had decided to go to Innsbruck, approximately an hour and a half's way from Reutte. It was another gorgeous day in Tirol, so after having walked around lovely Innsbruck for a while, we decided to visit Schloss Ambras. Here, we could wander around at our own pace and view old armors, furniture and objects, and hundreds of portraits. It was quite interesting, and after our tour we enjoyed coffee and ice cream at the castle café before taking a short stroll through the garden to watch the birds (they had a couple of black swans - absolutely amazing!). All in all it was a lovely day.

On the Sunday we headed west, toward the Swiss border. Originally we wanted to spend a few days in Switzerland to do some hiking, but Jakob managed to hurt his foot the very first day (excuses? We'll never know...), and so since it is horribly expensive in Switzerland, we decided to just spend a day there. But first we meandered our way through Tirol and Vorarlberg, the westernmost county. It was a wonderful journey. It was warm and sunny, the villages were as cute as ever, and the Alps made for a fantastic backdrop. We had lunch in a little town, sitting outside enjoying the sunshine, and later we made a stop at a skiing/hiking resort where we took the cablecar up to the top and walked around for a bit before taking it back down again. In the late afternoon we rolled into Feldkirch, right on the border to Liechtenstein, where we spent the night. Feldkirch is a very cozy little town (of course) and we had a lovely evening at a local restaurant listening to a local band.

The next day we visited Chur in Switzerland. It was a wonderful drive through a beautiful Swiss landscape (read: Heidi land), and the city itself was nice, particularly the Old Town. As expected, everything was quite expensive (especially with the dollar at its all time low thanks to Mr. Bush's politics); even so we couldn't help but picking up some chocolate and also three bottles of wine from the region.

The Monday was the last day of sunshine for us. On Tuesday we woke up to gray and rainy skies, and our plan to visit Bregenz by the Bodensee (Lake Constance) didn't seem quite as appealing. Still, we made a quick stop in the town and had coffee and pastries at one of the lovely little Konditoreis (coffee/pastry house - Patisserie in French!) that are part of most Austrian towns. We had originally planned to spend a night in Bregenz, but with the weather as gloomy as it was, and no end in sight we decided to head back to Reutte instead. On the way we stopped by a shopping mall to look for Fudge for Andreas (some sort of hair product - we were unsuccessful in this quest by the way), and pick up some breakfast supplies. Walking through the grocery store, I took a trip down memory lane remembering things I used to buy when we lived in Germany.

That evening we had dinner at the Maria Hilfer brewery. It was a rustic, authentic Austrian dinner: lots of meat, sauerkraut, and beer. It was fantastic to say the least. In fact, we had so much good food during our vacation that we gained close to 5 pounds/2.5 kilos each!

We took a day off on the Wednesday and just hung out at home. A couple of Jakob's friends came over in the evening for some beers. On the Thursday we went to Innsbruck again, to see the silver mines. Unfortunately we just missed one tour and the next wouldn't be until an hour and a half later. We decided to leave the mines until next time we're in Austria (because, mark my words, we will be back!), and instead went to Hall, a town right next to Innsbruck. Again, this was a wonderful little town; gorgeous, old churches and buildings, and lovely little shops. We bought Landjäger sausage in a butcher shop, and then we had coffee, Apfelstrudel, and Tiramisu at a cozy coffeehouse.

The next day, Friday, was our last day. Because the weather hadn't lightened up one bit, we decided to go to a spa (Königliche Kristall-Therme Schwangau). This particular one was very close to the Neuschwanstein castle, and you could see it from one of the outdoor pools. The low clouds made the castle look especially magical this day. The spa itself was great, we tried all the different pools (saltwater pool, hot tub, outdoor pool...) and then we went upstairs to the sauna part. There were several different kinds of sauna, from the steam rooms to the very hot Bergsauna (100 degrees Celsius). There was also a Turkish Haman, where you lay on a hot stone surface. That one was my favorite. Being that we were in Europe, and more precisely in Germany, these saunas were unisex areas, and swim suites (or any other clothing) were forbidden. Having lived in the United States for four years, it was both weird and nice to be back in a country where nakedness isn't something shameful, but rather something quite natural. I wonder if a spa like this would be a hit in Seattle...

Our last meal in Austria took place at a Gasthaus owned by BMW (Alpenhotel Ammerwald). September is game time in Austria, and the menu was full of yummy treats like wild boar, deer, rabbit, and even reindeer. Although I had been able to find a lot of good vegetarian alternatives throughout our stay (fall is also the time for mushrooms in Austria!!) I had decided that tonight I would eat meat. And what a meal we had! We gorged in the most wonderful food, all sorts of different meats, blaukraut, and knödel. We ate as if there was no tomorrow; for us, it was truly the last meal.

At 4:00 in the morning on Saturday September 29th, the alarm went off and it was time for us to get up and go to the airport and head for home. We left the house at 5:00 a.m. (poor Jakob who had to drive us!) and after a couple of hours we were once again at the Munich airport. There isn't much to say about our trip home; it was as good as could be expected. Thankfully we managed to upgrade to Economy Plus on the transatlantic flight, so that certainly made the journey home more pleasant. And now we are back in our old everyday routines, and our trip almost seems like a dream. I have to say though that it was great to see JoJo again. He, by the way, had a great time staying with his buddy Simba at Jesper and Dorde's. Their son Sebastian and JoJo apparently hung out together quite a lot... :)

THANK YOU Jakob, for an absolutely marvelous vacation! We are already looking forward to our next visit.

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