2 posts tagged “salzburg”
Immediately following this entry will be a grosser one detailing my mononucleosis and subsequent hospital stay. For those of you who may not know, Mono is not something to worry about in (at least in my case).
I figure it’s about time that I blog about my Dad’s visit. On Wednesday (2/28), he arrived at the Uni by plane, bus, train and bus again to meet me for lunch. There he met most of the group, and tried currywurst and apfelschorle, neither of which seemed to impress him (correct me if I’m wrong, Pops).
Dad went to the Historisches Museum (my, what could that mean?) while I was in class. Apparently there is no English signage or staff. Whoops. We met back up at my room for tea and cookies (I’m a good planner-aheader) and discussion of sights seen. We went out to the Hofbräuhaus for dinner. The original Hofbräuhaus is a brewery/restaurant in that is a huge tourist destination – and acts like it. has a HB Haus branch right at the end of my street. I’m trying to think of the American equivalent, because I feel like we have one, but the bottom line is that its all beer-Frauen and beer and wurst. Dad had a Schweinehaxen and I had a big pork chop (I apparently mistranslated the menu). I’m growing more and more disgusted with the lack of non-pickled vegetables offered with German dishes. I may have said it before, but I’ll say it again: Sauerkraut looks and tastes like its actually LEECHING vitamins OUT of your body.
On Friday, I met Dad at his hotel, and we went briefly to the yarn store, where I planned to check out the yarn to see if there was anything suitable for a project I’m considering, the Jemima sweater. Instead, I discovered 7+ balls of beautiful green, merino, superwash yarn. I purchased 7 balls of that and 1 of yellow for just under $21. Dangerous business, that yarn store. From there we headed to the Dom and did the previously blogged Dom tour. We started talking about Cathedrals in class yesterday and I was glad that I knew a little bit more about the Regensburger Dom than others. Did you know that during WWII, clergypeople took the stained-glass windows out of churches because they didn’t want them shattered by the shock waves from bombs? The Nazi party declared it a lack of faith in the imminent victory of the Reich and sent people to prison and concentration camps for it. Jerks.
I believe we had a late lunch on Friday at a fairly lackluster bistro on Ludwigstrasse. I had a baguette with lox and cream cheese that was pretty good, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. Our lunch was so late that instead of dinner we went out for gelato on Haidplatz. The place is called Café Venezia, and their gelato freezer faces the window, so when you walk past, you see all their flavors. Tricky devils. It appears that I have also already blogged about this, but it was just so good!
On Saturday, I awoke at 6, and too the 6:30 bus to Dad’s
hotel so we could meet at 7 and buy pastries before taking the 7:45 train to . When we got to Salzburg, we got the Rick Steeves-recommended
map at the train station, and immediately got lost. With embarrassingly bountiful difficulty, we
figured our way back toward the Altstadt.
We then set about looking for a restaurant selling non-wurst-related
items. This is a considerable problem in
what might well be the international-tourism capitol of WurstLand. In the meantime, we checked out an open-air
Saturday market, and Toscanini-Hof, a little cul-de-sac-type-thing next to the Felsenreitschule where the singing of “Edelweiss” takes place in SOM. We couldn’t get into the amphitheater itself,
but we climbed above it (too many stairs!) and looked in.
By then I was rapidly becoming Frau Crankypants, so we redoubled our efforts to find food. If it was on a main street, it was wurst city, so we started traveling via alleys. And then, all of a sudden, there we were, at the door of a Chinese restaurant. It was very emotional, for me personally. I had the beef with broccoli, Dad had a noodle bowl and we split fried wontons. Not only was some of the only *actually spicy* food I’d consumed in Europe, but it was also the most it has felt like home here. Chinese restaurants of the world: Don’t ever change!
After lunch, we stumbled out into the light…and probably
went looking for dessert, but I don’t remember.
What actually happened is that we went to the cemetery (Friedhof) that
“inspired” the one in Sound Of Music where they hide from the Nazis. I say “inspired” because to imply that the
cemetery in the film was based on this one is to ignore an awful lot of
artistic license. Correct me if I’m
wrong, but the cemetery in the film was at the top of a hill, had windows, was
rectangular, and didn’t have a full-size church in the middle of it. The one in is at the base of a cliff, is kind
of shaped like a parallelogram, and while containing many of those fenced-off
family plot alcoves, does not actually contain any stones that could conceal a
large, musically-oriented family from fascists.
Dad was a little distraught, but since I thought that the movie was corny and maybe a little boring, I just thought it was a beautifully landscaped churchyard.
Immediately next to St. Peter’s Cemetery was the vernicular up to the Festung Hohensalzburg. Believe it or not, vernicular is the English translation (of course, “vehicular” was the Foos translation). The Pittsburghers among you would recognize the little tram as the same type of car that takes tourists up and down the Duquesne incline. It’s a little diagonal train car that can travel up and down 60 degree inclines on ratchet systems. They are not for the faint of heart. There are two reasons for this. First, if you look out the back window, ascending or descending, you can become pretty convinced pretty quickly that you are about to plunge to your death. On the informative plaque near the exit, it says that the system was upgraded in 1959, after a “malfunction” (or some other such word). Of course that is all they tell you. Anyway, the second reason that you should consider bringing back-up pants when riding the vernicular is that on the descent, and Xue will appreciate this, when the car accelerates to the necessary velocity, it feels like a free-fall. I don’t know why the designer sat down and said, “Y’know, 9.8 m/s2 seems like a good rate of acceleration for a car full of people on a 60 slope”, but he or she did, and might just owe me some counseling.
The important thing is that there were two British sisters with three charming British children on the vernicular with us, and Dad was so desperate to hear English that he would’ve made small talk with the two-year old if he’d had to.
The Festung Hohensalzburg is a big old fortress on one of
the cliffs rimming Salzburg. I’ll have to link you to somewhere else to
find the whole history, but it has existed for quite some time, and has
undergone quite a few renovations. You
are only allowed into the actual castle part on a chaperoned 30 minute audio
tour. Ouch. Luckily, the tour is included in the 9,80
that it costs to ride the vernicular, so you only lose time, not money taking
it. The tour is pretty laughable, as
there is almost nothing IN the castle, and the highlight of the tour is the
“torture chamber”. Sounds cool until
they tell you that, gee, well, it was really only used to store torture
devices, and the devices stored there never actually got used because the
fortress wasn’t a court seat and wasn’t allowed to torture people. Luckily, the view from the top of the Reksturm
is worth the embarrassment and time you will never get back resulting from your taking the tour.
In fact, the of the
fortress period is the view, seconded by the medieval party chambers in the
non-tour part of the fortress museum. If
you’ve ever tried to imagine yourself in medieval times, you probably imagined
yourself in rooms like these. Dark wood,
painted accents, gold leaf, totally sweet.
And in one of the rooms you can see the Kachelofen, a 15-foot tall
ceramic furnace covered in relief scenes and glazed in a rainbow of
colors. There's a detail shot in the photos section.
We also saw a rainbow from that room because it had been raining all day.
After our descent we began looking for a bakery in earnest. Unfortunately, they were mostly overpriced, too Americanized (think Starbucks chic) or without seating. We resolved to find a café on our way back to the train station and set off. Just as my legs began to loosen at the hinges, we came across a café that I’m pretty sure was called “Coffee Shop”. Weird. Name aside, it was literally and without exaggeration, the most relaxing place I had ever been. It was very open, filled with actual cushy chairs, and painted a warm orangey-peachy color. I had cocoa and a cherry torte, and Dad had coffee and a raspberry muffin. The menu said something about the café being conceived of in the teachings of some guy, who looked like maybe he was a Buddhist (based on the video of him playing quietly in the background). It was an extremely nice place, and someday I think I may base my bakery on it in part, if I can afford the space.
You’d think the story would end with us boarding the train, but alas it does not. Our itinerary was as follows: take the train from to , wait maybe 15 minutes, and then take a second train from to . Instead, about a half hour before we get to Landshut, we start hearing these announcements “zzzzzzzzz…Munich…..zzzzzzz….Landshut”, but I figure if it was important someone would tell us in person. That was silly. In not too long the train stops at some random station (Eggmühl?) and everyone gets off, except for us. Then, while I run out to see if I can figure out if maybe THIS is where we’re supposed to change for , a conductor stops and speaks to Dad. In German. When I get back, they’re kind of wildly gesturing at one another. It turns out that our train just isn’t going to Landshut anymore, and we have to get off. On platform six, he says, there’ll be a train going to in 10 minutes. So we’re off to platform six, wondering if we’re going to miss our connection. We get to the platform pretty fast, but it doesn’t matter, because our Landshut-Regensburg train is 20 minutes late. And it was cold, so cold! Some Uni Regensburg students who could understand the announcements kept us up to date, and we eventually made it back.
On Sunday, Dad gave me the “look what I learned!” tour of Regensburg. We went to all the sections of Roman wall
still standing, including the Northeast and Southeast corners. One of the sections of wall is inside a
parking garage. Wah wah. A lot of the medieval walls are built on top
of the Roman walls, which is pretty crazy.
Also pretty crazy? The tops of
the Roman walls are about 2 feet above the current sidewalk level of Regensburg. Think of all the sediment!
Then I slept all day (a prelude of things to
come), and we went out to dinner at Peaches, the bar down the street from my
room. Kay came along and the three of us
split a Pizza Prosciutto. That place
makes a mean pizza, let me tell you. And
then Dad flew home the next morning. It’s
quite a lot of fun to have someone to show around your digs. Consider this an open invitation to all
friends and relatives to come for a visit!
Hotel rooms from 38 Euro a night!
Less if you split it!
Now stay tuned for Foosity Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: Book the First, The Malicious Mononucleosis!
