An Australian in Austria

Salzburg
Salzburg is a lovely little town but we found it vewwy vewwy quiet. There were moderate amounts of tourists during the day but we had no idea where they all went at night because the place became very quiet. Not many people on the well trodden streets and the restaurants/pubs were pretty empty, we bypassed lots that had none or few people in it because we didn't want to sit there awkwardly too...

I saw this all over the place and avoided stepping on it cos I thought it was poo, seems that they're just nutshells from some tree!

Sound of Music........
Well everyone says to do it and I was neither here nor there about it but I knew P really wanted to do it. D even relented when the tour operator mentioned that we would be travelling across the countryside of Salzburg. D was horrified though when the singing started.... 'Doe a deer, a female deer...doo doo doo'. This song continued to haunt him throughout the trip and whenever he thought he'd finally forgotten the refrain, I'd make sure that I'd be there to prompt him into singing the song.

It was really lovely to see the countryside around Salzburg and for that I'm glad I went on the tour. We got to see the pivotal landmarks of Sound of Music scenes, I didn't know that the set was made up of different aspects of different areas and the inside scenes were all filmed in Hollywood. See if you can figure out where these pics came from in the movie, sing along now!

We finished up Salzburg with a visit to the fortress set high in the mountains and accessible via the funicular- Hohensalzburg. It's a very cool little fortress with an amazing view across Salzburg. We tripped through the fortress and even encountered an instrument of torture exhibition amongst the various exhibitions. I think I made D wince when I asked if a particular implement was to go up the butt - I knew my historical crime reading would come in handy one day!

I looked at this and thought 'oh it's a puppet tree... hmm puppetry... a pune, oh I'm so good!'

Amazing views of Salzburg from Hohensalzburg fortress

Vienna
I really liked Vienna - it has a lot of history, lovely old buildings and some beautiful gardens. The weather became better after the first day so we even had time for a lazy afternoon in one of the many gardens.

The beautiful Hofburg gardens

Bloody pigeons, can't escape them! There was a swarm of them sunning themselves at the park, cooing away. ARGH!

Sunning myself and wearing my fabulous new winter leather gloves, complete with cashmere lining. OOH

We encountered the same phenomenon as Salzburg, people just seemed to disappear at night. It was quite the twilight zone and the first time I'd encountered something like this in a major city, maybe they all disappeared to an underground party town - who knows! Or maybe they were all here....

Dodgy man...

Sunday was spent at Schonbrunn palace or the summer palace of Vienna. You could easily spend a day there, especially in good weather. I really liked the palace and gardens, both were grand but not as over the top as.. say...Versailles.

After spending the afternoon exploring the palace and grounds (including a cool maze where we managed to hit every dead-end available), we went to see the strudel making show and P got her strudel at last! The strudel baker was very deft with the pastry swishing and gave us tips on how to make the best strudel. Now I'm not into baked/stewed fruit desserts but I found this sample surprisingly nice and the apples were crisp not gluggy, I probably liked it because it was a sample size from the strudel making demo rather than a big ole chunk of glug.

You're meant to get the pastry so thin that you can read a newspaper through it !!!!

I encountered one of the weirdest incidents I've ever whilst in Vienna and it was with a taxi driver after a very long train journey there (complete with a breakdown that an Austrian guy in our cabin translated as 'the tracks were DESTROYED' - that was his literal translation of why we stopped for no reason). Anyway, so we decide to get a cab to the hotel because we were very tired and so I walk up to the next available cab and toward the boot because D was giving the cabbie instructions. The (black) driver took great offense to this and kept saying that I could go with another taxi if I liked, I was like wtf and stared at him cos I had no idea what he was on about. He specifically kept mentioning me and said that I seem to have the problem with his cab but not my friends, I said 'err no, I'm tired after a long journey'. A bit of harrumphing from us ensued but we took the cab anyway to our hotel.

D later explained that he read that there was a lot of racism in Austria and maybe the cabbie took walking past the cab as an insult because he was black. P & I were confused because we're dark too and have no reason to be that way but nevertheless, that's the best reason we could think of and so the state of the world is quite saddening. The whole thing horrified for a while that night but I got over it, it's sad that it exists to the extent that something so small can be misinterpreted as something bigger and wrong. I have no idea if that's what the cabbie really thought but eh, you live and learn.

And after all that angst, we come to something nice.... food.... and lets just say that I'm not planning a permanent move to Austria any time soon! Austrian food consisted of pork pork pork, sausages and meat, usually breaded and fried and complimented with stodgy boiled veges. Boring..... and even the meat eaters thought so! In saying that, Austria certainly knows it's desserts, pastries and cakes - I think I existed on dessert for most of my trip :)

The famous Sacher Torte from the cafe/hotel of that name. Arr num num num

Food food food

Ahh what would a trip be without some P-isms
* Confusing homo and homie when saying "hangin' with the..." - I suggested saying that in Harlem and then waiting to see the reaction ;)
* I got a cold and was sick for the last part of the trip, P soothed me by patting my arm and calling me a muppet but she meant poppet :P

All in all, it was a lovely trip and it was great to see P again and to hang out with her like old times. We even bickered like old times, ahhh bliss. I'm looking forward to when she is back in the UK and have demanded that she spend weekends brunching with me in Maida Vale.

Cheers - congratulations on your engagement P & D! :))))))

The only beer I've liked so far and it's a house brew, eee!