Bad translations and the end

 Although there are lot of words that are similar in English and German - orange, hotel, haus, bier, mutter - there are lot that aren't at all what you would expect.

Rathaus - not a house for rats, but rather city hall (or maybe it is a house of rats depending on your view of city hall employees)

Fahrt - ride, trip or journey.  I know, it's not even spelled the same!

Schmuck - jewelry  In American slang, derived from Yiddish, schmuck means a jerk or contemptible person.

WormWorld - the name of a men's clothing store in Munich, no translation available

The End - 

After breakfast a short walk from our hotel and a visit to a very cool army surplus store across the street, we headed for the train station via subway to catch a train from Vienna to Munich.  We got into Munich around 5pm and went to a Vietnamese restaurant for hot soup.  There are a lot of Asian restaurants, perhaps more than Italian ones!

We had an uneventful trip home, only hiccup being that we arrived before our luggage in Santa Fe.  There was an hour and 20 minutes to make the connection in Denver and the tiny plane to Santa Fe leaves from a gate as far as possible from international arrivals!  Fortunately, it just means we postpone doing laundry until our bags are delivered!

Austria: This says it all!

 Austria!  'nuff said.

Vienna

Surely a grander European city does not exist! Statues, columns, and gilt around every corner and more seemingly more palaces than royalty. We arrived at the train station around 3pm and caught 2 subways to our hotel, the 25Hours Hotel near the Museum Quarter. Since I had neglected to eat lunch, we went off to one of Christmas markets, on Spittleberg Strase. Rather than on a plaza, this market stretched a couple blocks along of street of trendy shops and restaurants. I got a sleeve of Belgian fries with a mix of cocktail sauce (not ketchup!) and some other white mayonaisse based sauce. Across the street we got hot drinks - the housemade punch with mango juice, ginger, and white wine for me and hot apple juice for Jake. We ended up eating dinner at a very busy Italian restaurant called IRagazzi with decent, not great, Italian food. From there we walked over to another close by Christmas market on Maria Theresien-Platz before returning to our hotel.

Spittleburg market

Maria Teresienplatz market

On Saturday we started the day off with visiting the Nachtmarkt. We got breakfast at one of the many cafes at the market. The Vienesse breakfast consisted of a croissant, coffee, orange juice, a soft boiled egg, and rolls with ham and cheese. The market had a lot of Turkish vendors selling olives, feta, salted and candied nuts, dried fruits and baklava. They are always offering tastes of their products hoping to draw you in. There were numerous spice vendors, candy shops, butchers, bakers, and fruits and vegetables. On Saturday there is also a flea market of mostly people selling antiques. There was a surprising disregard for the snow covering records and books by some vendors making me think they weren't worth much!

Nachtmarkt flea market in the snow

 From the Nachtmarkt, I headed to the Albertina, while Jake went to the war museum. The Albertina is half an historic palace and half art museum. The historic rooms were quite stunning. I was particularly taken with the variety of intricate parquet floor designs and beautiful silk drapes and wall coverings. The art collection was equally impressive with a special exhibit featuring many of Michleangelo's drawings of the human figure and a collection of art from Impressionists to Surrealists. They have a large print collection in part because one of the royals who inhabited the place had amassed a formidable collection. I walked along some of the shopping streets afterwards searching for a couple items since I figured many of the stores would be closed on Sunday. There is a wide variety of international brands and local brands and the streets were busy with shoppers. 

One of my favorites but I forgot to take a photo of the description with the artist's name!

Meeting back at the hotel around 3pm, we headed for the closest cafe, Cafe Raimundo. Jake had a decent goulash and I got the fried chicken fingers on lettuce with potato salad. The fried chicken was both moist and crispy, but the lettuce was rather drowned in balsamic vinegar. We finished our meal sharing a piece of sacher torte, perhaps slightly better than the piece we had had at the Sacher Cafe in Salzburg.

After resting up at the hotel, Jake and I went out to the largest Christmas market at City Hall (Rathaus) plaza. This market features a large ice rink with different branches around islands of trees. There was a whole children's section with a double decker merry-go-round, ferris wheel, and mini train. It had stopped snowing by evening, but was still cold and damp, so we took a cursory tour around before heading back to the warmth of our hotel. 

Cashew and chocolate baklava from the Nachtmarkt (our dinner Saturday night)

Tree filled with hearts

Entrance to the market

 Sunday brought much better weather with the sun appearing for several hours and warming up to the low 40sF. We got a late start but headed into the heart of the city having felt like we hadn't seen that many of the historic city center sites the day before. We first tried for breakfast at one of the better known cafes, but were told there was a wait only after checking our coats. We picked our coats back up and headed out coming across the just-opened doors of the Falstaff. We were the first people there and they had an excellent breakfast menu. I got the smoked salmon and avocado plate for less than 10 euros. I got a bite of Jake's pain au chocolate which was excellent and hot out of the oven. They also had fresh-squeezed orange juice. Afterwards we strolled around getting a glimpse of the interior of St. Stephen's cathedral while the choir was singing and of another church as the organ was playing. We passed lots of tourist groups and the horse-drawn carriages were busy.  Around noon we came across the Aida Cafe and stopped there for slices of cake and more coffee.

An old building in Vienna

Gargoyles on the cathedral

The cathedral's organ

Esterhazy and Chocolate truffle cake at Cafe Aida

    I ended my touring by visiting the Christmas market on Freyung St. while Jake went to the train station to get our tickets sorted out for returning to Munich tomorrow.

Hallstatt

 We arrived in Hallstatt on Wednesday afternoon, taking the train from Salzburg to Attnang-Puchheim, then changing to a regional train that took  us through a valley to the Hallstatt train station.  The Hallstatt station is across the lake from the town itself, so a ferry meets you at the dock and for 7 euros RT you take the ferry over to town.

View of Hallstatt in the early evening

Waiting for the ferry

It was snizzling (rain and snow drizzle) when we arrived.  We are staying at the Heritage Hotel.  The main hotel is right next to the ferry dock, but it turns out that the hotel lhas several buildings.  To get to ours, a staff person loaded our suitcases onto a mechanical cart and led us up cobbled icy streets to our building.  The room is quite nice though and has a lovely view of the lake.  And if the weather were nice, a little balcony with 2 chairs. 

Since we hadn't had lunch, the first thing to do was to find a cafe for a sandwich and cup of hot tea.  After that, we strolled around town.  The most historic part of town is bracketed by gates to control traffic.  Above town is a bypass that goes through a tunnel.

Although it seems like there are a fair number of tourists in town, it is clearly not nearly as many as will come on the weekend or in summer months.  A lot of the restaurants are closed and the stores seem to have fairly short hours.  We ended up eating dinner at our hotel's restaurant after not finding any other place open except for another big hotel.  We were amused by watching two young Asian women photographing themselves and every course of their meal, switching seats for the best lighting or backdrop.  Another large tour group from Thailand was seated nearby.  I often wonder how people from different countries end up going to relatively small places like Hallstatt (or Santa Fe in the US).  How do they end up being on the tour itinerary?  There also seem to be quite a few young Asian women traveling by themselves or in small groups in Germany and Austria.  Has it become a thing like the "European Tour" of the early 1900s?

I got a very good whole trout for dinner, served with a salad and parslied potatos.  Apparently trout and pike or perch can be caught in the lake.

Our hotel includes breakfast.  The typical German breakfast buffet is quite impressive - ham, cheese, rolls and bread, croissants and some sort of cake or small pastries, smoked fish, pickles, yogurts, cereals, and yogurt toppings, fresh fruit, and eggs and sausages.  Today's also included "steamed sweet dumplings" which turned out to be filled with nutella, and shredded fluffy pancakes.  We have found that eating such breakfasts means you can eat a very late lunch unless you have more willpower than we do!

After breakfast, with the skies clearing and sun appearing, we went to the Salzwerks, or salt works.  A funicular takes you up to the top of the hill over town and offers beautiful views.  You can download an audioguide to your phone and we listened to about 10 stops as you make your way uphill to the start of the salt mine tour.  The mine tour takes at least 90 minutes.  Our guide spoke German and English and there were about 20 of us on the tour.  Apparently they can accommodate 70/tour!  You walk a long ways into the mine and they have various places to stop and sit to listen to the guide or to several videos/light shows.  You also get to go on two miner's slides (see photo) and at the end you leave on a miner's "taxi" pulled by a small train car.

The funicular track

View from the Salzwerks

layers of salt

A video that showed the formation of the salt layers

The miner's slide

Saltworks buildings

People have been mining salt here for at least 7000 years and an immense amount of salt is still sent as brine through a pipeline to the town of Ebersee to be processed into salt.  Although some is used for seasoning food, apparently much of it is used as road salt and for industrial uses.  The salt deposits were formed when an inland sea dried up that became surrounded by clay deposits that didn't allow the salt to leach out.  This happened before the Alps formed.  There is also a burial ground from the Iron Age that has yielded many interesting artifacts and information about how people might have lived in that era.

We had a late lunch at the restaurant at the top of the funicular, but the main dining area was seating by reservation only and the small downstairs area had one waiter who seemed rushed off his feet. There is a skywalk just outside the restaurant, but unless you really want someone to take your photo at the end of it, it didn't seem worth it to pay the fee to use it when the views were so good from everywhere.

the skywalk

Back in town we stopped at a cafe for small piece of cake and a cup of tea.  We ended up sharing a table with a couple from Michigan, a retired librarian and her husband whose birthday was today.  They had basically just gotten to Hallstatt after their bus broke down on the way here from Vienna, but they would still have time to do a brief tour of the town before the bus left.  The town is getting set up for its weekend Christmas market, but we will be off to Vienna in the morning.

A note from Jake

 Before we leave Salzburg notes, we got incredibly lucky arriving in town.  We got off a bus at midnight, disembarked in (what seemed like) the middle of dark nowhere.  We hopped onto the first local bus that came by not knowing where it was going relative to our hotel.  Lo and behold, it stopped half a block away!  Whew.  Now we are in Halstatt, which is as cute as can be.  Got off a train and onto a boat to cross the lake to our hotel, pictured here.

Two days in Salzburg

 We arrived in Salzburg after 11pm after an hour and a half on a dark and quiet bus.  At the bus station, there were only a couple taxis that were quickly taken, but a public bus pulled up that said Zentrum on it, so we hopped aboard.  They didn't seem to expect us to have tickets.  It ended up dropping us off just 2 blocks from our hotel, which is just off the Mirabellplatz.  

In the morning we walked across the river to the old town and up a very long set of steps to a Benedictine cloister and the start of the Panorama trail.  A tall cliff lines the edge of the old city and offers a beautiful view of the city to the north and of the Alps to the south.  We walked along a little used road at the top of the cliff that goes past the old fort and several villas and other fortifications until it ends at a modern art museum.

A Tyrell skypace - the 3rd or 4th one I've seen!

The panoramic road

View of the fortress

Mini snowmen along a wall near the convent

Back in the old town we had a traditional Bavarian lunch of venison ragout and wiener schnitzel.  After a nap we went to the historic Sacher Hotel  cafe on the banks of the river for Sacher torte and coffee, a delicious combination.  Having now consumed far more calories than we expended on our morning walk, we strolled around the city looking in shop windows and getting to the Christmas market outside the Cathedral in time hear a choir singing.

Christmas market in Salzburg

Tuesday we had breakfast at another historic cafe next to the Sacher hotel then walked to the train station to get our train tickets to Hallstatt, Austria for Wednesday.  The OBB ticket office was very helpful.  I had downloaded the RailEurope app, but it doesn't seem to have all of the different country's trains on it and had much longer travel times listed.

We got back to the Cathedral in time to hear an organ concert.  A single organist goes to 4 of the cathedral's seven organs and plays a song at each one.  Organ music has never been my favorite, but it was quite contemplative to listen too in such a huge space.  At the end a group of 3 Ukrainian musicians played guitar and sang, but could barely be heard in the space.

wood carving at the cathedral

The Salzburg Cathedral

Around 5pm we stopped in a BrauHaus for a winter bock beer and a "beer snack".  The snack is a wooden platter with a salami, mustard, a pretzel and a pile of what looked like shredded cheese, but we discovered was actually shredded horseradish!

Tuesday was also Krampus Day!  According to legend, the krampuses joined the St. Nicholas legend as those spirits who punished bad children, but they also seem to carry the bags of presents handed out to good children.  We got to watch the Krampus "run", more of a walk, as they came through town.  The first glimpse was right as we stepped out of the bar.  One krampus hit our legs with his brush, so I guess we haven't been good all year!  We made our way to the stage in front of the cathedral to watch the different krampus groups pass by.  The costumes and masks are really amazing.  You can hear them coming because they wear large cow bells.  The body suits are long fur and the masks usually have long curved horns.  These are definitely the beasts of nightmares.

Now that's a museum!

 Now that's a museum!

While Sylvan was attempting to go the Botanical Garden in Munich, I scoured the city for alternatives.  This picture shows a REAL museum, BMWWerks.  Not that great, actually, but an acceptable way to spend an extra afternoon and much better than looking at plants covered with snow.  Lots of old motorcycles and famous cars -- think James Bond and "Mission Impossible."  Architecture of the buildings was the best part.