Austria

Salzburg and Vienna (Wein)

After a brief stint in Adar, the most typical Eastern Europe city I could have ever dreamed of, and many, many trains, we arrived mid-day and went straight to the family run Nord-Sam campground. The change between Eastern Europe and Austria was tremendous, both aesthetically and operationally. We decided to go for a run after setting up our tent. We found a nearby bike bath that led to a park. It has become one of our habits to check out the cool stuff at the children’s playgrounds if there are no children nearby to fight off, so we headed into the park and found this zip-line type swing that was awesome to play around on! We kept running all the way to the Salzach River and almost the city center. The run was beautiful and helped us get acquainted with the city. We passed by many ducks on the way back and played on the zip-line one more time. Later in the afternoon, we took public transportation in to the city center and walked through the main parts of town from the train station. First stop was the Shloss Maribell gardens (scenes from in were in the Sound of Music, in addition to many other places in Salzburg). The sun was at a perfect angle and all of the flowers and sculptures look amazing! The groundskeepers at these gardens were definitely busy and all the elaborate designs of flowers were very well manicured. Next stop was over the Salzach River to “old Salzburg”, where the biggest fortress/castle “Festung Hohensalzburg” in Europe sits on top of a hill. We wandered around this side of town and started to get hungry, so we took a long walk back over to the “new Salzburg” and were rewarded with very good Indian food and lots of Naan bread! On our way back, we noticed that it was very cold outside and put on all of our warm gear that we had with us. This included me wearing gloves and my warm wool hat. However, the temperature did not stop us from getting a cone of gelato for one euro! At first the lady who served us thought I was kidding when I reached out for my ice cream cone with my glove on! We made it back to the tent just before a very hard rain began.

The next day, we rented bikes and spent the entire day exploring more of the city and the surroundings. First we headed out for about a 40 minute ride to the Hellbrun Castle. This is the famous castle with the trick fountains that spray water from weird places sporadically and get people wet. Apparently, the place was built not as a residence, but just as a fun house for the archbishop at the time to get a laugh from. Pretty big place to just get a laugh out of! We biked all around the grounds and the gardens and the size of the place was just very impressive. All over Salzburg, there were huge tracts and parks of public land, although all of the land in this area actually was part of the castle grounds. There was even a zoo there. Next stop, we biked over the famous lake called Leopold where many scenes from the Sound of Music were filled. As soon as we arrived at the lake, a bunch of ducks swam quickly over to us. I guess they were used to people feeding them, but we did not have anything for them. JJ pretended to throw bread and they seemed pretty happy about that until some little kids showed up with some real bread. We followed a path around the lake and over to a very large estate. This estate was also in the Sound of Music and had an interesting history. It was restored by a Jewish man, who fixed up the house and made it a very nice place for people to visit, until right before World War II it was taken from him by the Austrian Government because of his faith. We kept biking back to the city center and around the Residence Platz, the fortress, the famous St. Peter’s cemetery and cathedral, and Motzart Square. Motzart was born in Salzburg and the city is very proud of this fact. There was a huge statue with many bean bags around so that you would be able to sit around, drink some wine, and admire the great Motzart. We had some time before dinner and we were not really hungry yet, so we decided to explore more bike paths. We took one bike path along the Salzach River and rode for a half an hour out of Salzburg with no sign of the train ending! The bike paths in many of the European cities we have visited have been incredible and we were really happy we got to enjoy this one. Also, we were very pleased to have our rain jackets and waterproof pants since it had been raining on and off all day. For dinner, I was really excited because we found a Vietnamese Pho restaurant, and I wanted hot soup! Although, after we ordered I realized that I actually hadn’t ordered soup, but some sort of cold rice noodle dish with veggies. I was bummed for all of about five minutes, because what I ordered was actually really good! The fresh ginger tea to finish off the meal was a nice touch. After we cycled back to the campground and put away the bikes, a torrential downpour began.

Vienna (Wein)

We woke up the next morning and operation try to stay dry, pack up the wet tent, do some laundry, eat some food, and get on the train to Vienna. We made it successfully onto to the train and arrived in a windy, torrential downpour. We somehow able to navigate to the Strawberry Hostel and unpacked our very wet tent, but very dry laundry. We then set up our entire camping situation in the room in order to let everything air out. You just have to laugh at the thought of that. Did the weather stop us from exploring the city? Of course not! So off we went down a main street into the heart of Vienna with our “space people” rain suits, wool caps, and smiles on. Through the rain, 45-50 degree weather and high winds, we prevailed, stopping often to eat ridiculous food that we would have never otherwise had except for the conditions. For example, after passing many impressive government buildings and statues, we wondered past a huge open-air cinema festival in the Residenceplatz. There were food stalls everywhere (and no people) and JJ went straight for the crepe stand. Warm, delicious, and filled with nutella is all I can say. Even though the weather was terrible and we had a very short stay in Vienna, all of the buildings were majestic and the city was immaculate (from what we could see). The main cathedral was amazing, even in the rain! I hope that one day we will be able to visit Vienna again in nice weather. One of my favorite spots in the city was a huge archeological site in the middle of one of the main roundabout areas in the city! We walked and walked and then walked back, eating really good Asian stir fry for dinner. When we arrived back to the hostel, we noticed that the ridiculous arrangement we created worked out and everything was dry! Hallelujah!

This morning we flew to Athens and we are now waiting in the Athen’s airport to catch our connecting flight to Santorini! We will be in Greece for 6 days and then we will go to Israel. I am sure we will have some way of working off all the calories we consumed in Vienna trying to stay warm. Apparently the city of Fira, where we are staying in Santorini is on the top part of the ancient Caldera edge. I sense some intensive stair climbing about to occur. Here we go!