The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Beer Halls

Salzburg was enlightening. The tourist books warned of more tourists than Venice which sent shudders up and down my spine. After a somewhat fraught arrival and a 4 hour traffic jam we eventually arrive at Weisse Taube, a lovely little hotel just off Mozart Sq. It was brisk when we set off out to eat and after a walk around the old town we settled on a restaurant called K+K where out restaurant of the evening had only 6 tables in it. The waiter was lovely, very very attentive, funny, croatian and knowledgable. We asked him to choose a wine to go with out meal. The Bald man ordered potato soup while I had the very traditional garlic cream soup. Both were equally delicious. The garlic soup, I thought would become over powering but it was like meeting an old friend, someone you know intimately and yet until you have that first hug, you can’t remember what they smell like. The lovely waiter produced a local Riesling which was full of flavour, yet light enough to compliment the soups and cut the cream a little. I went straight for the Salzburg schnitzel which was full of ham and mushrooms and cooked perfectly. It was accompanied by plain old boiled tatties, which some may consider dull, but in fact it was nice to be able to taste the spud without it being flavoured with other ingredients. The Bald man’s steak was up to standard apparently and again disappeared rapidly. 

Our decision had been to have an early night and not drink too much so we could have a full day the next. So when we rolled into our hotel room at 3am the following morning, having been discovered by an Irish bar and danced around the fountain in the rain with my phone stuck down my front to give us musical accompaniment, the only thing we could think about was bed. 

Unsurprisingly, the following day was a lazy one. We rose late and tottered off downstairs for our first Austrian breakfast. A lovely lady in traditional dress sat us a table and began to roll off a list of potential breakfast options after delivering fresh bread and a plate of jams and triangles of cheese. “would we like ham and cheese?” “ Yes please” “would you like yoghurt and muesli” “yes please” “would we like soft boiled eggs?” “ Yes please” Would we like tea or coffee?” “ yes please” “Which?” “ Oh sorry, both.” As we filled up, I had a feeling I would enjoy Austrian breakfasts. 

Part of our accommodation deal was a Salzburg card which gave us either free entry or very reduced entry to a number of different attractions. There is so much to utilize on it, I don’t think we scraped the surface. We did, go on a horse and carriage trip, take the river boat up and down the river and sat in it while it “danced” for us - that is spun in a circle to a Mozart Waltz, cliche but quite lovely. We went up to the top of the castle and looked down on the rest of the city - quite spectacular. Our lunch on the saturday was quite simply hotdogs. We wondered around the market which is glorious and shared various different hotdogs from 3 or 4 stands. In any other country I would despise hotdogs but these were glorious, meaty with the perfect combination of mustard and ketchup to enhance the flavours not over power them. The Salzburg market is on most days and had a great Foodie mix of treats. The butchers stall were amazing, full of delicacies I spent the rest of the afternoon reading up on. Giant meatballs and meatloaves took prize place in the middle of the display and the different cured meats, schpek and bacon were deep red and so appealing. The cheese counters had tasters of masses of different cheese on offer, lots of goudas and goats cheese, just yummy. Towards the back was a stall with herbs and spices in test tubes. One of the them has some gold nuggets in which when I enquired the stall proprietor asked me to hold my hand out as she shook some into my palm. “Taste them” she said, so I did. And there it was in front of me, George Clooney in a test tube!

Chocolate covered popping candy decorated with edible gold leaf! GEORGE CLOONEY IN A TEST TUBE! The chocolate melts away and the popping candy starts going wild in your mouth, making your tongue tingle and a very silly grin appear on your face. The stall proprietor smiled as I burst out laughing “ Good Yah?” “Bloody Good Yah” So I bought 3 George’s in the aid of research, and popped my way around Salzburg for the afternoon. 

Our dinner that evening was somewhere recommended by the barmaid from the Irish bar and right next door to the hotel, so not far to crawl home. Barry had my garlic soup to start which was slightly more pungent than across the square the night before, but still delicious. I had a beef consume with a large cheese dumpling in the middle - simple but yummy. More dumplings turned up with my goulash following the soup and by the end of it I certainly looked more like a dumpling than when we walked in. 

Sunday was Barry’s birthday and after a slap up breakfast and lazy morning in a horse drawn carriage we headed out to the Salt mine to be thrown down a wooden slide 300m underground in the name of Salt. Arriving a bit early we headed in to the closest town to kill some time and both wished it was the depths of winter so the coffee and hot chocolate we were drinking would be more appreciated. The mountain was so beautiful, bright blue cloudless sky, rich green trees and fields. Again I could have stayed for ever, it was somewhere I was very at peace with.  But instead of spending the rest of my life in an Alpine paradise, we went back to the salt mine, donned some overalls and headed on a little train into the depths of an Austrian mountainside. The little train takes you in, in, in and down the mountain until you get to  a big cavern with a very long wooden slide taking deeper down into the mountain. We sat on the slide, felt like we were dropping off the edge of a precipice and I screamed like a right Nancy until we got to the end of it! 

The Salt mines are pretty special, the lake cavern in the middle is magical. To show it off they light it up and play Mozart very loudly, just perfect. 

Our mission for the afternoon was to get to the beer halls of Salzburg. The Augustiner Monastery has a fabulous story behind it of the monks making beer that they then on sold. The beer hall is massive with a food court in the rooms around it. Outside the garden can take over 2000 and as we took our litres of beer and sat in the sun, I beelined towards some delicious looking ribs that were just the yummiest things. The shack selling them had  two options, neither of which were very vegetarian friendly - rack of ribs or 1/4 chicken.... OH YEAH!  Why oh why can we not have something similar in NZ? What was impressive was no one was plastered or racous drunk, it was great. We bar crawled our way back to the hotel stopping in various different bars along the way.  A fabulous evening.

Monday was a boat cruise up the river and a trip up the hill to the castle. It is another world up there, isolated, quite and rather special. We came back down via the cemetery where the Sound of Music was filmed. By chance at the end of the cemetery was a restaurant I had read a lot about, St Peter Stiftskeller. We decided to have lunch after falling in love with surroundings. Our lunch was in an open air courtyard though our seats were covered. It is delicately decorated with perfect flowers and amazing crockery and glass wear. We were adventurous in our meals The Bald Man having a dish of Lung which I was amazed he picked, but when I tasted it it was beautiful. The restaurant is very definitely worth a visit, I would go back in an instant. We finished off our last day in Salzburg with a recital of Mozart at the town hall, just lovely. 

As we packed our bags and left the next morning for Strasbourg, I was sorry to be leaving Salzburg and the memory of dancing in rain will stick with me forever. On the way out we stopped at the Hellbrunn palace to visit the Trick fountains and the gazebo that was featured in The Sound of Music. Perfect really, just perfect!

The People Meet the Movie Set

As I sit in Strasbourg writing about Venice the whole experience seems a very long time ago, when in fact it was only 7 days. Under the bitter disappointment of not finding George Clooney we left Lake Como, one of us somewhat subdued. Our drive south was rather quiet for the initial 20 mins as we pondered what could have been. The Bald man soon snapped out of it, I think he realized he was stuck with me whether he liked it or not.

The drive to Venice was reasonably easy, the amount of trucks on the road however wasn’t and queue after queue of trucks sat beside us as we made our way west. My directions were simple, follow signs for Venice and once we hit the water, it should be in front of us. And a couple of loops around varying industrial areas there it was, one huge Historians play ground. No matter how underwhelmed I was trying to be, it really is spectacular.  We parked the car in super huge garage, told the man behind the glass where we were going and a bloke in a babygrow with “Porter” on the back took our bulging suitcases, flung them on a sack barrow and took us to a waiting Daygo Whop in a very flash private taxi. The private taxi took us gently around the lesser canals, opened up on the Grand and within 15 mins we were at the prettiest hotel on the street and it felt like we were on a movie set.


80 Euro later he was after a tip, but was ignored. We checked in, was given some directions to restaurants, shown the sites on a museum map and the nicest concierge in Italy took us to our room. 20 mins later we got rid of him after he had expressly showed us how to use every gadget and device. Tired and somewhat thirsty we crossed a bridge and sat at the first bar we got to where our two beers were served in glass boots, don’t ask, they just were.

Our plans were simple, walk dinner walk and sleep.  So we walked to find some food and ended up on the waterfront (proper not canal) of the lagoon looking out over one of the other islands in a restaurant called La Piscina (or something similar) So imagine the setting, waterfront, caramel and terracotta coloured buildings all around, great domes over the top and boats everywhere. Stunning right? So in the restaurant we were herded in to a couple of seats and deposited with two menus. At that point we realized the staff were all in fact security guards and we were VIPS being treated to something amazing……….. or not! This was the start of the tourist debauchery that I was going to end up loathing about Venice.

The menus were read and discussed, some exceptionally dry bread was dumped on the table and 10 mins later  our wine appeared beside me courtesy of Grumpeo, our waiter for the evening. Grumpeo got up my goat pretty damn quickly when I was trying to put Olive Oil on my concrete bread.

“non, non, non, plate plate plate.” He snapped at me pointing at the table cloth

“well get me a plate plate plate then” I replied

Something Italian was spat at me, translations to be left to your imagination, but a while after a plate plate plate was thrust in front of us and the wired up waiter stalked off to get our starters. Mine was a mixed eraser salad which I mistook my school girl Italian in translation from Mixed Seafood Salad.  Some vinegar soaked sliced and curls of pencil eraser were delicately thrown over some gritty green salad with a similar vinegary sauce. The sauce unfortunately spilt a little of the plate plate plate….. shame. The Bald man can’t remember what he had so it can’t have been any good.  My main was rabbit parpadelle, of which I have had better in Auckland. The sauce from the pasta however splashed a little on the tablecloth too…. Shame. The Bald man had “meat on potato I think” memorable obviously.

We discovered why everyone was cabled up to the 9’s when our starters were cleared and the mains were called away into the waiters collar where a mic was placed. So there we were in an industrial restaurant of crap food and rude waiters. Welcome to Venice.

The following day after a good sleep we enjoyed a slap up Venetian breakfast of hard boiled eggs and ham and decided on a visit to the Murano glass factory on one of the other islands which was an easy and free trip on a taxi boat from our hotel. And free it was. The hard sell on some stunning glass however wasn’t free and as the salesman told us explicitly that we couldn’t afford the pieces we were interested in and showed to a seconds room I was beginning to lose my rag. As we missed the shuttle back to Venice we were politely (not) shown the door to the rest of the island as it was slammed behind us.

Murano is a beautiful island, with equally lovely canals and much better value food. We sat next to a canal for lunch and I enjoyed the best plate of spaghetti Vongole I have ever had. The Bald man went for Lasagna and a mouthful later, I agreed it was pretty fantastic. An English couple sat next to us and as we recommended what we had they ordered it and were equally as enthused. They were both journalists and he worked in Khabul. I felt a little humbled as I listened to their exploits.

After a lovely morning we felt fed and watered enough to brave San Marco, which we did. And then left. 40,000,000 tourists in one square with 1,000,000 Nigerians selling knock off Louis Vouis’. “Fuck you and thanks” was their phrase du jour if you paid no attention to them, bloody charming.

We ate next to our hotel that evening in a little restaurant which served simple food with simple flavours. Calamari that tasted of calamari and prawns that tasted of prawns, no accompaniment just that! We had booked the Venice Jazz club that evening which was absolutely brilliant. A bottle of Chianti, amazing jazz and beautiful surroundings, who could ask for a more perfect evening. A little wobbly we had a great nights sleep!

Day two what to do! Well we were bloody lazy and spent half the morning in our room catching up on the joys of email and work. By 11 it was time to head to the Rialto bridge and the markets in order to find some of the much raved about delights of the Cichetti bars. It took a while and then we found one on the corner of a couple of streets. Cichetti is a little like Tapas and Mezze, little bites to be eaten, enjoyed and move on. The first we found had about 25 different options from big crumbed meatballs to lots of different bruschetta type nibbles. We had a combination of Tuna, anchovy, ham and chicory with cheese along with one of the meatballs. Individually they were sublime, tasty mouthfuls that were light yet filling, washed down with a small glass of wine or beer. It was a sophisticated and simple experience and even though we were there less than 20 mins, people came and went quickly – satisfied and off.

The second one was a little more tucked away, but one of the oldest in the area. Big barrels of house wine sat on their sides waiting with bright copper lids. The food was behind glass or on top of the counters, morsels of taste bud explosion just waiting to be picked. My favourite vegetable, globe artichoke hearts were sliced and marinated in a little olive oil and vinegar, enough to taste but not to over power. Luckily the Bald man curled his lip up at them, all the more for me.

I was jealous as all hell of these places, little glasses of beer and wine, enough to wash the food down and some light meals…… could we reproduce in NZ? I don’t know.

Next on the tourist trip was the Bridge of Sighs……… covered in scaffolding and not viewable, waste of a trip and meant to a backwards and forwards through San (“would you like a fake handbag? No! thanks and fuck off”) Marco Sq. Back to the other side of the Grand Canal and a quiet beer. Dinner a bowl of crap Bolognese and a pizza, the service was good though!

We finished the two days off with an evening of Vivaldi in a beautiful concert hall. Behind us was a stunning American with 3 perfectly dressed boys, the youngest of which was heard to be saying “Mommy, I don’t like this we have to leave immediately, do you understand? I don’t like this already Mommy I want to leave right now, do you hear me, right now!” Poor Mommy! They left (thankfully) after the first movement.

As we drove away from Venice, I know I’ll be back some day and will just have to accept the fact that the Venetians are abysmally rude and as I was warned, the restaurants do not serve great food. In all I thoroughly enjoyed our stay though and the amazement on the Bald man’s face made the trip completely worth it.