(Mis)Adventures: December 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Tuesday, we visited a palace near some friends of our friend Aaron today before heading out to the Austrian countryside. We visited the home town of his friend, Hartberg, Austria and we had an amazing time. We visited a small market and bought fresh grape juice that we enjoyed. We were able to stop by his parents house and see an amazing mix of modern downstairs house mixed with the historical part of the house upstairs that was the same way it was a hundred years ago. It was awesome to see the juxtaposition of both the old and new. We wound our way through mountain roads and enjoyed some stunning views of Austrian mountains near the border of Hungary. After the sunset, we partook in some traditional Austrian countryside tradition. We visited a community farm that had opened its doors to everyone and shared the food that it had produced itself over the recent weeks and months. The tradition or event is known as a "buscehnshanken" and it is quite common in the Austrian countryside. We ordered a large plate of fresh cut hams, spreads, liver, bacon fat, and other meats and cheeses that we ate on bread. We had some white wine mixed with apple juice and water. Apparently this drink is quite common at these events. The food was great and eating the organic and home grown foods are just so much better and tastier than most of the prepackaged foods found the supermarkets. Needless to say, we are very grateful to Aaron's friends for taking us out in the countryside and showing us a good time. On to the Czech Republic.

Vienna, Austria

We arrived in Vienna at what is normally an early time in the afternoon, 3:00 p.m., but here it is actually almost time for the sun to go down. We spent the evening wandering through the shopping district streets because on Sunday night in Vienna, nothing is open except for cafes and kebab shops. We ended up eating dinner at a nice little restaurant with some friends of our traveling partner Aaron. We tried some amazing banana soup with little shrimps in it and some Indian food. We went to bed early on Sunday night so that we could get up early on Monday and start seeing the city when the sun came up since we only had til 4 in the afternoon to get some picture taking and sight seeing in. We walked through the first district of the city starting at a church called Stephansplatz. The city is divided into many districts and the first district is where a lot of the great architecture is. The church there is really beautiful but it looks like every other church we've seen before. We found the opera house and some other really nice places before meeting some friends at the Hundertwasserhaus for a look around the semi surrealist house that is reminiscent of the houses of Gaudí in Barcelona. The patio and front of the house were really nice and inside was a lot of artwork and an exhibition of Annie Lebowitz, one of Iz's favorite photographers. After that, we went to a local market and sampled a lot of the local food and bought a few different dried fruits. The local markets like these are really wonderful and full of great, fresh food that tastes so much better than a lot of the stuff in the supermarkets. We spent the last 2 hours of light wandering through the rest of the first district in order to see some of the great architecture before the winter solstice and her short schedule darkened the sky around 4 in the afternoon. We ended the day by going to see the famous artwork of Gustav Klimpt and his work The Kiss that is housed at the Belvedere Museum here. Overall, the day was great but very tiring due to all the walking.

Salzburg, Austria

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and headed around to the Hauptbahnhof or Central Train Station in Munich. Our 930 train headed to Budapest dropped us off in Salzburg, Austria just across the German border and nestled into the side of the Alps. One of the most famous composters, Mozart, is from Salzburg and his childhood home is available to visit for a few euros. The other claim to fame for this Austrian city is that it's countryside hosted the filming of the movie The Sound of Music. At our hostel, they showed the film everyday at 10:30 a.m. and an expensive tour was available to take you around to the places in the movie.

We chose to visit the city center where a Christmas market was winding down. We found some great street food vendors and some really good deals on Christmas decorations. Now we just have to get them home in one piece. After visiting the market and the church, we headed up to the hills where the Festung Hohensalzburg(City Fortress of Salzburg) is located.

It was built in 1077 and provides some absolutely amazing views of the valley Salzburg is in in addition to the Alps. We even saw a plane take off from the airport and the ascent takes it right over the mountains, which seems like it would be an amazing beginning to a flight. We wandered through the various castles, parks, and other places on the hill overlooking the city. The sun set around 4 p.m. so we made our way the Mülln Beer Hall, where we sampled the local beer. The interesting thing about the beer hall was that you had to pick your own stein off the wall, wash it out, then take it to a guy standing by a wooden barrel so he could fill your mug. Then you had to choose between the smoking and non smoking places to go sit and enjoy your food and beer.

We have really enjoyed our one night in Salzburg and are heading on to Vienna tomorrow to spend the next few days.

Dachau, Germany

On Christmas, we slept in since most of the city was shut down due to the holiday. We decided to head out to the small town of Dachau, Germany, where there is a national monument. The monument is the highly depressing site of the Dachau Concentration Camp, the first concentration camp opened under the Nazi regime. The weather was quite chilly and damp, with some rain and this just added to the depressing feeling of the place. Most of the buildings are gone but there are two that have recreations of what the places looked like inside and to say the least, it is hard to imagine what the people there had to go through on a daily basis. There are tons of plaques with information on there and one noted that when the Americans liberated the camp in April of 1945, that the camp that was built for 6,000 had over 32,000 prisoners there. Our trip to the concentration camp took up most of our day and after some friendly advice from the guy at the front desk of our hostel, we returned to the beer hall from the first night to have dinner.