Thus, it just seemed like a waste to not even go skiing, and I mean real downhill skiing - Alpine Skiing, as the locals call it - while living right at the edge of the Austrian Alps. Although I do enjoy my solo travels, I figured this would be a fun trip to make with at least one other friend. Minor caveat, however: I wanted them to already be at least intermediate skiers, if not advanced. I certainly wouldn't mind teaching people, but this was the Alps, and my first time out; I wanted to ski something distinctly European, not toy around on the bunny slopes. I prodded around a bit and found two worthy candidates - a classmate here in Vienna, Erica, and a friend from high school, Abby. The latter I hadn't seen in years, but I had happened to catch wind of the fact that she is living in Berlin, and for some reason remembered her as being a skier, even though we had never gone.
So, long story short, I did some research, did some booking, coordinated some schedules, and we were off. We decided that Salzburg would be a good spot to rendezvous and that I might as well drive as it's only three hours from Vienna and it would open up our schedule and travel potential a lot to be on our own schedule and take whatever roads called to us.
Friday, 24th February, 2012 - After a quick spot of work in the morning, I picked up Erica at about 8:30 and we were on our way. Relatively uneventful, relatively snow-free drive until we hit the mountains outside of Salzburg. We got there around noon, then it took me a second to orient myself from where we entered the suburbs of Salzburg to determine what direction the 'old city' was. Seeing as Abby had never been to Salzburg before and I had only been for a few days the summer before, I decided in front of the Salzburg Cathedral would be about as central and easy to find place as we could get. However, parking was a minor problem. The signs weren't really as clear as they are in Vienna, so I drove around for a bit before a friendly man pulled up beside me and pointed me to a parking area. I think he knew I was lost because I had a Vienna license plate. I've come to find that Austrians are very observant of what region you come from.
We met up with Abby without a hitch and decided that the first thing to do was get lunch. Of course, I insisted that we couldn't be in Salzburg without trying Salzburger Nockerl at some point, and when we passed a restaurant on Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse called S'Nockerl we figured it was a sign. A hugely touristy sign, but hey, we were tourists, right? The restaurant was down in a cellar but painted a surprising light blue and decorated with birds and angel wings that made you think of a lovely spring day. The cuisine was "Salzburg and Mediterranean Specialties" (whatever that means), but it was really good, if a little pricy. I had a zucchini soup followed by some really tasty ravioli, then the three of us split The Dessert.
I had never seen one with raspberry sauce rather than vanilla sauce, but that variation was surprisingly good. We also found out a few interesting tidbits from the waitress, such as that there's an unending debate among the Salzburgers about which mountains this dessert is actually supposed to represent since there are four prominent mountains around the city, not three. Also, during the 'high season', they serve one hundred and sixty of these desserts a day! One hundred and sixty! Wow.
Afterwards I figured I would go ahead and get us checked in to our hotel and let Abby and Erica explore Salzburg since they had never been there before. We were only staying half an hour away so I didn't mind at all. I left them to do more touristy things while I drove to Berchtesgaden, Germany.
Now you may be wondering: why Germany? Every school in Austria gets a week off for skiing (this is not the same as their Spring Break), with the weeks staggered more or less by region so that not every family in Austria is trying to get out on the slopes during one week. This means that rooms are invariably difficult to find throughout the entire month of February, though, because about 70% of all families ski. (It used to be that 100% of the population of Austria knew how to ski about twenty years ago, but recently there have been parents that don't take their kids or send them on school trips because it's too expensive. Shame.) Getting back to how that relates to us: everything near 'good' skiing that wasn't in western Austria was booked solid. So we ended up just fifteen minutes over the boarder in Germany.
This is what I missed out on while I was gone:
Actually Abby took this one before Erica and I got to Salzburg
We stopped briefly in my favorite cemetery, St. Peter's, on the way up to Salzburg Castle to try and catch the sun setting over the mountains. Although we had to hop a fence to the courtyard of a closed cafe to get the best view, I would say we were successful (in our defense we weren't the only ones doing it).
We were still more on the side of 'Full' after our late and large lunch, so we decided to get some coffee since everything in Salzburg was closed by this point (I'm not even sure it was 6:00 yet). We saw a Manner café across the courtyard from the cathedral, so we popped in there. Now, mind you, Manner is a very Viennese brand of those little chocolate filled wafers your probably used to eat at your Grandmother's, so not only finding a Manner store in Salzburg, but an actual café, which they do not have in Vienna, made us decide it was something worth checking out. I caught them up on what I had learned at the hotel ('very large bed and breakfast' might be more fitting) and we looked over some maps and wrote a few postcards and enjoyed some very delicious drinks. I will strongly argue that my hot chocolate was the hands down winner.
Eventually we headed out, deciding to have dinner at the Augustiner Bräu, locally known as Mülln. To be fair, this place is not so well known for its food as it is for its beer. And it's not just 'any old place'. This is actually a brewery founded by Augustinian monks in 1621. It has at least four giant dining halls where you share tables and make friends and you get your food and beer from little stalls along a hallway connecting all of the dining halls. We made friends with a group of three Germans and chatted with them for a few hours over some simple but delicious food and a few beers which they were kind enough to supply us with (although I was not partaking since someone had to drive). We mostly (attempted to) speak in German, though Abby and I caught them making fun of our accents at one point, but it was all in good fun.
The quotation painted on the wall translates to: A good drink makes the old young.
Eventually we headed out to try and get a good night's sleep before our full day of skiing the next day as Erica and I were pretty exhausted from the early start that morning and Abby had had to take an overnight train. We made it back to Berchtesgaden without a hitch and got settled into our cozy room and crashed... well, maybe not immediately, but there was crashing eventually.
P.S. For day II of the trip, go to my German page.
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