The Halftime Report

We arrived in Salzburg with no real plan for how we might spend our days. The town itself is lovely with lots of great views of the river, churches, and pretty old streets. The castle on top of the hill overlooks it all and makes for a great walk too.

After exploring the town on foot, we decided to venture a little further away by car. We soon found ourselves across the border in Germany at the Salzburgwerk saltmine. On this trip we haven’t done too many guided tours, but this one looked interesting and turned out to be fun. Besides learning about where the salt comes from (they drill holes deep in the mine, fill them with water until it dissolves the salt into a brine, and then pump it out and evaporate it leaving the salt), we also got to ride the “miner’s slide” down into the depths and in an open train car into a narrow shaft.

After Salzburg we planned to start heading west. We decided to see the 4^th smallest country in Europe, Liechtenstein, and ended up staying one night there. Along the way though, Eric found out that we’d pass near a place called Kufstein, which happens to be where one of my favorite little luxuries is made. Kufstein is the home of Riedel glasses. If you’ve never heard of them, they are wine glasses that are specially designed in different shapes for each type of wine. Their theory is that each shape delivers the wine to your nose and mouth in a different way to enhance the taste and present it in the best possible way for that specific wine. Whether it’s true or not, I’m hooked on the shape of these glasses and the way they look and feel. They are an indulgence that I have missed on the road… drinking wine out of jelly glasses in Greece made me long for them. So of course, we had to make a detour to Kufstein, and it was well worth it. The factory tour offers a fascinating view of how each glass and decanter is made by hand. It’s wonderful to see the craftsmen at work with the blobs of molten glass until finally the perfect shape emerges. It was also lucky for our bank account that we can’t fit anything else in our luggage - the shop at the factory is very tempting.

Here are some future Riedels being born:

After a couple of days in Zagreb, we crossed back into the Schengen visa region and headed to Vienna. The weather in both cities seemed to fluctuate between pouring rain and humid sunshine every few hours, so we learned to be prepared for anything. We learned a few other lessons in Vienna as well. Visits to the Schatzkammer (Treasury) at the Hofburg and the Schonnbrunn palace taught us quite a lot about Austrian history and the Hapsburgs that we didn’t know before.  Next we had a music appreciation class at a concert with music by Mozart, Hadyn, and Strauss in a beautiful old theater. 

We also got a free language tutorial courtesy of the Vienna Parking Department. I felt pretty good about how many German words and phrases I remembered.  I was even able to ask someone on the street about where to buy a parking permit, and then ask for one at the shop. Feeling triumphant, parkschein in hand, we pulled into an empty space. However, we returned to a big fat ticket on the windshield only to discover that the reason for it (and the reason the spot was open in the first place) is that it was a clearly marked “Ladetaetigkeit” which is roughly a loading zone and illegal to park in. That’s a word that was not in any German textbook I ever had.

Our final lesson in Vienna was that it is not a good idea to mess with Austrian cops. We were casually strolling down a street when out of nowhere three undercover police surrounded a guy sitting in a parked car right in front of us. They were shouting and waving automatic weapons before they pulled him out and onto the ground. The whole operation took less than a minute, but seemed to happen in slow motion. Needless to say, as soon as we saw the guns we backed up behind a store front until the action cooled off. We never found out what he was arrested for, but I don’t think it was a parking offense.

Parting thoughts:  It was good to be the Emperor.  Here’s the summer palace at Schonnbrunn: