How Stuff is Made
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 4th 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:
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