saint gilgen

From Salzburg we take a day trip to the lakes district in the hills that rise around the city. This involves getting on a bus and hoping we’ll get off somewhere interesting. The gamble pays off; we end up in Saint Gilgen, a lakeside town with the familiar surplus of horse-drawn carts, swans, and ice-cream. Europeans eat ice-cream near lakes like they’re at the beach. It’s cheap and plentiful, and the sellers are generous. The concept grows on me with my daily scoop.

There’s a three kilometre sky lift that stretches up the mountain behind the town. Little red and yellow boxes work up and down the hillside like suspended Lego bricks. They’re barely big enough for four people, and they swing in a gust of wind, so we buy our tickets because that seems like a good idea. It’s midday, and the girl at the counter suggests a return trip, as we may not have time to hike down; rain is expected around three.

Half way up the mountain our little yellow box is absorbed into cloud. The cables run away from us in opposite directions and fade into the close grey mist. Every now and then an empty box passes, appearing and disappearing in a few seconds. The air cools as we climb.

The top of the mountain is clear and cold. I change to jeans and still my nose starts to run. As we work our way around the peak to the other side, swathes of hikers pass in the opposite direction. They’re fleeing the grey mass of cloud that puts the mist below the peak to shame. This is probably sensible of them. Of course we continue on our path. We are hit by the full fresh wind as we round the peak. On a clear day the blue lakes and matchbox towns would be peaceful postcards; on a grey day the scene seems tense like it's charged with static. I wrap my scarf around my head to save my ears from the wind.

Standing on the mountain and watching clouds roll around me, I can’t decide whether the feeling of power or of powerlessness is stronger. The height, the sweeping scope of the land below, the feeling of being within the clouds: these make me feel like a god. Or at least like some kind of powerful immortal or angel, or a really wrinkled and wise weather wizard, or something mighty (like I can shoot lightening from my eyeballs, you know). At the same time, the sheer force of nature up here, the power of the wind, the strength of the old pines: these make me feel so pathetically human.

It’s some feeling.

We climb higher, into the wind. The tinkling of cow bells against the shivering trees is an eerie soundtrack to our ascent. Small wooden signs point to places we can’t pronounce. We don’t meet anyone on this side. When the wind picks up and the clouds darken further we make our lonely way back.

We eat our traveller’s picnic – bread rolls and Nutella spread swiped from the hostel breakfast – on a bench on the protected side, and watch the storm come in.

The storm sirens sound just before three and we make the journey back to the lake beneath the clouds. Ice-cream is in order.

 

 

salzburg

When I was young, my family would day trip to the coast to visit my grand parents. My mum and I discovered that the trip was about the same length as the entire score of The Sound of Music, cover to cover. I've always had a soft spot for the movie. I do enjoy films with intervals.

I came to Salzburg with every intention to re-enact the entire script, which I didn’t do, and to sing some songs – inevitably badly -- in tree-lined alleys and atop mountains spotted with lakes, which I did. This was a matter of necessity for me.

 

Cycling around the city on tour with a Sound of Music enthusiast proved satisfyingly dorky. I got through the disappointment that the guide wasn't wearing an exact replica of one of Maria's outfits from the movie or being trailed by seven sweet Austrian children. Just. It was called Frauline Maria's Bicycle Tours. You understand my disappointment. Aside from the low-down on the filming of the movie, we got a bit on the history of the city. The oldest restaurant in Europe (we’re talking 7^th century here) is tucked away in the corner of a cobbled square, and there’s a bakery still run by monks in an old watermill beside the cemetery. There’s a fairy tale castle on the hill. We managed to climb to the top of this hill twice in one day without actually making it inside the castle. Don’t ask me why because I’m still not even sure.

The white turreted castle and the blue river all criss-crossed with walking bridges and the narrow cobbled streets of the old town make the place quite magical. Salzburg’s buskers are some of the most talented I’ve heard, and their music rises above the stone and pretzel stands (giant pretzels covered with chocolate and nuts that look and smell so delicious it’s painful). They do things here like hold organ concerts in the baroque cathedral. That should say it all.

This is a city leaning heavily on the past. Horse and cart rides, Julie Andrews and Mozart are the drawcards it plays. Oh, and pretzels shaped like treble clefs and cute signs on the public toilets. That said, I’m not sure what else it’d go with; from what I saw of the club strip on a Wednesday night they aren’t getting close to selling themselves as a social hub. It had that disco lights on an empty dance floor and thudding music with no bodies to absorb it and that why-even-bother-paying-your-bar-staff kind of feeling, you know it. In many tourist towns every night is the weekend. I can't judge for sure, but I don't know whether the weekend would change much for Salzburg except the number of shops open in the old town and the quantity of photos being taken in the cathedral. This place is a city that feels like a small town. Luckily, it has enough of Julie Andrews and Mozart to hold its own.

luxembourg

Everything I ever heard about Luxembourg is true.

Considering I’ve never really heard anything about Luxembourg except that they have an exceptional GDP per capita, that wasn’t bound to be hard.

Here's a conveniently numbered list of the things I now know:

1.       The big hostel is at the bottom of the valley.

2.       Everything other than the big hostel is at the top of the valley.

3.       The number 21 bus doesn’t go to the hostel. It stops a few kilometres away, at a place called the Cultural Centre that appears to be neither cultural nor central.

4.       12kg packs feel heavier after a few kilometres.

5.       When asking for directions in Luxembourg, ‘straight on, straight on, straight on,’ accompanied by wild sushi-chef chopping gestures is not a good sign. This means you have a long way to go.

6.      It is very possible to spend a day wandering through the old city and the lush green valleys. It is possible to spend two days doing this. Two days is probably enough.

7.      The casemates under the city walls were once the longest in the world, have been used by many occupying countries, house the treasures of the modern national bank, and have a tendency to drip on one’s head. They also foster the ideal conditions for growing mushrooms year-round, which I think is just excellent.

8.      The Museum of the History of Luxembourg City is one of the most flawless examples I’ve seen of an old building that has been modernised yet still retains its character and history.

9.      Luxembourgers retain the European obsession with bread and all its wheat-based cousins. Perhaps it’s even stronger here than elsewhere. 

10.   Strongbow tastes exceptional when it’s the first cider you’ve found in Western Europe. It tastes especially exceptional after a few kilometres walk with packs and accompanied by a really fat gluten-free potato and salmon omelette (that didn’t even come with bread, my gosh). Salsa Tapas Bar is in the old town, and is generous with their serving sizes. I respect that.

11.   It’s impossible to feel guilty about eating a huge dessert instead of dinner when you’ve climbed 1000 steps in one day and it’s the only gluten-free option on the menu.

12.   Underground rooms full of dead people are really great. Churches with stained glass do this especially well. The Cathedral is beside the Golden Lady war memorial - both worth a visit.

13.   If anyone is in Luxembourg in the near future they can find my copy of Coetzee's Disgrace wedged between the back bunk and the wall in room 1D. Don’t tell me what happens in the end because I didn’t finish it. Happy reading.

brussels

I woke on my first morning in Belgium without a thrill.

Here's how it went the night before:

We've treated ourselves to a private room in a hotel that is a remarkable replica of the worst hotel ever from <insert holiday-themed chick flick of choice>, complete with rude and portly French-speaking attendant, stairs that sag in the middle, flickering lights, and a comically small bathroom that forces its occupant to sit sideways on the toilet to avoid bruised kneecaps. We have a stunning view of the back end of two other hotels. The walk to the place provides a surplus of jeering men and shop attendants who smoke while they sell dusty oranges and bottles of rum.

I spend the evening reminding myself about the phenomenon of 'culture shock' -- that it is a thing and, yes, I am human, therefore fallible, therefore susceptible to it and, no, that doesn't mean I'm going soft, probably, hopefully -- and trying to digest the over-priced and underwhelming salad that might be the only breadless option within a kilometre of Midi Station.

Oh, Europe. You and your bread.

So there I am, underfed and admittedly nostalgic for safe Australian streets lined with restaurant menus featuring little 'gf's on every item. I'm no hero.

Ella and I have a quick sook then decide to find our way to Grand Place -- the centre -- in the morning and hope we'll leave the creeps at the hotel. 

We step outside the next day and are absorbed into a vibrant produce market that apparently sprang forth overnight from the pavement. After the sleepy dark of the hotel room, the fruits and shining olives in stainless steel bowls seem oversaturated like morning cartoons. Nuts cover meters of trestle tables: salted, unsalted, crushed, ground, slivered, mixed, roasted. High cooled trailers peddle cheeses and meats in the shaded underside of the rail bridge. I begin to warm to the city when I realise I can subsist for days on avocados and nectarines.

It's warm olives for lunch that day, in a patch of shade in the centre of town beside a busking brass band that we happen across during one of our frequent 'not lost' wanderings. We share the olives with three gypsy girls, because they ask. I don't know if they ask nicely, but my appalling French can't be helped.

We're looking for the royal palace, but what we find is a gothic cathedral just hanging out in the business district. Naturally, we manage to enter through the (disused) side door. I push open the heavy wood and I’m met by a cavernous and apparently empty cathedral wing lit by candles and stained glass. The first tremendous chords of a traditional Latin hymn echo off the vaulted ceilings. A mournfully catholic group of stone figures stands before us. I think, briefly, that my time has come; I'm about to be told that because I laugh when attractive people get bad haircuts I'm being cast into the fiery pits. Then there's the familiar swivel-click of cameras from behind a barricade. It's choir practice day, and the cathedral has the usual surplus of tourists. I walk amidst mortals another day.

We find the royal palace, eventually (absolutely not lost), and wander around the cordoned visitors sections in awe of the grandeur and extravagance, just like you’re supposed to.

Some of the best places in Brussels are stumbled upon. The Sunday market and the pop-up fairground down the street, the cathedral, the buskers, the spontaneous day trip to Ghent: all gloriously unplanned (seeing a theme here?). The city centre delivers an abundance of tasty hide-always.

The Musee du Cacao et du Chocolat has an inoffensive façade in an alley behind the Grand Place square, and offers a glimpse of the production and history of the famous Belgian chocolate tradition. My French isn't good, but that name needs little interpretation. Don't look surprised. You really thought I’d come to Belgium and NOT come across the chocolate museum?

  

 

In a side alley off a street lined with restaurants, behind a metal dumpster, the entrance to Toone is advertised in rusted letters that fade into the brick behind them. This is an old puppet theatre and bar, which has been in the building since the 1830s. Inside is dark and cool. The poor bar boy looks at me very strangely when I ask for cider, and kindly hides his smirk when I ask for beer made from apples. He offers me a peach flavoured Belgian barley brew, and doesn't even look offended when I turn him down. Upon discovering the place is not overrun with hipsters (and in fact suffers a lack of them, bless!) I’m grateful for a slow afternoon drinking wine by the puppet stage and harassing the staff for information about how darn old everything is.

 

We eat moule et frite, the national dish, in a place near Toone. I'd say it does everything a huge bowl of mussels and fries can do. The waiters make only the most appropriate Australia jokes.

So I guess Brussels proved itself despite dubious beginnings. The place is overrun with mussels, chocolate, bread, and beer (not a bad way to be I suppose). Bread and beer not being my thing, and mussels mostly exceeding my daily budget, I was forced to eat Belgian chocolate and wander around stumbling over little gems of history and culture. Such a shame.