Austria & Surroundings. Part 1. Oct, 2019

It was a wonderful autumn vacation. Majestic Vienna, mighty mountains and emerald lakes of the Salzkammergut, Germany’s royal lake, charming Salzburg, fairytale-like Český Krumlov, the 2019 World’s Best Photographers Awards ceremony... And, of course, ancient castles, relaxing in thermal baths, salt caves, real skulls, and delicious food 

Since Europe is quite a long way from us, we don’t get to take trips there very often. But whenever we do make the journey, we try to see as much as possible. I usually spend a long time planning our trips, and fortunately, this time we managed to complete almost the entire itinerary.

We were lucky with the weather. In early October, autumn was only just beginning to make its presence felt in Austria. The trees had started to turn yellow, and daytime temperatures were around 20°C (68°F), although the mornings were quite chilly. It drizzled on only one of the ten days, and luckily, that was the day we were spending time indoors.

In the description of the trip, I’ll mention the hotels where we stayed, but I wouldn’t use them as a guide when planning your own trip. Prices are constantly changing, and with so many options available, it’s always possible to find a good deal for the dates of your particular trip. We usually stayed two nights in one place and then moved on to the next stop along our route.

Day 1. Getting to Know Vienna 

We arrived in Vienna and immediately took a taxi to our hotel to get some sleep. There is a six-hour time difference between Vienna and Toronto. We were lucky that, despite the early hour (10 a.m.), our room was already ready.

Hotel Caroline is conveniently located about a 10-minute walk from the subway station, and from there it’s only a 10-minute ride to central Vienna. There’s really no need for a car in Vienna, as parking is expensive and the subway system is very convenient.

We arrive right in the heart of Vienna and immediately see the Vienna State Opera

We continue walking and soon find ourselves at Albertinaplatz. This is one of the main tourist hubs of Vienna. The Albertina Museum houses works by famous masters such as Raphael, Rubens, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and many other great artists.

And here is the famous Café Sacher. See the crowd under the red roof? This is where you can try the legendary Sachertorte. Austrian pastry chef Franz Sacher created the cake especially for high-ranking guests.

There’s no time to wait in line today, so we’ll visit another equally famous and delicious place a little later.

Right next door is the equally well-known Café Mozart, which first opened back in 1794

We see granite blocks. They were brought here from the quarries of a concentration camp. Between them stands the figure of a Jewish man scrubbing the pavement with a brush. This monument commemorates the victims of Nazism and symbolizes the suffering of the people. It was erected here because, in 1945, hundreds of people were killed in a residential building on Albertinaplatz during a bombing raid.

We continue exploring the city center. There are souvenir shops everywhere. Mozart chocolates are probably the most popular souvenir to bring home from Austria

And now we are already in the square with the magnificent St. Stephen’s Cathedral 

The cathedral is incredibly beautiful and majestic. You can climb up to one of the viewing platforms for a wonderful panoramic view of Vienna. Around the cathedral, horse-drawn carriages wait in the square for their passengers.

Right next to the cathedral is Haas House, a large shopping complex. Its mirrored façade reflects the cathedral’s domes and Gothic towers

Such a  beautiful flowers! We continue on our way, strolling along Graben, Vienna’s pedestrian street, where we find the Plague Column. Similar columns can be found in many European squares and were erected as monuments of gratitude for the end of a plague or victory in war. We also wander into some of the charming little side streets

And here we are already at the Julius Meinl café and store. In addition to a wide variety of products, the store is famous for its signature coffee. We’ll keep seeing the logo with the little boy in the red cap on coffee cups all over Austria. Many tourists come here to buy beautifully packaged coffee as souvenirs 

It’s time to try Viennese coffee and the famous Sachertorte. And here we are at the Demel pastry shop. This pastry shop once went to court with Café Sacher over which version of the cake was the authentic one. The two cakes differ in the placement of the apricot jam: in one, it is layered in the middle of the cake, while in the other, it is spread on top, underneath the chocolate glaze.

At certain times, you can watch the pastry chefs at work through the glass. And, of course, here is the star of the show — a slice of Sachertorte.

It’s hard for me to judge the taste since I’m not really a fan of this kind of pastry. For me, a truly delicious cake is one with lots of layers soaked in cream

And here we are standing at the entrance to Hofburg Palace, the winter residence of the Habsburg imperial family. The enormous palace complex includes the Imperial Stables, Josephplatz with its equestrian statue of the emperor, the Treasury, the Orangery, the Imperial Silver Collection, and the Sisi Museum — six rooms dedicated to Empress Elisabeth, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, whom Vienna seems to be slightly obsessed with. We really wanted to visit the Treasury, but it was already evening, and the following day, Tuesday, it was closed...

We continued our evening walk through Vienna. To our surprise, the city seems to die down after dark. Many restaurants are closed, and the streets are remarkably quiet.

We find ourselves in the Jewish quarter, at Judenplatz, near the statue of Lessing. In the center of the cobblestone square stands a monumental gray cube — a memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The rectangular shapes on the walls of the cube represent the spines of books — a symbol of the Book of Life, closed forever. Along the edges of the memorial are plaques bearing the names of the places where Austrian Jews were murdered by the Nazis

Day 2. Museum, Palace & Food 

The next day, we decided to start with Vienna’s museum quarter. Since it was Iris’s birthday, she got to choose the museum she wanted to visit. So, we headed to the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Right across from it is the Natural History Museum.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum has an incredible collection of artifacts reflecting the cultural life of humanity, dating back to Ancient Greece. The collection was started by private collectors from the Habsburg imperial family as early as the 15th century. We began our visit with the galleries dedicated to the Ancient World and Ancient Egypt

Beautiful interiors, a gallery dedicated to Bruegel — the largest collection of his paintings in the world — Rubens, and a quick connection check... 

We especially loved the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Italian painter from the 16th century. There was also a beautiful café on the museum’s upper floor.

After the museum, we decided to see the Parliament and the City Hall. This turned out to be a mistake, as the City Hall didn’t impress us in any particular way, while the Parliament building was undergoing restoration, so we never got to see it properly

It’s time for lunch. We hop on the subway and head into the city center to the famous Figlmüller restaurant. They say it serves the best schnitzel in Vienna.

I don’t know whether it’s the best or not, but the place is so popular that there was a line outside, and once we got inside, we were told the wait would be at least two hours. Too bad we hadn’t made a reservation in advance...

We quickly found another restaurant nearby and had a very tasty schnitzel there. I suspect that in Vienna, it’s easier to find a place serving a good schnitzel than the other way around

It’s time to visit one of Vienna’s magnificent palaces. We chose Schönbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Austrian Habsburgs. When the Austrian residence was being built, Versailles was used as a model, and its unmistakable influence can be seen in many details throughout Schönbrunn. The palace and its grounds are enormous, and when time is limited, you can take a ride around the entire estate on a little panoramic train, which is exactly what we did. The palace grounds include an orangery, mazes, artificial Roman ruins, a carriage museum, a palm house, a desert house, a marionette theater, and the world’s oldest zoo

The palace grounds include an orangery, mazes, artificial Roman ruins, a carriage museum, a palm house, a desert house, a marionette theater, and the world’s oldest zoo. And from the Gloriette, you can enjoy a spectacular view of Vienna

A little photo session in one of the shady pathways 

You can also watch a real Viennese strudel being made at Café Residenz inside the palace grounds. Unfortunately, this show, like many other attractions in Austria, ends quite early. Most museums and attractions close around 4–5 p.m.

It’s starting to get dark, and since we were moving on to a new place the next day, we hop on the subway and head to one more unusual spot.

Hundertwasser House is one of Vienna’s most avant-garde landmarks — a colorful residential building with no straight lines, designed by the unconventional architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Tourists flock here all day long, but apparently, it doesn’t bother the residents too much — after all, they chose to buy apartments in this very building.

Just a five-minute walk away is a small museum shop dedicated to the same architect

Day 3. Nature, Mountains & Lakes 

In the morning, we picked up our rental car and set off for a completely different kind of adventure. From this point on, our plans were all about nature, mountains, lakes, and a little relaxation.)) COOEE Alpin Hotel is located in the Alps, in the small village of Gosau, not far from Bad Ischl. Green meadows dotted with contented cows, majestic mountains looking especially beautiful in the morning mist, complete silence, and the purest air. I can confidently recommend this place to anyone planning to explore the beauty of the Salzkammergut, a picturesque region of mountains and lakes east of Salzburg.

The hotel is modern and clean, with a delicious breakfast. There isn’t much to see in the village itself, but it’s a wonderful base for exploring many of the most beautiful places in the region

We had plans to visit the thermal pools at Eurothermen Resort in the town of Bad Ischl.

Salt has been mined here since ancient times, and the local cold and warm springs are similar to seawater, but contain more minerals and are believed to have beneficial effects on the body. For many years, the area attracted local aristocracy as well as famous personalities, including even Nikita Khrushchev. The spa offers a wide range of wellness treatments, but we simply wanted to relax and have fun in the pools.

There were saltwater and freshwater pools, with an average water temperature of 34°C (93°F), both indoors and outdoors, as well as all kinds of whirlpools with bubbles and massage jets for every part of the body. There was even a lazy river — where the current carries you along.

The funniest part was that all the jets switched on automatically and completely unpredictably, so we never knew where or when the next blast of water would come from. We absolutely loved it!

Day 4. Lake Gosau, Hallstatt & the Salt Mines 

We had big plans for this day. We woke up early. What beautiful clouds!

In the morning, we drove to see one of Austria’s most beautiful lakes — Lake Gosau (Gosauseen). It was only a 10-minute drive from our hotel. Gosauseen is actually a chain of three lakes, deservedly known as the Emeralds of Austria. The water is crystal clear, with an incredible emerald-green color. We drove to Vorderer Gosausee, the first and largest of the three lakes, nestled at the foot of the Dachstein mountain range. You can walk all the way around the lake, which takes about an hour. Or you can simply do what we did — stop and take in the breathtaking scenery. And if you want to see it all from above, you can take the cable car up the mountain for a spectacular bird’s-eye view...

Then we continued on to the village of Hallstatt, where salt was first mined on an industrial scale. The village has a population of just over 1,000 people. It’s such a beautiful place that tourists flock here year-round. The Chinese even went as far as recreating a similar town in China.

Hallstatt is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Красивые фотографии озера и домиков, уютно расположенных на склоне горы, часто можно встретить на просторах интернета. Острый шпиль церкви возвышается над всей этой красотой

The village is simply breathtaking. You want to take pictures of absolutely everything 

We pass by Hallstatt’s Catholic Church and follow a narrow path up to the town’s small cemetery. This is a rather unusual place. Because there is very little space for new graves in the town, since the 15th century it has been customary to exhume the remains of the deceased about ten years after burial to make room for new graves. The bones were dried in the sun, the skulls were decorated, and then placed in the chapel.

Today, more than 1,200 skulls are kept there. The last skull was placed in the chapel in 1995, and the problem of limited burial space has since been addressed through the growing popularity of cremation

We head to the SalzWelten salt mines. They are considered the oldest salt mines in the world. Salt was being mined here as far back as 3000 BC, and it is still being extracted today. We take a lift up to the Hallstatt Sky Walk, which offers magnificent views over the surrounding landscape. Then we continue higher and higher on a forest trail, eventually descending deep into the underground labyrinths of the salt mine

Everyone puts on special protective clothing and follows the guide through the tunnels. The tour is conducted in both German and English. It’s cold inside the caves, around 0°C (32°F). We learn about and see traces of the different cultures that inhabited the area over the centuries, dating all the way back to the Stone Age. The caves even yielded the remains of a person naturally preserved in salt.

During the tour, we also watch short films explaining how the salt deposits were formed, how salt mining first began in prehistoric times, and how mining techniques evolved over the centuries.

The most fun part of the tour is sliding down the traditional wooden miners’ slides — on your backside! There are several of them throughout the caves

And the next morning, it was time to hit the road again, because new places and new adventures were waiting for us. But that’s a story for another time...