The salt towns - Salzburg & Hallstatt

We leave Cesky Krumlov with fond memories, but perhaps the railway station could do with a bit of work to make it a tad more tourist friendly. As we rumble south into Austria I’m struck by the romanticism of the little villages we pass through - Aisbach Wartberg, Katsdorf, Lungitz Gusen, Pulgarn. Yes, not just the language of engineering, German is truly the language of love. Ich liebe dich, Österreich!

As you’ve gathered, we spend a lot of time on trains, and getting used to the peculiarities of the dining and toileting facilities is becoming a fine art. I was caught short by the toilets in the train to Linz, failing to read the small print on the door which asked not to flush while at a station. Yup - the contents are deposited straight onto the tracks below. I experienced this in SE Asia, but it didn’t even occur to me some that European trains wouldn’t be fitted with holding tanks, as most are. Recounting my experience to Pauline on my return she turns a little pale, as she’s done exactly the same thing a couple of stations prior with a more substantial flush.

The Linz to Salzburg Intercity is a different story. We get first class seats, first world toilets, and are whisked along at 200kph. With the recent loss of air services to some of NZ’s smaller towns, I reflect on how much better and environmentally friendly an efficient electrified rail service like this could be back home. Whangarei or Hamilton to Auckland in less than an hour? No problem. Even Auckland to Wellington in four hours would be competitive when you factor in airport commuting and parking time. But the idea of enhancing our rail network for passengers and freight seems anathema to our Government.  Let’s build more roads instead, and proceed to destroy them with increasingly heavy trucks.

We arrive at Salzburg, pick up the key and make our way to Viktor’s apartment. It’s Sunday 9 November, and the final MotoGP race is in progress at Valencia. I wonder if it’s live on TV? I flick through 100 channels on the satellite receiver, and am just in time to catch the last two laps and Marquez’s victory. I’m torn by watching the replays on what I missed, or venturing out to have a look at Salzburg in the late afternoon.  Pauline’s persuasive powers win out, and I content myself I have MotoGP recorded back home.

Good call. Salzburg’s a magic town tucked up on the edge of the Austrian Alps, and it’s great to familiarise ourselves in the afternoon sun. Translated as “Salt castle”, the city owes its existence to the considerable salt deposits in the region. The bishops 

moved in first, transformed themselves to princes, and with the fortunes to be made from the salt trade (with gold and silver to boot) built themselves the magnificent and impregnable castle on the hill. The peasants and miners, sensing a degree of wealth inequality, tried to attack it in the early-1500s as part of a general Germanic peasant uprising, but were brutally suppressed. 

The legacy of the wealth is reflected in the town itself.

The Mirabell Palace and Gardens, the churches, plazas and ritzy shopping streets - all serve to turn this into a delightful town on a human scale that can easily be explored in a day or so.

Other than salt and its alpine location, Salzburg is known for two things - the home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the location of the Sound of Music.

The Mozart Museum gets a visit, and I’m starting to warm to him and his compositions. Sure he was a bit precocious, but he had a lot of fun as a lad setting up ribald targets with his mates and shooting at them with air rifles. It wasn’t all red jackets, curly wigs and music. Getting back to the apartment, I download a selection of Mozart’s work, and am steadily working my way through it. Definitely some favourites emerging.

I was nine when I fell in love with Julie Andrews. Not many people know this, not even Julie. I’d seen the movie, and we had the LP at home, with a gorgeous picture of her on the back. But the infatuation didn’t last long, and it certainly wasn’t sufficient to justify doing a trip of the shooting locations. Pauline agrees. Now if I’d been here with Karen, my cousin’s wife, things would be different. She loves the movie and has seen it at least half a dozen times, so I’ve sent her a suitable postcard wishing she was here.

We’re tiring a bit of schnitzel and goulash, and are delighted to find Pescheria Backi, a local seafood restaurant only a couple of blocks from the apartment.

There’s no menu - just choose what you want from the display cabinet. We decide on mixed platters for both entree and main. Can’t fault the quality, nor the quantity. Getting through that turbot (large flounder) took time, but it was worth it.

With a relaxed schedule we have time for a day trip to Hallstatt up in the mountains to the south-east.

This place is built on a cliff face that rises near vertically from the lake, and was only accessible by boat until 1890 when the road and rail links were blasted through the cliffs. 

Possibly the world’s first commercial salt mine, a 40km brine pipeline was built in 1595, made from 13,000 hollowed out trees. Impressive! Nearly as impressive is that the Chinese mineral company Minmetals Corp has built a replica of the town in Huizhou - which perhaps explains the hordes of Chinese tourists competing with us for photo shots.

But it is a delightful spot, and if we ever come back again we’ll be sure to do the salt mine tour. 

The trick with any place in Austria (as we found with both Vienna and Salzburg) is don’t arrive on a Sunday. Apart from the odd restaurant, the country is closed and at rest. Part of me thinks this is a good thing, part of me thinks it’s a bad thing. But the important thing is to be aware of it, and adjust your time to Österreich time accordingly. Then you'll love it.