Our hotel in Vienna was a treat—spacious rooms, spa and pool facilities, and even volleyball and squash courts, but unfortunately for me, no squash-playing equipment (or indeed anyone against whom to play), which was a shame because I had been hanging out for a game, and indeed for any physical activity whatsoever that could have offset the many days and nights of sloth and gluttony prior and since.
Austria is the home of classical music and the birthplace of Mozart. Austrians are celebrating this, the 250th year since the birth of Mozart, with great gusto, Mozart memorabilia and snacks flying off shelves like that brilliant simile that didn’t occur to you until long after you’d already pressed “Publish” on the article. Our first night in Vienna comprised a delightful Mozart concert performed by a company of skilled, yet easygoing, musicians and dancers, delivering a solid set of the familiar Mozart standards punctuated by moments of comic relief and audience participation.
You notice a lot of changes passing into the ‘Germanic’ countries from a place like Italy. The quality of food, drink, and service take a giant leap upward. Toilets have seats again. And buildings and infrastructure are generally newer, on account of Austria and Germany getting bombed back into the Charlemagne age at the end of WW2. Vienna is one city that chose to rebuild in the pre-war architectural style, so it’s both old and new at the same time.
The ubiquitous Christmas markets always have sausages, glühwein—a warm, spicy wine served in a mug—and other traditional holiday food and drink, plus a broad selection of craft, toys, and other knick-knacks for sale. In any major German or Austrian city, there is a Christmas market (Weihnachtsmarkt) in literally every conceivable public space, bottlenecking major pedestrian thoroughfares that you’d like to get through at more than ten metres per minute. Your attendance at, and enjoyment of, Weihnachtsmärkten is therefore not open to negotiation if you live in Germany or Austria.
The full day in Vienna, I slept in, missed breakfast, missed the daily briefing of where and when the bus was picking up from, and lost my map. I caught a train to a station that looked reasonably central and then walked around arbitrarily until I randomly spotted an Australian pub, where I requested a Coopers and a map. At schnapps tasting I bought some absinthe and learned about the large schnapps factory that was obliterated by the Allies and is now a small schnapps factory. We wandered around Vienna looking for a decent place to drink and settled on The Duke, a pub run by a couple of Scottish dudes with no Austrian beer at all.
Our journey toward Germany took in the rain-soaked town of Mondsee, where we saw Christmas markets, and unfortunately a lot of scaffolding in the way of the altar at St. Michael’s, the church made famous by The Sound of Music apparently—I haven’t seen it.
Smo