Sun, Snow & The Sound of Music: A Weekend in Salzburg

One might think that choosing a mid-February weekend to take a city break in Salzburg might increase the chance of experiencing a snow-covered, winter wonderland. Such was not the case. But where you can’t find snow, you go searching for it, especially if you can see it teasing you from the surrounding Alpine mountains! 

It has been the second-warmest winter on record in Austria in almost 250 years, according to the local news. We can now consider it spring time it seems. Naturally, one is more likely to find rain than snow during the spring and our first day in Salzburg delivered just that. Nevertheless, we managed to find plenty of things to do on a rainy day.

We started with Mozart’s Geburtshaus that was once the birthplace of the famous composer and now houses a museum depicting the life of Mozart and his family. I must be honest and admit that I basically knew nothing about the man beforehand, but now I understand him to be like an older, more classical-musically orientated Michael Jackson. If MJ was the “king of pop” then Mozart must be something similar in the world of classical music. My reasoning behind this, perhaps radical, comparison is drawn from what I learned about Mozart in this museum: that his father was the driving force behind his talent and success; that he remained quite child-like throughout his entire adulthood; and he lacked the ability to manage his own finances. All of these details could also be used to describe Michael Jackson. Now I hope you see what I mean. 

As the rain continued to fall, we moved on to another museum on offer in Salzburg: the toy museum. After the traditional, read-everything-from-the-wall museum of Mozart’s birthplace, it was refreshing to experience a fun and interactive museum! The toy museum is, admittedly, probably primarily designed for children, but we can excuse ourselves as big kids sometimes! We lived up to this by making a pit-stop on the way at a chocolate shop and trying all the free samples they had. It was a shop exclusively selling Zotter chocolate; a relatively young, organic and fair trade Austrian company that has brought exciting new flavours and combinations to fulfil every chocoholic’s dream, including chilli and ginger chocolate. 

Other eatery delights were also consumed during that day. We enjoyed lunch at a traditional, Austrian/Bavarian restaurant, named Wilder Mann, where I know I should order beer but as someone who simply can’t drink beer, I stuck with the Austrian soft drink, Almdudler. Considering I don’t like beer, I questioned my decision to join the others (Agnieszka, Laura, Scott & Steffi – the other Comenius Assistants in Vienna) for a tour around the Stiegl beer factory. The only attractions for me were the free gift (a bottle of beer or a bottle opener) and free samples (though I only tried strangely flavoured lemonade and a grapefruit Radler, of which I only enjoyed the grapefruit taste and not the beer taste!) 

Later in the evening, we walked along the river amid stunning views of the Alps in search of a restaurant recommended on wiki travel. We found it, but unfortunately with no reservation, there was no table available for us. Instead, we carried on walking we were lucky to spot a lovely, local restaurant hidden away in a courtyard. There I enjoyed Spinatknödeln (which I can only describe as ‘spinach boobs’ but they were actually very tasty spinach dumplings!) After that we returned to our hostel, where we could watch The Sound of Music movie. As famous as this 1960s, Julie Andrews movie is, I really didn’t know anything about it. Yet, during the 3 hour long film (they could’ve cut quite a bit of it) I got into the story of the woman who leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to the children of a Naval officer widower; that leads to a romance that is overshadowed by the threat of Austria’s new German rulers and the looming World War II. The movie was set in Salzburg, which explains the relevance of watching it there!

Our second day in Salzburg consisted of climbing higher and higher above the city while enjoying the lovely sunshine. We started the day searching for a cable railway that leads up to the Hohensalzburg Castle/Fortress. After getting slightly lost wandering around the narrow, winding streets, we stopped to ask a local for the way, just to realize that we were already half way up and we should just continue climbing! So that’s what we did. And the reward was magnificent as we reached the fortress and could gaze out over the city and admire the backdrop of the Alps. We also joined a great tour of castle; the tensest part of which involved the so-called ‘torture chamber’. I was glad to find out that it was never actually used to physically torture anyone, but just to store the equipment that could be used for that purpose (!). 

After returning to the old town via the cable railway, we enjoyed a stroll around before making our way to a proper cable car to reach Untersberg,1856m high mountain in the Alps. There’s nothing like the breath-taking Alpine view with stunning, sparkling snow to whisk all your worries away. The bus ride to the cable car also happened to be somewhat entertaining as we ended up involving a local stranger in our far-too-detailed conversation about waxing! 

One more pit-stop before catching the train back to Vienna, where Thomas was patiently waiting for me, couldn’t be resisted at the Mozart Café. There we decided to indulge in a ‘Salzburger Nockerl’ between the five of us. It is a bit of an extravagant dessert, priced at 12€ for one, but it is huge. Needless-to-say, it wasn’t very well received! As a supposedly sweet, soufflé dessert, it tasted more like meringue without the sugar, plopped on top of a smudge of jam. Maybe it was worth trying once, but I don’t wish to have such an egg-y-tasting “dessert” again! Despite this disappointment, Salzburg certainly lived up to its reputation; it’s very easy to fall in love with the place.

After this trip, I can now sing ‘My Favourite Things’ and picture the original Sound of Music movie and the actual place it was filmed, as well as listen to the best of Mozart while I complete my German homework. Sometimes it’s fun to fulfil the Austrian stereotypes and feel like I could be even more Austrian than a native Austrian. 

Anyway, we definitely plan to return to Salzburg in the late spring/early summer and hopefully rent a car to explore the beautiful surrounding area of small towns, villages and lakes.

A Winter Break in Finland: snow, sauna and all kinds of FOOD!

It was so refreshing to have a ‘skiing week’ off school at the beginning of February, but instead of spending my time rolling down slopes (I say rolling because I’m terrible at downhill skiing!), I decided to return to Finland to visit some of my good friends. I toyed with the idea of travelling somewhere new and fulfilling my wish to see more countries, but it seemed a good time to take a break from that. Anyway, I experienced plenty of new things in Finland! 

Pic: First wifi experience on a board a flight with Norwegian airline, en route to Finland.

I found myself reflecting on the contrasting life I now lead, compared to that I had in Finland. The differences struck me from the moment I arrived in Helsinki, while getting the bus from the airport to the city centre. Even how you enter a bus differs; in Finland, you can only enter through the front door next to the driver and exit through the middle or back doors, whereas in Austria you can hop on using whichever door takes your fancy. These things you pick up only by observing what the locals do. The way of life is simply different and in Finland a lot of that is based on the fact that there are so few Finns. As a result, the capital city is much quieter, slower-paced, and with only one underground line (cute, compared to the six that exist in Vienna.)

Pic: Ice swimming last year.

Needless-to-say, I’m a huge fan of some of Finland’s contributions to the world, including a very old, tradition originating in Finland and even expanding the use of the Finnish word to other languages; that is, sauna. I couldn’t resist going to sauna on this visit of course, and although I didn’t get round to ice swimming (one of my favourite winter pastimes), I at least got to roll in the snow in my bikini. 

There is also a relatively new and ever-growing ‘tradition’, started for the first time in Helsinki in 2011, called Restaurant Day. It is an opportunity for anyone to set up their own restaurant for the day (four times a year) and it has become a “worldwide food carnival”. I have experienced it twice, in Turku and in Helsinki (see pic: Helsinki, May 2013), and both were fantastically, unique days. Since it has originated in Finland, it has gained a lot of popularity there and there are many pop-up restaurants to choose from. So far, from what I can see, the concept has caught on in Vienna but nowhere near to the same extent, yet. Hopefully it does!

Keeping in line with the theme of food, it has to be said that the food I had in Finland during this winter break was to-die-for! It was all homemade and ranged from Thai curry, to Finnish reindeer and smoked salmon, to Indian chicken biryani, to popping candy dessert sushi! I even tried chocolate fondue and rolling homemade sushi for the first time. The Thai chicken curry I assisted in making with my friend Eni, who’s training to be a chef, was simply a mouth-watering fusion of flavours from coconut milk, pickled bamboo shoots, lime leaves, Thai fish sauce, lemon grass, chilli and much more! We also made a beautifully soft pear and white chocolate cake that accompanied nicely as a dessert. 

Pic: My first time making sushi rolls!

 

I’m sure it may seem bizarre to some people to have sushi as a dessert but, believe me, that is definitely worth trying and makes you feel a lot less guilty about submitting to your sweet tooth! As my Comenius friend Laura said, “If you ever feel guilty [about eating dessert], just wrap it in seaweed!” We used sheets of seaweed and filled them with flattened Japanese rice, a line of spread Nutella, grated white chocolate and popping candy, before rolling them to create our sushi rolls. Yum! 

Although I missed the Viennese style of life that involves indulging in a slice of cake with a cup of tea (meaning I can hardly have a cup of tea now without cake!), Finland supplied its own pastry custom in the form of pulla buns with jam and cream in the middle, as well as Runeberg cake (Runebergintorttu, in Finnish.) It is named after the 19th Century Finnish poet, Runeberg, and is traditionally eaten on his birthday on the 5th February every year. One of the many Finnish flag days is also dedicated to him, besides the tasty, moist, almond and rum-based cake. I probably had one too many of these while I was there! However, I think I made up for it during my first ever aqua-jogging session. 

Eni and I went to sauna and aqua-jogging at a public swimming pool during women-only hours, meaning that no men are allowed, as women can swim and go to sauna naked there (in fact, swimsuits are forbidden in sauna.) Naked aqua-jogging was another first for me and it was revitalizing. At first, I had to get used to how it works as you have to wear a float as a belt so that you float at the deep end of the pool and the only way to move is to ‘jog’. The best part is that you hardly feel like you’re doing much because the water lifts all the weight from you, yet it is a great workout! 

More highlights from the trip to my second home include some quirky and rather difficult to watch movies we saw (Dallas Buyers Club, Requiem for a Dream, Her); Matti's narrowly lost bet on Turku’s local ice hockey team as we watched them play a live match and saw ourselves on the big screen; time spent with a lovely, Finnish family, admiring an amazing website the father made that shows photo animations of how Finnish countryside has changed over the centuries; and playing a guest role in my favourite club, the UTU Debating Club. I have missed my usual debating club as it was always fun to play with a group of friendly, open-minded individuals who are not overly competitive about debating and can enjoy it as a game.

What was particularly surprising during my trip was how quickly people seem to be ‘settling down’ or ‘growing up’, or however you would like to call it. Couples moving in together, getting engaged, having a baby. That quarter-life crisis age has come – at least for me! It’s a challenge not to become engulfed by the rapid surge of commitment from those surrounding me and not apply it to my own circumstances. Nevertheless, I’m happy to share in my friends’ joy and join them on their new journeys in life. 

 

I have to say I was well looked after by my international and Finnish friends, almost spoilt even! Though, it was almost like I’d never been away and I know it won’t be my last time going back. I can’t wait to see what my next time in Finland has in store!