You can only spend so much time nestled at the foot of Austrian mountain ranges before you find yourself seduced by high altitudes and the thrill of the outdoors. We grabbed our gear and headed up Bärenschützklamm.

We stopped at the peak of the hike to do some Geocaching and stop for a break. Felix surprised Nina and I by pulling a camping stove and pot out of his bag and cooking us some garlic soup. I don’t care if it was the mountain air, the exercise, or the suspiciously tasty powdered soup mix, but I wonder if every meal tastes better when you’re on top of a mountain.

When we were back on solid ground, we experienced the legendary burgers from Brot & Spiele. Felix made the bold claim that they served the best burgers in town, possibly the best burgers he’d ever had, and I have to admit that I won’t be challenging his claim any time soon. The hike might’ve affected the flavour country we found ourselves swallowing, but there was no time to slow down and savour the experience: WALL-E waits for no man. The movie was incredibly well done, and pretty much everyone will find something to like in it. As a computer geek and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about video games, I was floored by the graphics in the early scenes of earth, and the characterization the writers brought out with just a few sounds and gestures was phenomenal. Story-telling and technology at its best.

But the best part of the day was yet to come: On the fourth or fifth attempt, I beat Dr. Lugae in Final Fantasy IV DS. I loved that game on SNES back in the day, and now I can love it wherever I go.

You just can’t have an Austrian vacation without a trip to the Zotter chocolate factory. We opted for a self-guided tour, feeling like Charlie let loose in the factory. We sampled, snacked, slurped, and became totally gorged, almost unable to move.

 

That was when we found out that we’d only visited half of the tasting rooms.

We decided to walk off our blood sugar levels with a tour of Riegersburg Castle.

 

The castle has stood for over 850 years without ever being taken, although I presume that its threat level is reduced every century or so.

 

The castle now houses – er, castles – 3 hectares of vineyards, with grapes ripe for the sampling. Since the vineyards grow on the slope of the mountain the castle is built upon, the grapes get more sun than the rest of the region. This means that grapes for red wine, notorious sunbathers, can grow here in an otherwise inhospitable region.

Our stomachs wised up to our plan, and they started to rally against us. We’d anticipated this gastronomical mutiny and arrived at a local Buschenschank just in time. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the couple that owned the Buschenschank had spent several years in America, where they met. Ms. American added an untouched North American accent to our dinner conversation. If fluent English speakers keep popping up in every small town and unexplored corner we visit, learning German might be slow going. We ate good food and smiled as the locals finished their drinks, paid their bills, tipped their hats, and hopped on their tractors for the drive home.

Breakfast at Café Central seemed like a great idea until we saw the prices. We walked away to avoid any noticeable change in the contents of our wallets, and unfortunately stomachs. Another restaurant was just a stop away, and with reasonable prices at that.

We followed breakfast with a trip to the World Press Photo Exhibition. The exhibit contains hundreds of photos from around the world, each more jaw-dropping than the last.

Next up: a walking tour of the city, including a visit to parliament and city hall.

Anyone who’s been walking me should know that I have a hard time limiting myself to walking.

We finished our weekend in Vienna at Prata, a local amusement park. It felt like I was home, at Canada’s Wonderland:

For those of you who haven’t been to Canada’s Wonderland, you might want to see a picture of the ride Tomb Raider/Time Warp:

Prata happened to be host to a number of hopefuls trying to break a few world records. I’m proud to say that I witnessed the new world record holder hammer 22 nails into a log in less than a minute. My life feels complete.

The day started with a stroll around Naschmarkt, Vienna’s largest flea market. The bizarre variety of wares being hawked included a lone controller for the Sega Master System, a viking helmet, and a box full of Marklin train tracks, the same foul beasts our real time trains bounced across for three long months.

I escaped the terrible stench of all things Marklin and landed safely in Do-an for breakfast. The Do-an breakfast (Frühstück) consists of eggs fried with pieces of salty cheese, which was a new and tasty combination.

We burned off our breakfast at Schönbrunn, Vienna’s castle.

Nina gave some breakfast to a squirrel. I didn’t capture the kodak moment, but here’s the basic idea:

We escaped several hedge mazes, since we apparently never learned our lesson after the first one. One of the mazes contained a group of poles I bravely scaled to spot our next destination.

I managed to find it: the appel strudel demonstration. Not only did we learn to make proper Venitian apple strudel, but we walked away with a recipe and a phone number we could call if we ran into any strudel related problems. I can now sleep soundly at night, knowing that a team of master strudel chefs are only a phone call away.

A tour of the castle taught us that the first emperor of Austria was a very diligent man. His day started at 4am and he was working at his desk by 5 for most of his 68 year reign.

After serenading Nina with favourites from the Backstreet Boys, we headed home, where I watched my first German film: Ocean’s Eleven. I understood exactly one line: “Tess. Ihr name ist Tess.”

Our borrowed GPS navigation unit guided us to Vienna, where we were greeted by Tina. Our dinner pub of choice was Centimeter, where Felix was served a small shovel of food.

It took a trip to Austria’s capital for me to finally learn what Cordon Bleu is: a variation on Schnitzel, filled with cheese and ham.

Vienna’s excellent transit system ferried us to Flex, our drinking hole. I have to say, Austrians seem to have damn good taste in music. I’m going to have to try to e-tune in to the Austrian radio station FM4 once I’m settled in Germany, since they seem to be a quality source of beats.

This morning started with a visit to the Höhlenwelt ice caves in the Dach Stein. We rode a cable car above the cloud line, coming to a stop about 1500m above sea level, above the first layer of clouds.

 

We hiked our way to the ice caves, a system of caves where the cold winter air and plentiful spring meltwater generate a yearlong supply of ice, which goes hand with massive caves formed by thousands of years of erosion.

 

The clouds had cleared by the time we returned to the surface, which made for a great drive to the nearby town of Hallstatt, where we visited a saltmine. They had not one, but two slides.

 

 

We trod down the mountain side, passing a number of outdoor material elevators the mountain folk use to send their groceries home.

 

We spent some time walking through the small town, eating scrumptious homemade ice cream and listening to a faintly played tuba melody. We saw local children feeding waterfowl in the lake’s edge of their backyard, and we saw some bizarre water-art.

I also found the world’s greatest hat. It was almost worth the 80 euros they were charging.

We arrived home tired and famished, and gorged ourselves on home cooked Austrian dishes. Food always tastes better after a day of activity. We drank Sturm with our meal, an Austrian treat I discovered at the restaurant last night. It’s kind of like a premature wine. It tastes non-alcoholic, like juice, but it has just as much alcohol as wine does. It’s the sort of dangerous beverage I can get behind.

I spent most of my second day in Austria driving with Felix and Nina to the tiny Austrian village of Obertraun. We stopped in Admont along the way to visit a monastery called Benediktinerstift Admont. The abbey contains a massive library, the biggest monastery library room in the world. It was built in 1074, and it comes fully equipped with fake bookshelves that cover hidden windows that doubled as emergency exits in dire times. We also saw books that were more than 1000 years old. It turns out that the scribes of old doodled as much as we do today.

The monastery also had an awesome TV.

When we’d had our fill of plasma screens and priestage, we took in the sights.

The restaurant was closed, so dinner was not one of those sights.

When we arrived in Obertraun, we met the owners of Landhaus Osborne, the wonderful country house we stayed in. They gave us the grand tour of their “humble establishment”, complete with heated garden gazebo and outdoor jacuzzi. The owners, retired project managers at Novell, said they loved skiing, mountains, and the quaint traditional Austrian life, so who better to ask for recommendations for local traditonal Austrian food? If you’re in the area, you’d be foolish to not order the garlic cream soup (Knoblauchcremesuppe) from Gasthof Höllwirt. It was without a doubt the best soup I’ve ever had:

Tip of the day: In English Canada, it’s common to wish someone a good night if you’re parting ways in the evening. In German, that’s reserved for wishing someone a good night’s sleep. So, telling a waitress to have a good night? Oh yes. Now that’s smooth.

We’re going to spend the rest of the night catering to Nina’s whims and smashing our heads against a 750 piece puzzle. Tomorrow’s trip to the ice caves should be fun…

As far as Higginses go, he wasn’t the most famous. He might’ve been the smelliest. But if he goes down in history for anything, it’ll be for his laziness. He was right at home in our lazy family.

 

He was always happy when I came home, even if I’d only been gone for three minutes. He was like a small, furry brother.

The vet thought that he had three months left, but he kept going strong for over a year before the cancer finally beat him.

You will be missed, Higgins. You were a damn good dog.

Waking up to catch a flight at 02:30 is even worse when you have a cold, but that’s a small price to pay to spend the next 10 days visiting my Austrian friends, Felix and Annina.

Felix and Annina whipped up an awesome walking tour of their hometown, Graz. Like any good tour, it started and ended with chocolate. I saw an alien which commemorates Austria’s 2003 title of European Capital of Culture, climbed a rope maze on a metallic river-island, and gazed out over the beautiful rooftops of the city from the top of a once decimated castle:

Interesting side note: the word decimate comes from Roman times. When a member of unit retreated from battle, disobeyed orders, or otherwise behaved unacceptably, the group would be punished by having to strip every tenth man (deca) of his armour and beat him to death. Isn’t English fun, kids?

We spent the evening playing board games, which seems to be a favourite European past time. While I’m really grateful that almost everyone I’ve met so far can at least grunt a few English words at me, I can’t wait until I can play games, read menus, or hold conversations without turning to my personal translator with a panicked look in my eyes.