Austria 2017 - Break the Crust

Wednesday, 18 October 2017

Graz

The train from Hungary arrived in Graz at noon. The night before leaving the Lake Balaton I made a reservation at Comfort Appartementhaus Blümel which is between the railway station and the old town. At the station I picked up a city map and a booklet with Graz attractions. I had no specific plans on what to see in Graz and played it by ear.

After dropping off my backpack at the hotel I headed towards the city center. A fortress high on the hill attracted my attention and I climbed to it. That fortress called the Schlossberg (Castle Hill) dates back to at least the 10^th century. It was never conquered.

After walking around the fortress I simply wandered in the old city. Below is a brief account of what I saw.

The following text is copied from the description of the monument:

In May 1809 Major Franz Hacker zu Hart received orders to defend the Schlossberg against Napoleon’s troops. Together with 17 officers and 896 soldiers he held the fortress against the mighty foe. The French totaled 3,000 men and launched 8 unsuccessful attacks. Only after an armistice had been arranged Hacker withdrew with his men. Thus, the “Hacker Lion”, a monument in honor of this heroic defender was erected in 1909.

The prison cells in the fortress. It is now a concert hall.

The Landhaus Well in the Arcade Courtyard constructed in 1590 is a real masterpiece.

A beautiful facade of an old building, one of many in Graz.

The Murinsel is a cafe. The bridge connects it with both banks of the Mur.

Does anyone know what this strange metal ladder means? It leads to a brightly lit window. I could not find anything about it.

Next morning I had a couple more hours to spend in Graz that I liked very much. The noon train was taking me to Salzburg, my last stop on this trip.

Thursday- Saturday, 19-21 October 2017

Salzburg

The 4-hour ride through Alpine valleys was anything but boring. Fields with grazing cattle and neat houses with a backdrop of the mountains which slopes were painted green mixed with shades of rusty brown and yellow slid past the train window. They gave place to a formidable medieval castle here and there or a town with a white church in its center. Then there were more fields and little rivers. October could be the best time of the year to take that train ride. I worked on my laptop, watched the scenery and did not notice how we arrived in Salzburg.

Pension Jahn where I booked a room was only a 5-minute walk from the train station. I ate pizza in a small café on the same street and hunkered down in my room for the night. After almost two weeks on the road I did not feel tired. On the contrary, I grew used to this way of living and became comfortable with it.

Salzburg is a small city which makes it easy to see it. Next day after breakfast at the pension I walked across the river to the old town. I do not know why, but fortresses always attract me first out of all tourist sites.

I rode the funicular to the large Hohensalzburg fortress built in the 11^th century. It shot up to the top so fast that nobody had time to take a photo.

In the fortress only a few rooms remain decorated the way they were when it was occupied. Besides antique furniture and beautiful wooden panels visitors can also see how a fortress loo looked like.

Other rooms are devoted to various exhibitions and modern installations that can be interesting for some people, but I skipped them and walked to the tower which offers great city views from the top. The tower has a gruesome history because it was used to interrogate suspected criminals and to store torture tools. The most horrible of them is a wheel that was dropped on a victim’s body to crush the bones. The tower included a dungeon that could only be accessed from the storage room.

Lunch at the restaurant in the fortress was overpriced and not particularly tasty. Rather than taking the funicular down, I walked to the square below and from there to St. Peter’s Monastery and Cemetery. The monastery is really old; it was founded in the 7^th century. The cemetery is so beautiful that I spent a lot of time going from one family crypt to another. It is still in use. The dates in the same crypt can be within a range of 500 years. This cemetery is also known as the place of filming the scenes of “The Sound of Music” where the Trapp family hid before escaping to Switzerland.

By the way, about a Sound of Music tour – I did not do it. I was in the mood to see the city itself as much as possible in one day. When I got saturated with the city views it was too late for the tour.

From St. Peter’s Monastery I climbed the Mönchsberg, one of the five mountains in Salzburg, got back down to the river and wandered around the city until dinnertime.