Austria, 2022

Flying to Vienna, first international trip since all the bullshit began. Out of practice, been unreasonably anxious for a bit. But starting to relax now we are under way.

Nothing like a 2+km walk through Frankfurt Airport to help get through the 3am jetlag.

Hotel Bristol in Vienna. There's a leather seat in the elevator and we have an eccentric ceiling in our room. Olde Europe.

Good morning Wien.

I think it's weird how all these sites are showing me German language ads and recommendations just because I'm on an Austrian IP address. Even though I'm logged in on my American/English account. Google, Twitter, Reddit...

Also the cookie warnings are intense here. google.com shows me this in every new browser before I'm allowed to search (which thanks to mobile app capture, there are a lot).

Kunsthistorische Museum.

Reminded once again how art nouveau (Secession) seems almost a forgotten direction. Why has it not had a revival?

At MAK Vienna.

Leopold Museum: Klimt in particular.

Some terrific graphic arts.

And the Naschmarkt, inspiring jealousy. Also an Apotheke and our bedroom.

"100.00 US Dollars = 101.08889 Euros". Yikes!

Vienna has its famous Pestsäule, a monument of thanks for deliverance from the Plague. It's hideously ugly, as is its little brother in Baden.

Some more shots of Baden, a perfectly ordinary propserous small Austrian town (and suburb of Vienna). This is typical Europe for me.

At zur Alten Press in Graz, regional Steiermark specialties. Table of 14 next to us and they are so polite and quiet. In the US the boys would be screaming "shots".

One surprise about Graz is what a late night town it is. Restaurants and bars open until midnight, 2 am. Vienna felt over at 9pm. Perks of a student town I guess. (Photo unrelated).

It's fall, which means game and mushrooms. Lunch is Steinpilzen breaded and fried until soft, almost oyster texture. With a simple salad dressed with pumpkin seed oil.

Some Graz tourist snaps, mostly from the Schlossberg.

And some from the museum out at Schloss Eggenberg.
Graz is a very pleasant livable town. Lots of cafes, quieter streets, good transit and bike infrastructure.

It's fall, so it's winemaking season. Which means it's federweisser season, or as they call it in Austria, Sturm. Lightly fermented grape juice, still quite sweet. In Styria it is Schilcher Sturm, a rosé. It's kind of awful TBH.

Pumpkin seed oil turns out to be a big deal in Graz and the Styria region in general. It's really good. Nutty, like walnut oil, but milder. And quite complex, more like olive oil in variations and quality grades.

Today we visited the Gurktal, a tidy alpine valley with a huge 12th century pilgrimage church (St Hemma). Also delicious Nudeln.

One thing I admire about Germany is its thorough critical examination of its Nazi history. I've seen none of that in Austria, no exhibits or museums about the Anschluss or the Holocaust. In some ways it recalls America's willful ignorance of our history of slavery. 1/3

Until the 90s the polite international fiction was that Austria was the "first victim" of the Nazis, ignoring how many embraced fascism and the Third Reich. That's changed some but neonationalist politics still have a lot of sway in conservative Austria. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_victim_theory

I don't know what the moral balance in Austria is today. But I'm struck by the contrast to the German approach of open examination, documentation, and confession. And by what we in the US can learn toward our own obligations of reconciliation and reparation. 3/3

Cafe (European) (n.). A casual place to sit outside, have a coffee, and breathe cigarette smoke.

Tomorrow we are driving the Großglockner Hochalpenstraße, a road winding through the Alps in Austria that goes up to 8500 feet. grossglockner.at/gg/en/thehighalpineroad/thehighalpineroad

Today we toured the Wörthersee, where Austria goes for sun and warmish swimming. Not so much in October, a lot closed for the season. But still lovely. Photos include the Klagenfurt Dragon (Lindwurm).

We also went high up the Pyramidenkogel Tower for the amazing view and to watch kids riding down the 200 foot slide. Our hotel room is across the lake in the last picture, under the red line.

Success! We are at 2369m at the Pasterze Glacier along the Großglockner Alpine Road. Lovely day for it.

Today we are in Zell am See. Which surprisingly enough has a large number of Middle Eastern visitors! Stories as to why differ but most mention the local tourism board marketing itself to the Gulf States. Nice to see such a mix. theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jul/20/zell-am-see-austrian-village-muslim-holiday-hotspot-in-pictures

View from our room in Zell am See. Really lucky with October weather so far.

Unfortunately Zell am See is mostly shut down in October, the break between summer and winter tourist seasons. Not much to do, so we went to this museum of funky old European cars. Some fun tiny things from the 50s in particular.

Hab' gefunden!

Happily the tourist boat that makes a little trip around the lake was running. Sit relaxed with a beer and watch the houses glide by.

The only Wifi in this hotel is on channel 13, which is locked out on my US computers and I can't figure out how to enable it. (Windows 10 and Samsung tablet)

Stopped in Hopfgarten I'm Brixental for a coffee and a look at some saints bones. Pfarrkirche St. Jakob und St. Leonhard.

Today we are in Innsbruck. Some snaps there, also last of Hopfgarten.

Ringing a Tyrolean folk tune on cowbells @lyzidiamond

After a demanding morning of strolling through the folk culture museum, time for some French wine and cheese at the Markthalle.

Some shots from the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum.

And the Hofkirche, featuring some saucy D&D campaign material.

At the phase of travel where I am starting to miss the comforts of home. Do not love the Germanic thing of toilets with a display shelf, for instance. amsenneff.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/heres-a-culture-lesson-for-you-the-pooh-shelf

I cannot emphasize enough how awful the cookie experience is inside Europe right now. Every website is like this, frequently several times (depending on browser context.)

I assume this UI is a form of malicious compliance. It would be very easy to have an automated "no track" preference in the browser. We had one nearly 20 years ago. But the companies refuse to support it and instead harass users with a deliberately bad experience.

@blowery Thanks for the details. Not hard to imagine more user friendly ways to have implemented all this. Or why the companies aren't excited to. Maybe this current mess will encourage everyone to work on a better solution.

Getting a preview of the new Crusader Kings 3 DLC at Schloss Tratzberg.

@jmason Where have you been? We are on the way to Salzburg today.

We visited Schloss Tratzberg near Innsbruck. Beautifully restored, privately owned castle with mostly 16th c. Renaissance decoration and some Gothic construction. Some ceilings and other room scale shots here.

Also some details of hardware and furniture. Most delicate marquetry I've ever seen in the last two photos. The features are little slips of wood 1-2 cm square.

Salzburg is so *vertical*. The old town is where the river is sandwiched between two improbable rocks, steep hills on either side. And 4-5 story buildings all in a line on a narrow long street.

And some Salzburg graphic arts.

Excellent if slightly overwhelming fine dining at Pfefferschiff in Salzburg. Elegant food and excellent service. Seemed particularly Austrian in its details, like using onion or pumpkin in various parts of dishes.

@mereborders It's charming! We are on a 3 week tour of Austria. Tramp Abroad is imminently skimmable. I liked the parts on Heidelberg dueling clubs in particular.
Bonus Salzburg Vampyrhof photo just for you!

More Salzburg today. Funicular up to the fortress, also the Residenz. The museums are oddly empty of objects: I think a lot must have been lost to Napoleon in 1803 and the subsequent political uncertainty.

Salzburg is the city of music and it's not all Mozart.

Enjoying some elderberry Schnapps (Holler or Holunder). seiwaldgut.at

Google Maps is remarkably bad for walking around European pedestrian zones. (Compare OSM Organic Maps, which works offline as well).

Arrived Hallstatt. Kind of overwhelmed with how touristy it is but then again this is the view from our hotel room so you can understand why.

One new thing for us has been these hummingbirds, which actually are moths. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird_hawk-moth

Important updates on the view from our Hallstatt hotel.

I'm in Hallstatt, Austria. A town that is so popular for tourism that a developer in China built a copy of the town. allthatsinteresting.com/hallstatt

One clever thing we've seen all over Austria in restaurants: a system of categorizing food allergies. All dishes are labelled with a collection of letters.

Tag urself I'm L: Celery and products derived therefrom

Hallstatt is kind of a tourist hell, regretting spending two nights here TBH. But it is beautiful.

The @voxdotcom website from Europe does not give you any choices for cookies other than "I Agree". They have a link to their cookie policy, which contains a table of 50+ surveillance partners. With non-clickable URLs for their privacy policies. voxmedia.com/legal/cookie-policy

One last update on the Hallstatt view, as we pack up for Linz.

Linz sure makes a bad first impression. A bridge over the Danube separates our hotel from the city center. A six lane highway.

Google Maps has no transit data for Linz. Rather than admit that, the app just shows you maps and routes as if transit didn't exist and you had to walk. Bing Maps has the same problem. (Linz has a transit planner at services.linzag.at/efa/index-en.jsf)

Linz is nicer from up above, the Pöstlingberg. Still trying to get the town though. Compared to the rest of Austria it seems more modern and industrial.

My favorite Linz site so far is the Neuer Dom, built 1860-1920. Remarkable newer stained glass, including these generative art-like 1995 pieces by Karl Martin Harmann. Nice to see new work in a grand cathedral context.

Underwhelmed visiting Ars Electronica in Linz. Exhibits are pretty hard to understand and often not working. Sympathy from my grad school days though, electronic media is hard to do for the public.

E.g.

I'm visiting Mauthausen, a concentration camp memorial near Linz. It is overwhelmingly bleak, as it has to be. The history is well presented.

One terrible aspect of the Holocaust is the way the camps were "evacuated" ahead of the Allies, prisoners driven deeper into Nazi territory. 300,000 prisoners died in the last six months. Mauthausen was only liberated 3 days before the Wehrmacht surrender.

This all reminds me of the role Texas played in the Civil War, the last refuge for Confederate slavers as they were losing their war. How many slaves were taken in to Texas? Do we even know?

@bookscout One display here at Mauthausen talks about how prisoners organized to save lives and preserve evidence in the days leading up to liberation. A remarkable form of resistance.

Failed to find a proper lunch, every place in town closed the kitchen at 1:30. So bought some Tyrolean sausages, Liptauer cheese dip, and fresh rolls from a local store. Snacking in the car along the Danube.

Our hotel room has gendered towels: one pink, one white. Always a conundrum for a gay male couple. Which towel did I take?

Some tourist snaps from Dürnstein in the famous Wachau wine region. We also visited Melk Abbey but they won't let you photo the creepy Catholic skeleton relics I liked.

I should note there is only one towel by the bidet, pink. Thereby confirming this bathroom was designed to straight male stereotypes.

One of the great privileges of traveling as an American is almost anywhere in the world, people you meet in the hospitality industry are likely to speak some English. Makes it so easy to travel. In Austria over 23 days I think only twice we benefited from knowing a little German.

Staying at the Hotel Sacher for our last night. It is as fabulous as you might expect. Our bathroom has a bronze sculpture in the niche above the paper. Off to get a slice of chocolate cake.

All over Austria they have these useless COVID hand sanitizer stations. Particularly in churches where they have replaced the holy water.
But every bathroom still has those Dyson hand driers that aerosolize the wet germs and blow them around the room.

Our last day in Austria, a quick stay in Vienna. Capped it off with a visit to the small but excellent archaeological exhibits at the Natural History Museum. Good way to put our Hallstatt visit in context. Bring back Bronze Age jewelry!

Sitting on a plane to come home after 23 days in Austria. It was a good trip but maybe a week too long, glad to be going home.

I am here to report Lufthansa's business class on a 350-900 is terrible. The seat has space for someone maybe 5'10" at most (I'm 7" taller). I am in a fair amount of pain

Back home less than 24 hours and already managed to taste red chile flakes, Mexican salsa, California hot sauce, gochujang, and Indian pickle. We had some very good food in Austria but goodness did I miss spice.

Tonight is Cajun gumbo. May well be Thai (larb) tomorrow. Also got a virgin Bloody Mary lined up for breakfast.

We're back home! I wrote a short blog post summary of our trip here: somebits.com/weblog/culture/travel/austria-2022.html