On our way to Salzburg

This morning we took the train from Munchen to Salzburg, a direct OBB Railjet doing the liaison from Munich to Budapest. After Salzburg the train becomes more regional and will make several stops as it goes Eastward towards Hungary, stopping in Linz and Vienna. Though we cross 2 borders there are no inspection or stops for immigration anymore, the Shengen Treaty Zone means that when we arrived in Frankfurt we entered the zone and went through the only immigration custom control for Shengen Zone, several EU countries are signatory to the Treaty.

Our hotel in Munich the Eden Hotel Wolff in front of the train station was very nice, clean and quiet. Lots of businessmen stay there because it is central to everything, the train, the connection airport bus, all attraction of the old centre of the City. The food at the hotel restaurant was very good with a menu of Bavarian Specialties and great wine selection. The Hotel is not new, built in 1900 by Mr. Wolff it was completely rebuilt in 1950 after suffering devastating bombings by the Allies at the end of WWII. The hotel is said to be ''Die Gute Adresse im Munchen'', its true.

So now we are on the road or rail, going East crossing vast green meadows, dark green pine forests, brooks and rivers. Just after crossing the Austrian border we approach the Tyrol mountain range which are smaller mountains than the Alps beyond which we can see the snow cap peaks. To get to Salzburg from Munich there are no mountain range to cross. This sort of puts the lie to the final scene of the Sound of Music saga when you see the Von Trapp climbing mountains, where are they going? Unless they are going south to Innsbruck towards the Brenner Pass into Italy. But still a very long distance from their home on foot, not credible for 1938. Interesting to note that in Salzburg they are seen more as a fairytale story which makes a good musical or movie.

The OBB has a restaurant car and also for the first class passenger a service at your seat. The menu is quite extensive and all of it is served on real china, no paper cups here please and all for the same price as in Canada on Soviet Style service VIA RAIL. You have to wonder how they do it.

Sidd on the train to Salzburg

We are also traveling with our friend Sidd, he is a gnome and has gone around the world. Will takes him with us and he has been to Amsterdam, London, sailed the Baltic and Russia, now he is going to Austria. He has previously been to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lybia, South Africa and many other places, lucky little gnome. He even gets to sit in the cockpit of planes with the Captain. Funny how a gnome will make you popular with people.

Sidd in our suite at the Bristol amongst the fruit basket.

The scenery on this 90 minute train ride is quite lovely, beautiful churches, old castles, mountains, valleys and forests, cows with those big bells around their necks and peasants driving BMW and Audi.

The railway station in Salzburg is completing a total refit, rebuilt and renovated, very modern, its stands just outside the City as not to disturb the historical beauty of this small town. Only the historical mean hall and entrance of the old station in Art Nouveau style has been kept with its mosaic murals of the countryside of Salzburg.

Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo soprano, director of the Whitsun Music Festival Salzburg

We arrived at Hotel Bristol and were met my the owner Theodor Magrutsch and staff, this is how it is done here at the Bristol, a family run hotel. It is just as lovely as ever and we got our old suite the Tuscany which we love. The Maitre d'hôtel Mr. Peter is still here and a new barman Mr. Gabor. They also have new elevators but just as elegant as the old ones with silk damask panels. Mr. Christian Lackner the manager and cousin is also here. This hotel is quite special and unlike any other I have ever stayed at. I note that their dining room in now in the Gault et Millau. 

While Will took a nap I went looking around, I went to Schubert next to the hotel to buy some socks and bought 2 shirts also. The selection is unbeliveable, the most beautiful stuff, ties and bow ties too, its a very small shop, but the quality. Came back to the hotel and had tea in the Sketch Bar which is very well prepared using mountain stream water that is super hot with quality tea served in beautiful porcelaine. Their strudel is also wonderful made fresh everyday by the pastry chef and served warm with real whipped cream.

Love black marble and mirrors

Around 7pm we walked to Café Bazar and had a drink and then the weather being so nice and sitting by the river looking at the Castle and the old city as the sun was setting we decided to have dinner. The food of the Café Bazar is quite good and reasonably priced. They also have a good wine list of Austria and German wines.

Laurent with Proseco

Today Thursday is a quiet day, the Festival starts tomorrow.

View of old Salzburg from the Café Bazar

Wien Meidling Bahnhof to Roma Termini

We boarded our train this Sunday evening at 19:29 for our night ride to Rome. Meidling is being used at this time apparently because the Sud-Bahnhof Wein is under re-construction, not surprised it was fairly old, 1950 vintage full of big staircases, no escalators and no elevators, try managing that with luggage. Meidling is modern, well organized and is also connected to regional train lines and the S-Bahn (subway). This being Sunday night, Vienna is fairly quiet, so we bought our dinner to go at NordSee which deals exclusively in seafood and fish, very fresh and so good. We got 2 tuna wraps and 6 giant shrimps with cocktail sauce, and then we got some nougat and nuts at a shop next door. Vienna has little to offer on a Sunday night so you have to plan ahead. The overnight train to Rome does not have a restaurant car but the Steward can bring you, wine and schnapps, beer, coffee, tea, juice and water. They will also serve continental breakfast in the morning.

Our suite on board the train is very comfortable and private, we have a small sit-bedroom, full bath with shower, towels etc. Lots of young Austrian soldiers on board tonight, they are probably going to Klagenfurt or Villach in southern Austria, very polite in their uniform. We will cross the border into Italy at Villach, which is a very small village with the sad distinction that it received more bombs in the final days of the Second World War than Berlin, incredible but true. The reason being that much of the German army retreating from Italy made a desperate last stands there to no avail. Then we enter Italy at Tarvisio Boscoverde, unto Venezia, Ferrara, Bologna, Firenze, Orvieto and finally Rome.

We had a great vacation in Austria like always but we are looking forward to coming home to our puppies Nicholas and Eleonora who will be two years old in February.

Salzburg to Vienna

This morning we packed our bags and said our goodbyes to the Hotel Bristol Salzburg. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this hotel. Thank you to the staff, Mr. Muigg, the concierge, Peter, the Maitre d’hôtel, Ben the barman at Sketch, the staff of the Breakfast room, Marie-Anna at the reception and the owners and Manager. Who knows if we will be able to return to Salzburg in the future, given that my post in Rome is drawing to a close and I do not know what the future brings in July. However all our stays at Hotel Bristol were wunderbar, so danke to all.

The concert last night at the Mozarteum with Philippe Jaroussky had a surprise in that he did his 3 arias and then left, leaving the stage to les Musiciens du Louvre, who because Marc Minkowski was ill, was led by Thibault Noally first violin, they played Schubert symphony no.5, then at the end, Jaroussky came back to do an encore.

Though Jaroussky has a wonderful voice, what lacks is the acting part, it is not enough to have a perfect voice, one has to be able also to feel the emotions, last night it felt a bit flat. Could be the Jarrousky was not well he looked very red in the face, which is not normal.

Our best concert recital for me was with Thomas Quasthoff. 

Second best, the Hagen Quartet who played a piece by Schostakovitch, his string quartet no.8 composed in 1960 while visiting Dresden still in ruins from the Second World War. Third best for me was the Alban Berg piece written in memory of the young Manon Gropius who had died tragically.

During the Mozart Woche, you can go to 4 concerts a day, at 11am, 15:00, 19:30 and 22:00, all different with different artists and orchestra or ensemble, playing not only Mozart pieces but also Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, Schostakovitch, J.S.Bach, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Alban Berg, Handel, Brahms and Holliger. So quite a variety but in a way all tied together in some fashion.

If you enjoy the study of music and its composition and how a composer came to write such music then this festival gives you a better understanding of musical compositions.

Another piece I really liked because it was so different of all other compositions by Mozart was his string quartet K.428 a later piece, apparently Mozart had a difficult time in writing this piece.

Speaking of Mozart, since the 28 January is the day after his birthday, we decided to do something we had never done, that is to visit his birthplace in the old town. The building is located on Getreide Gasse, it’s a 4-story apartment block. The family lived there for 20 years. It was an apartment building for well to do families. The family of Leopold Mozart lived in 4 rooms, with large windows and a storage room. They had a large kitchen and running water, a luxury fixture for the time. The ceilings were low which leads me to believe that they could not have been tall people, unlike today. The living room was used for meals, entertaining guests and family, you simply rearranged the furniture, which like most houses at the time was a simple affair.  There was another large room; the birth room, all births and all the activities surrounding it took place in that room. A sad fact of the time was that one out of every second child died within the first 3 years of life. Mozart’s parents lost several children at birth or a few months after birth, only Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl survived into adulthood. 

The Mozart birthplace is a well done museum; it presents factual information about the composer, his life and  family, it also debunks many myths about Mozart’s life. His parents were well educated, his father was highly intelligent, well educated and had a very good position, financially providing a well to do life for his family. Mozart’s parents had a happy marriage and a good life.

His mother was kind hearted and she often played referee between her husband and the musical genius son.

Both of them had a difficult relationship probably because they had their own ideas about things.

Mozart spent a third of his life traveling to various cities and he enjoyed it. He performed, as was the custom then for many Princes and Bishops, they had the money to pay for performances whereas the public did not. Neither he nor his sister Nannerl where displayed by his father as trained musical monkeys. Mozart left Salzburg because the Prince Bishop and the Church stifled the city’s artistic life with religious overtones, not to forget that Salzburg then was a city of 16,000 people. Times were changing and Mozart like all young person wanted to live in a big city like Vienna, were contract’s and commissions were more readily available and were he could establish himself as a musician and composer. 

Emperor Joseph II was a modern reformist ruler, he enjoyed music and someone like Mozart could and did well at Court. Mozart contrary to modern belief was wealthy, he had debts but in the last years of his life he did quite well for himself and did not die in poverty hounded by creditors.

Mozart was quite ambitious and he did suffer some disappointments in not always getting what he wanted but on the other hand he was very famous and appreciated by many at Court in Vienna and in Europe.

 Church of St-Peter where Nannerl Mozart and Michael Haydn are buried in Salzburg.

His burial was as was the custom then in a common plot, most middle class people where buried exactly in the same manner, no cross and no tombstone. It was sufficient for the Christian soul to receive the last rites and prayers and the body buried in consecrated ground.

Not to forget that only the aristocracy and the senior clergy, bishops and cardinals received a different treatment, with elaborate mausoleums and monuments built to honour them in death. Mozart though famous did not belong to that class of people and was not as a commoner entitled to such an honour.

It was not a pauper’s funeral, as some in Hollywood would have you believe. His wife Constanza remarried many years later to an aristocrat lived in Copenhagen for a time and then returned to Salzburg where her second husband died. Mozart’s two sons Carl and Franz were like their father adept musically and had good careers, one in Lvov and the other in Milan. They were known as Mozart’s sons and enjoyed the fame during their life time.

All the pathos we have today about Mozart started to appear in the mid-19^th century with the romantic age and this is where all the myths and legends came from, of course the movie Amadeus does not help in this respect but it can be viewed like most movies as nothing more than a work of fiction and fantasy. I am glad we did this visit simply to get the real facts about his life and family.

 St-Michael Platz, entrance to the Hofburg Imperial Palace, Vienna.

Our train is now approaching Vienna West Bahnhof; we are staying at another great Hotel, Kaiserin Elisabeth on Weihburg gasse 3 by the Cathedral and the Hofburg, very central, quiet rooms and good service. Tonight we go to the Wiener StaatsOper, a first for me to hear Cosi Fan Tutte. We have only been to the Volksoper in Vienna before.

Vienna is very cold today at -10 C. I did not know it could get that cold in winter.

   

   

Innsbruck to Salzburg with OBB train EC 165

Today the skies cleared in Innsbruck and the mountains all appeared, the Hungerburg is way up there and can be reached by cable car, from the city it looks tiny and I wonder how cold it must be up way up there, but the view also of the surrounding countryside must be spectacular. On the platform of the Train Station we can see the Alpine ski jump used for international competitions. On our journey I note that the pine trees on the mountain slopes look like green penguins, all huddled together with a dusting of snow. Little churches, small Alpine villages, old castles dot the countryside, it certainly has a pristine quality.

To get to Salzburg from Innsbruck we will have to pass through Germany at some point en route and then re-enter Austria to arrive at Salzburg.

Though Will had said no more buying of Tyrolean clothes, he did manage to buy himself this morning a shirt, a tie and a very nice yak and lambs wool sweater with an Elk stitched on the front. There are many stores where you can buy Tyrolean fashion, one good place is the Tiroler Heimat Werk, see www.tiroler.heimatwerk.at

They also have all manner of things for the house in terms of Tyrolean articles, all good quality.

The sunshine is really pleasant and makes for an interesting contrast between the deep green of the pine trees and the snow peaks. We will arrive at 16:00, tonight there is nothing on the program. So we will probably have dinner in town. We just past Kufstein with its big fortress castle just above the train station. This is not an urban landscape it’s rural, snowy fields, mountains, trees and a few houses. Suddenly a ring on the cel phone to announce that we have just crossed the border into Germany, next Bavarian blue and white checkered flags.

A side note, I discovered when I was learning Italian that Munich in Italian is called Monaco di Bavaria or Monaco, that can be confusing because I would think of Monaco the Principality not Munich Bavaria. On our way to Innsbruck the train’s  final destination was Munich and it was announced as Monaco di Bavaria in Italian.

On our trip today we past many lakes and rivers, mountain torrents, none are frozen despite the snow all around us. It has not been cold enough consistently for anything to freeze.

In Salzburg we are staying at the family owned Bristol Hotel, which is one of three landmark hotels in that city.

It was established in 1900 and has been owned by only two families since. It was the favourite hotel of Sigmund Freud amongst many famous guests. We are waiting to see who has replaced Gunther our favourite Barman at the Sketch Bar of the Bristol. He told us he was leaving when we were there in May. He was going to Butler school in Amsterdam. He really was the perfect old style barman, knew every cocktail, knew how to mix them, would listen to the clients, put them at ease. Nothing was ever too difficult, always ready to accommodate. I know that the family was aware of how valuable he was to them, as he attracted returning customers. Will have to see who replaced him.

Across the street is the other hotel the Sacher, owned by the same family who owns the famous Sacher Hotel in Vienna, it use to be called the Österreicher Hof Hotel, both hotels are just a few meters away from the river and central to the concert halls and other activities.

During our final leg of this train trip in Germany, we go through forests surrounded by mountains and then as we re-enter Austria a more semi-urban landscape. The Austrian Railway OBB has in recent years rebuilt and modernized all train stations, making them a hub for train and bus travel. Salzburg Station has been going through a massive rebuilding program and it was still not quite finished when we were there last in May 2010.

A shopping mall and an hotel are often part of the Train Station geared towards the traveling public but also citizens of the city, a hub in other words. I often wish the Government in Canada would adopt this approach.   

From Padova to Verona on our way to Innsbruck

We had made reservations with OBB Austrian Federal Rail System to leave from Padova at 14:08 to go to Innsbruck. We got to the station on time only to discover that the train was not listed anywhere, the personnel from Train Italia could not help, they had no information.

Finally after insisting that there had to be a train, we had tickets, one Train Italia Official told us that, yes there was a bus to Verona with the sign OBB on it. So out the station we go and start looking for this bus, No bus, what to do, we decided to take a taxi to Verona, the distance is short about 55 min trip all together on the highway, the cost 160 Euros extra. Our taxi driver was doing about 220 km per hour.

Verona Porta Nuova Station standing by the DB car.

What a pain, nowhere on the OBB web site does it explain where the bus is etc. It also fails to tell you that the famous bus leaves Padova train station 30 minutes before the actual phantom train leaves. On the other hand the web site of DB, the German Rail system tells you this. You see the train is in fact the express that goes from Verona to Munich via Austria. But then why are the Germans more forthcoming with info than the Austrians? It’s probably cultural.

 Austrian OBB locomotive pulling a German DB train. Verona Station.

Anyway all this to say is that we missed our train departing Verona by minutes, because in the Verona Porta Nuova station, this train is not announced either.

The information desk will tell you that all German trains leave from Binario 1 or 3 and the representative of the other train systems is on Binario 1. You figure it out, dear client, don’t you love it, unresolved issues about moving borders from the First World War some 93 years ago.

So finally we boarded the last train at 16:59 and left promptly first stop is Rovereto, which is a small town in the Dolomite mountains, next lovely Trento, then beautiful Bolzano also known as Bozen, this was part of Austria until 1918, all great wine country of the Alto Adige or Süd Tirol. On to

Bressanone or Brixen, Fortezza or Franzensfeste, the famous Brenner Pass which is the border between Italy and Austria way up in the Dolomites and steps away from the Alps and finally Innsbruck. We will arrive at 20:30 some 2 hours late. The unfortunate part is that we missed going through the mountains in daylight as planned, which is very picturesque at this time of year with all the snow high up in the Austrian Alps.  

Strangely enough our train has no restaurant car, no bar car, nothing to eat or drink, snack's are advertised and the prices of food and drinks are the same as Canada’s Via Rail, is there a conspiracy here? Probably. I did ask the conductor about this situation given that the entire train ride, if we went all the way to Munich would take about 7 hours. The conductor apologized and said it was DB Rail management who had decided at the last minute not to provide anything given that the train was almost empty.  Still to me that is irresponsible and probably contrary to safety rules. 

When we got to Innsbruck, our hotel is just across the street from the train station, The Grand Hotel Europa is a wonderful hotel, impeccable service, the rooms are ultra modern, with lots of facilities. The hotel itself is more than 140 years old, but the owners have take great care to maintain it and done it with great care and good taste. See www.granhoteleuropa.at

What impressed us the most was that the next morning we sent out laundry to be done at 8 am, it was back in the room all neat and clean at 10am, I can honestly say that never in 45 years of traveling around the world have I ever seen this. 

We met friends on arrival last night and went to dinner at a wonderful Tapas Bar called TAPABAR on Marktplatz, see www.tapabar.at great food and excellent Spanish wines.